This is the central site for a long-term project to research, examine, and respond to the radical collective of writers, theorists, architects, and visual artists who operated in Paris between 1829 and 1835 under the names of the Jeunes France & the Bouzingo, and through them to build a critical understanding of French Romanticist subculture through the historical lens of a continuing politically vigilant Anglophone avant-garde.

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Gérard de Nerval, "Fantasy"

Fantasy

There is a tune for which I’d freely trade
All Rossini, all Mozart and all Weber,[1]
Archaic tune, faded fast and sepulchral
Which for me alone offers secret allure.

Now, each time that I happen to hear it,
Two centuries my spirit revives;
Tis under Louis Thirteenth; I envision outspread
A verdant slope, which the sunset ambers.

Then a brick-built manor with stony corners,
With stained-glass windows of roseate colours,
Girt in vast parks, a rivulet there
Rinsing its feet, which slides among flowers;

Then a lady, at her lofty window,
Blond with darkling eyes, her apparel antique,
Whom, in another existence perchance,
I’ve seen before . . . – of whom I remind myself!

NOTE
[1] Pronounce it “Webure”.

(Nerval’s original footnote instructed the reader to pronounce it as “Webre”, to rhyme with “funèbre”, sepulchral. This is as close as I could come to reproducing the joke in a free verse translation.)