Two from Gerard de Nerval

Translated from the French

by Evelyn Hooven (April 2018)

Visage, Antonio Guanse, 1974

Obstinate and Beyond

 

Whosoever stares long at the sun

Thinks he sees obstinate and beyond

So, when young and still full of bravery

I dared stare an instant at glory

Then mingled through all, mournful signal,

Wherever my glance might remain,

I felt it interpose—obscure flaw

Between joy and me, perpetual.

 

That other world—of glory and of sun,

Is it the eagle’s alone? His, not mine?

Shakespeare Recites Shakespeare, Umberto Romano, 1960s

So Goes the Tale

 

He lived gaily, a fluttery starling,

Somber, sometimes, like a dreamer

It was Death, so he asked him: Please wait

Till I’ve crossed the T on my sonnet .  .  .

Then, with no more ado, he stretched himself out

Trembling, frozen deep in his coffin.

 

He was indolent, so goes the tale,

Wished to know all, knew nothing at all,

 

And when time was up and this life lost,

When, one winter evening, he gave up the ghost,

He went away saying: Why did I come?

 

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Evelyn Hooven graduated from Mount Holyoke College and received her M.A. from Yale University, where she also studied at The Yale School of Drama. A member of the Dramatists’ Guild, she has had presentations of her verse dramas at several theatrical venues, including The Maxwell Anderson Playwrights Series in Greenwich, CT (after a state-wide competition) and The Poet’s Theatre in Cambridge, MA (result of a national competition). Her poems and translations from the French have appeared in ART TIMES, Chelsea, The Literary Review, THE SHOp: A Magazine of Poetry (in Ireland), The Tribeca Poetry Review, Vallum (in Montreal), and other journals, and her literary criticism in Oxford University’s Essays in Criticism.

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More by Evelyn Hooven here.