Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition (review)

Hugo, Victor. Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. E.H. and A. M. Blackmore. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Pp. 631. ISBN 0-226-35980-8

Australian translators E.H. and A. M. Blackmore have rendered eight thousand lines of Hugo's verse into rhyming meters. In the preface the translators stress that they have turned the rhymed couplets into a variety of English meters "couplets, qua-trains, metrically flexible blank verse" because no English verse corresponds "even remotely to the French alexandrine" (xviii). They also have tried to avoid the mono-tony of English heroic couplets. For Americans some rhymes may appear strange. For Australians "-aw," "ah," and "-ar" ar exact homophones whereas "grass" and "mass" do not even remotely match. Therefore, it is immediately evident to the reader that the translators are not Americans.

The selections are arranged chronologically from Odes et ballades (1822-8) to the posthumous Océan (1942). The volume contains most of the famous poems both long and short; for example, "Demain dès l'aube," "La Pente de la rêverie," "Tristesse d'Olympio," "Réponse à un acte d'accusation, "L'Expiation," and "Booz endormi" are all there.

To see the difference between translating for meter and translating for meaning, let us compare the Blackmore verse rendition of "Demain dès l'aube" with the William Rees prose version (The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820-1950).

The original French poem is well-known:

Demain dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit,
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

As we can see, the Blackmore translation successfully keeps the rhyme scheme without drastically changing the meaning or seeming trite. Only slight shifts in word order attract the reader's attention. from Les Contemplations /Contemplations (1856) p. 199:

IV. xiv. "At dawn tomorrow, when the plains grow bright. . ."

At dawn tomorrow, when the plains grown bright,
I'll go. You wait for me: I know you do.
I'll cross the woods, I'll cross the mountain-height.
No longer can I keep away from you.

I'll walk along with eyes fixed on my mind -
The world around I'll neither hear no see -
Alone, unknown, hands crossed, and back inclined;
And day and night will be alike to me.

I'll see neither the gold of evening gloom
Nor the sails off to Harfleur far away;
And when I come, I'll place upon your tomb
Some flowering heather and a holly spray.

The Rees version tries to stay closer to the original French and in so doing sacrifices poetry to prose:

Tomorrow, as soon as day breakes . . . (51)

Tomorrow, as soon as day breaks, at the hour when the landscape whitens, I will set out. You see, I know you are waiting for me. I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountain. I can stay no longer far from you.

I will walk with my gaze fixed on my thoughts, seeing nothing outside, hearing no sound, alone, unknown, with bent back and crossed hands, sad, and the daylight for me will be like night.

I will not look at the golden fall of evening, nor at the distant sails going down towards Harfleur, and when I arrive I will place on your tomb a bouquet...