Anguish
Tonight, I come not
conquering your body, 0
beast of a nation’s
sin: nor stirring in your hair’s
impurities the sad storm
of incurable
ennui my kiss dispenses.
From your couch I crave
profound slumber without dreams,
hovering under nameless
mantlings, the remorse
that you, too, may taste, for all
your sable falsehoods —
you who of nothingness know
even more than all the dead.
For vice, devouring
natural nobility,
stamped me, like you, with
its sterility. — But while
your breast is stone, harbouring
a heart unscarred by
the dart of any crime, I
flee — pale, defeated,
haunted by my shroud, in fear
of dying should I sleep alone.
James Kirkup writes: ‘The problems posed by Mallarmé ‘s poetry are well-known to translators brave enough to attempt those perilous tests of language and form. [. . .] The greatest difficulty appears from the rhymes, which it is almost impossible to manage and still remain faithful to the original. [.. .] in producing these new versions . . . I have deliberately ignored the traps of rhyming. The poetic forms of the poems before Igitur are conventional sonnets, quatrains, alexandrines. So I have explored the possibilities of transforming those forms into something completely different in shape — the classical Ia panese tanka, a verse of five lines of unrhymed 5,7,5,7,7 syllables — 31 in all. In previous experiments, I had discovered how suitable this form is when used in sequence to create narrative poems and extended lyrics. [.. .1 I was astonished by the ease with which Mallarmé’s intricate poetic style transfers into this alien form.’
Translated by James Kirkup
Page(s) 87-88
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