French · Parisian Scenes

Le Cygne

The Swan

55 lines · 10 notes

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To Victor Hugo
Àtoà · prepositionpreposition marking Victor Hugo
VictorVictorVictor · proper noun, masculine, singularhead of the phrase
HugoHugoHugo · proper noun, masculine, singularin apposition to Victor
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I
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Andromache, I think of you! This little river,
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poor and sorrowful mirror where once shone forth
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the immense majesty of your widow's griefs,
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this lying Simois swollen by your tears,
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has suddenly quickened my fertile memory,
Wordféconder «féconder» = 'to fertilize, to make fruitful, to impregnate'. The grammatical subject reaches all the way back to «Ce petit fleuve» four lines earlier (s3-l1): «Ce petit fleuve» and «Ce Simoïs menteur» are co-referential (the same small stream), with «Pauvre et triste miroir» as a further appositive; the grammatical subject is singular throughout. The singular «A fécondé» ('has fertilized') is therefore correct — the poet's memory. Note the bare «A» (no accent) at the head of the line is the verb «avoir», not the preposition «à».
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as I was crossing the new Carrousel.
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Old Paris is no more (the shape of a city
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changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart);
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I see only in the mind's eye that whole camp of shacks,
Grammarne… que = 'only' «ne… que» is the restrictive construction meaning 'only'. «Je ne vois qu'en esprit» = 'I see only in spirit / only in the mind's eye'. The old quarter is gone, so the poet can no longer see it with his eyes — only inwardly, from memory.
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those heaps of rough-hewn capitals and column-shafts,
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the weeds, the big blocks greened by the water of the puddles,
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and, glinting in the windowpanes, the confused jumble of junk.
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There once a menagerie spread itself out;
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there I saw, one morning, at the hour when beneath the skies
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cold and clear Labor awakens, when the street-cleaning
GrammarPronominal «s'éveiller» «s'éveiller» is the pronominal (reflexive) verb 'to wake up, to come awake', distinct from transitive «éveiller» ('to wake someone'). With «le Travail» (Labor) personified and capitalized, the dawn city itself stirs awake while the swan suffers below.
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drives a dark hurricane into the silent air,
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a swan that had escaped from its cage,
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and, with its webbed feet rubbing the dry pavement,
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dragged its white plumage over the rough ground.
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Beside a waterless gutter the creature, opening its beak,
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bathed its wings nervously in the dust,
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and said, its heart full of its lovely native lake:
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"Water, when will you rain? when will you thunder, lightning?"
GrammarFuture tense + inversion «pleuvras-tu» and «tonneras-tu» are the simple future of «pleuvoir» (to rain) and «tonner» (to thunder), with subject-verb inversion for the question. The intensifier «donc» sharpens the cry to 'when on earth…?'. The swan addresses the absent water and lightning directly, as if they could answer.
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I see that wretched thing, a strange and fatal myth,
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toward the sky at times, like the man of Ovid,
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toward the sky ironic and cruelly blue,
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stretching its eager head on its convulsive neck
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as though it were addressing reproaches to God!
Grammar«comme si» + imperfect «comme si» ('as if') governs the imperfect «adressait», not a conditional — French uses the imperfect after «comme si» for an unreal present comparison. So: 'as if it were addressing reproaches to God', the swan's skyward strain read as silent accusation.
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II
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Paris changes! but nothing in my melancholy
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has stirred! new palaces, scaffoldings, blocks,
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old suburbs, everything for me turns to allegory,
Wordallégorie «allégorie» — every concrete thing the poet sees (palaces, scaffolds, old quarters) becomes a figure for something else: exile, loss, the irretrievable. This is the hinge of the poem, where the swan stops being an anecdote and becomes the master symbol for all the exiled who follow.
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and my dear memories are heavier than rocks.
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And so before this Louvre an image weighs on me:
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I think of my great swan, with its mad gestures,
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like the exiled, ridiculous and sublime
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and gnawed by a desire without truce! and then of you,
Wordronger / sans trêve «ronger» = 'to gnaw, to eat away'; «sans trêve» = 'without truce, ceaselessly'. The swan, the exiles, and Andromache are all consumed by an unappeasable longing for a homeland they cannot reach. «et puis à vous» resumes «Je pense» — 'and then [I think] of you' — turning back to Andromache.
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Andromache, fallen from the arms of a great husband,
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vile cattle, beneath the hand of haughty Pyrrhus,
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bent in rapture beside an empty tomb,
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widow of Hector, alas! and wife of Helenus!
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I think of the black woman, wasted and consumptive,
Wordphtisique «phtisique» = 'consumptive', afflicted with phthisis (tuberculosis); «amaigrie» = 'emaciated, wasted'. The exiled African woman, ill in the Paris fog, hunts for the «cocotiers» (coconut palms) of a homeland she will never see again — a third figure of irretrievable exile beside the swan and Andromache.
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trampling in the mud, and seeking, wild-eyed,
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the absent coconut palms of splendid Africa
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behind the immense wall of fog;
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Of whoever has lost what is never found
Grammarquiconque + reflexive «se retrouver» «quiconque» = 'whoever, anyone who'. The reflexive «se retrouve» here carries a passive sense: «ce qui ne se retrouve jamais» = 'that which is never found again'. The «À» resumes «Je pense à» once more — the poet now thinks of all who have lost the irrecoverable, widening the swan into a universal emblem.
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never, never! of those who slake their thirst on tears
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and suckle Sorrow as if at a kindly she-wolf!
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of the gaunt orphans withering like flowers!
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Thus in the forest where my spirit goes into exile
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an old Memory sounds at full breath upon the horn!
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I think of the sailors forgotten on an island,
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of the captives, of the vanquished!... of many others still!
Word«encor» and the open ending «encor» is the poetic spelling of «encore» ('still, yet more'), used to fit the meter and drop a syllable. «à bien d'autres» = 'of many others'. The litany of exiles is left deliberately unfinished — the swan's grief spills past the named figures to everyone, anywhere, who has lost a home.

The particulars

The text: Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire. Parisian Scenes.
Words: Every word of the text, by letter.
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