Robert Desnos, J’AI TANT RÊVÉ DE TOI translated by Alexander Dickow
I'VE DREAMT SO MUCH OF YOU
I’ve dreamt so much of you that you lose your reality.
Is there still time to reach this living form and to kiss the birthplace on
those lips of that beloved voice?
I’ve dreamt so much of you that my arms, given, as I embrace your
shadow, to crossing over my chest, might not bend to the shape
of your body, perhaps.
And before the true appearance of what has haunted me and governed
me for days and for years I could become a shadow, no doubt.
Oh sentimental scales.
I’ve dreamt so much of you it’s no longer time to wake up, no doubt. I’m
asleep on my feet, my body yielded to all the appearances of living
and loving and you, the only one who matters to me today, I could be
less able to touch your brow and your lips than the first lips and the
first brow that comes along.
I’ve dreamt so much of you, walked, spoken, slept with your ghost so
much that the only thing left for me perhaps, still, is to be a ghost
among ghosts and a hundredfold more shadow than the shadow
that wanders and will wander merrily across the sundial of your life.
Commentary:
You've given me a remarkable challenge, and I can only agree that this little poem admirably struggles against a harmonious rendering into English. Ordinarily, English is a slightly more compact language than French, dropping articles more frequently, for example. Desnos' poem, however, and in this it perhaps retains something of the Latinate (synthetic) origins of French, seems more tightly wound, more muscularly written in French than the English version I've created. Even the doubling of the syllables from "tant" to "so much" leaves me distinctly unsatisfied (I couldn't find any way around this problem). I was pleased to find "A hundredfold / More shadow than the shadow", which emulates Desnos' densely repeated terms, such as in the verse "Et les lèvres que les premières lèvres," producing a hypnotic effect. The noun "hundredfold" helped me accomplish something similar, compensating for the slightly shifted word-order. But most of the time, I was not satisfied with my attempts at "compressing" the English version enough to mimic the French. Another example of this kind of problem: in French, "ce qui me hante / Et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années" becomes "what has haunted me / And governed me for days and for years" -- 12 words in English to 16 in French, and yet the French feels more compact because of the use of the present indicative "hante" and "gouverne", where English requires the present perfect "has haunted" -- the composite form in English has less impact (rhythmic or semantic) than the single-word indicative. Additionally, the English loses the syllabic and syntactic symmetry of the French, organized neatly into four four-syllable syntactic groups (ce qui me hante - Et me gouverne - depuis des jours - et des années).
So, the French is distinctly more concise and tightly packaged than my English version, in my opinion. But there is also a rigidity to this poem, I think. For example, the term "réalité" didn't seem to accept any other translation than "reality." "Substance" has to do with corporeality, which is something different than reality. "Existence" could work but has too much philosophical baggage to feel like a true equivalent for "reality." In a sense, I felt there was nothing quite so fundamental as the word reality, and that only this word would do as a result.
I didn't entirely fail -- I'm quite happy with the expression "given...to" at the opening of stanza two, which avoids the clunky Latinate expressions like "accustomed to" (tried that one and threw it out...), and the emphasis on the word "given" at the end of this line felt absolutely appropriate for this very carnal (and yet ethereal!) poem. I like "yield" for "exposé," even though it's a less literal choice. I also felt good about choosing the colloquial expression "the shape of your body" over the more literal, but less natural, "the contours of your body." The Latinate calqued version reduces the effectiveness of this line; the "shape of your body" evokes physical forms more directly. Or so it seems to me: this might be an illusion of the supposedly more concrete Anglo-Saxon root of "shape," as opposed to the supposed abstraction of the Latinate "contours." But I think English speakers would more spontaneously say "the shape of your body" than "the contour(s) of your body." This poem does not display its many artifices; it prefers to hide them under the guise of the colloquial. Few expressions here stray all from normative French usage. So the more natural expression felt like the proper choice.
This version may not soar, but I'm grateful for the occasion to think about the translation process, and why certain things work, and others don't. So thank you, Chris Clarke, for this stimulating challenge.
Amitiés,
Alexander Dickow
World Poetry Review 