À Arsène Houssaye (Baudelaire)  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
Revision as of 13:58, 9 November 2016
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

← Previous diff
Current revision
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

Line 1: Line 1:
{| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5" {| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5"
| style="text-align: left;" | | style="text-align: left;" |
-"Which one of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a [[poetic prose]]: musical, without rhythm or rhyme; adaptable enough and discordant enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of revery, the jolts of consciousness?" --[[À Arsène Houssaye (Baudelaire)|À Arsène Houssaye]]" +"Who of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a [[Prose poetry|poetic prose]]: musical, without [[rhythm]] or [[rhyme]]; adaptable enough and [[discordant]] enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of [[revery]], the jolts of consciousness?" --[[À Arsène Houssaye (Baudelaire)|À Arsène Houssaye]]" (1869) by Charles Baudelaire, mixed translation
 + 
 +French:
 + 
 +"Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, rêvé le miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale sans rhythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience?"
|} |}
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-"'''À Arsène Houssaye'''" (English: To Arsène Houssaye) is the preface French author [[Charles Baudelaire]] wrote for his collection of [[prose poem]]s ''[[Le Spleen de Paris]]''. The preface is dedicated to its publisher [[Arsène Houssaye]], who published some early poems of the collection in his ''[[L'Artiste]]''. Among other things, it praised the [[nonlinearity]] ("I have not strung [the reader's] wayward will to the endless thread of some unnecessary plot") of its poems.+"'''À Arsène Houssaye'''" (English: To Arsène Houssaye) is the preface French author [[Charles Baudelaire]] wrote for his collection of [[prose poem]]s ''[[Le Spleen de Paris]]''. The preface is dedicated to [[Arsène Houssaye]], who published some of the early poems of the collection in his ''[[L'Artiste]]''. Among other things, Baudelaire praises the [[nonlinearity]] and [[plotlessness]] ("I have not strung [the reader's] wayward will to the endless thread of some unnecessary plot") of his poems.
==Full text[https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%80_Ars%C3%A8ne_Houssaye_(Baudelaire)] == ==Full text[https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%80_Ars%C3%A8ne_Houssaye_(Baudelaire)] ==
À ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE À ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE

Current revision

"Who of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a poetic prose: musical, without rhythm or rhyme; adaptable enough and discordant enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of revery, the jolts of consciousness?" --À Arsène Houssaye" (1869) by Charles Baudelaire, mixed translation

French:

"Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, rêvé le miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale sans rhythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience?"

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

"À Arsène Houssaye" (English: To Arsène Houssaye) is the preface French author Charles Baudelaire wrote for his collection of prose poems Le Spleen de Paris. The preface is dedicated to Arsène Houssaye, who published some of the early poems of the collection in his L'Artiste. Among other things, Baudelaire praises the nonlinearity and plotlessness ("I have not strung [the reader's] wayward will to the endless thread of some unnecessary plot") of his poems.

Full text[1]

À ARSÈNE HOUSSAYE

Mon cher ami, je vous envoie un petit ouvrage dont on ne pourrait pas dire, sans injustice, qu’il n’a ni queue ni tête, puisque tout, au contraire, y est à la fois tête et queue, alternativement et réciproquement. Considérez, je vous prie, quelles admirables commodités cette combinaison nous offre à tous, à vous, à moi et au lecteur. Nous pouvons couper où nous voulons, moi ma rêverie, vous le manuscrit, le lecteur sa lecture ; car je ne suspends pas la volonté rétive de celui-ci au fil interminable d’une intrigue superfine. Enlevez une vertèbre, et les deux morceaux de cette tortueuse fantaisie se rejoindront sans peine. Hachez-la en nombreux fragments, et vous verrez que chacun peut exister à part. Dans l’espérance que quelques-uns de ces tronçons seront assez vivants pour vous plaire et vous amuser, j’ose vous dédier le serpent tout entier.

J’ai une petite confession à vous faire. C’est en feuilletant, pour la vingtième fois au moins, le fameux Gaspard de la Nuit, d’Aloysius Bertrand (un livre connu de vous, de moi et de quelques-uns de nos amis, n’a-t-il pas tous les droits à être appelé fameux ?) que l’idée m’est venue de tenter quelque chose d’analogue, et d’appliquer à la description de la vie moderne, ou plutôt d’une vie moderne et plus abstraite, le procédé qu’il avait appliqué à la peinture de la vie ancienne, si étrangement pittoresque.

Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses jours d’ambition, rêvé le miracle d’une prose poétique, musicale sans rhythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience ?

C’est surtout de la fréquentation des villes énormes, c’est du croisement de leurs innombrables rapports que naît cet idéal obsédant. Vous-même, mon cher ami, n’avez-vous pas tenté de traduire en une chanson le cri strident du Vitrier, et d’exprimer dans une prose lyrique toutes les désolantes suggestions que ce cri envoie jusqu’aux mansardes, à travers les plus hautes brumes de la rue ?

Mais, pour dire le vrai, je crains que ma jalousie ne m’ait pas porté bonheur. Sitôt que j’eus commencé le travail, je m’aperçus que non-seulement je restais bien loin de mon mystérieux et brillant modèle, mais encore que je faisais quelque chose (si cela peut s’appeler quelque chose) de singulièrement différent, accident dont tout autre que moi s’enorgueillirait sans doute, mais qui ne peut qu’humilier profondément un esprit qui regarde comme le plus grand honneur du poëte d’accomplir juste ce qu’il a projeté de faire.

Votre bien affectionné, C. B.

English translation

Baudelaire,_his_prose_and_poetry#DEDICATION_To_ARS.C3.88NE_HOUSSAYE

MY DEAR FRIEND:

I send you a little work of which it cannot be said, without injustice, that it has neither head nor tail; since all of it, on the contrary, is at once head and tail, alternately and reciprocally. Consider, I pray you, what convenience this arrangement offers to all of us, to you, to me and to the reader. We can stop where we wish, I my musing, you your consideration, and the reader his perusal--for I do not hold the latter's restive will by the interminable thread of a fine-spun intrigue. Remove a vertebra, and the two parts of this tortuous fantasy rejoin painlessly. Chop it into particles, and you will see that each part can exist by itself. In the hope that some of these segments will be lively enough to please and to amuse you, I venture to dedicate to you the entire serpent.

I have a little confession to make. It was while glancing, for at least the twentieth time, through the famous _Gaspard de la Nuit_, by Aloysius Bertrand (a book known to you, to me, and to a few of our friends, has it not the highest right to be called famous?), that the idea came to me to attempt an analogous plan, and to apply to the description of modern life, or rather of a life modern and more abstract, the process which he applied in the depicting of ancient life, so strangely picturesque.

Which of us has not, in his moments of ambition, dreamed the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rime, sufficiently supple, sufficiently abrupt, to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the soul, to the windings and turnings of the fancy, to the sudden starts of the conscience?

It is particularly in frequenting great cities, it is from the flux of their innumerable streams of intercourse, that this importunate ideal is born. Have not you yourself, my dear friend, tried to convey in a chanson the strident cry of the glazier, and to express in a lyric prose all the grievous suggestions that cry bears even to the house-tops, through the heaviest mists of the street? But, to speak truth, I fear that my jealousy has not brought me good fortune. As soon as I had begun the work, I saw that not only was I laboring far, far, from my mysterious and brilliant model, but that I was reaching an accomplishment (if it can be called _an accomplishment_) peculiarly different--accident of which all others would doubtless be proud, but which can but profoundly humiliate a mind which considers it the highest honor of the poet to achieve exactly what he has planned.

Devotedly yours,

C. B.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "À Arsène Houssaye (Baudelaire)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools