Variations
on a Sublime Line
Baudelaire has written some of the most beautiful lines in the French language, and here is one of them.
Et
les grands ciels qui font rêver d’éternité.
It’s the last line taken from the first verse of LXXXVI PAYASAGE which is the opening poem of section two TABLEAUX PARISIENS of Les Fleurs du Mal, and it is also the first line that comes into my head when I look up at the sky and see a beautiful sun set, whether it is in the depths of November or in the middle of the month of May.
The first thing about it is without a doubt the twelve syllable count which just trips over the tongue in the most enjoyable way, and this is the famous heroic metre that exists and which is called the alexandrine. The alexandrine is made up of six syllables followed by a pause or what is known as a caesura, which is then followed by another six syllables.
Et
les grands ciels qui font – rêver d’éternité.
So, the six words at the beginning are each marked by a vowel each, the ie counting as one as it is a diphthong, so is pronounced as a single vowel sound, and this is a good rule of thumbas the syllables are counted as they are pronounced, not by the amount of vowels that there are. This is the first thing to note about the line, the absolute pleasure that it brings both to recite and to hear it being recited; le plaisir de dire et de l’entendre…!
One should of course be aware that the alexandrine is a heroic metre and so it is used in epic poems and brings with it a register that creates a rather sombre majesty, and which Baudelaire uses quite often in his poetry. This is important to understand, particularly when one is trying to translate him properly. I only say this as I have seen poets absolutely butcher his poetry by translating such lines in a kind of whimsically British/ English or even American way.
Okay, so much for the metrics, what about the actually words themselves! Well, this is where it gets very interesting. What follows now are some variations of how you might try to render this sublime line in an English translation.
Et
les grands ciels qui font rêver d’éternité.
And
the great skies which make dream eternity.
And
the great skies which make dreams of eternity.
What is really interesting I find is the lack of an object in the second clause, it is rather curious in its formality, and is much more closer to the original French than say the following when you introduce an object proper, which sounds so much more natural today.
And
the great skies which make you dream of eternity.
But then, when you play around with the verb form and switch it to an adjective or a noun you can come up with some interesting variations too.
And
the great skies which make dream eternal.
And
the great skies which make dreams eternal.
And
the great skies which make eternal dreams.
And
the great skies which make eternity dream.
Et
les grands ciels qui font rêver d’éternité.
And
the great skies which make you dream of eternity.
I always seem to come back to this line above, even though it breaks the metrical run of the line in English, I still think it is the most natural sounding.
I often recite this line in the original French to myself when I see a stunning sunset, and it always sounds so fresh and so eternal, and I think that this is the sign of a true poet one who can compose lines like this and which are eternally memorable and so bring eternal pleasure to generation after generation rather like the skies themselves which help to feed our dreams and our sense of the eternal. As long as we have skies that we can look to and which can inspire us, we will have poetry. It is that simple, and as long as we do not, we will not. A nuclear winter would blot out the sun, worth thinking about in the current climate.
Here's another thing to think about, can you think of a similarly sublime line written by a contemporary poet and which makes you recite every time you see a day to day phenonmenon such as the line above?
No? I didn't think so! That's why Baudelaire is considered a classic.
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