A useful download
Anthology of French poetry and Jeanne d'Arc
https://archive.org/details/angelflorestheanchoranthologyoffrenchpoetzlib.org/page/n233/mode/2up
I found this link that allows you to read from the classic anthology. An interesting introduction to some of the great French poets and a taste of different translators. It was my introduction in 1965 to poets such as Gerard de Nerval, Paul Verlaine, Apollinaire, and several others.
Today is the Remembrance Day of the visionary Joan of Arc. On May 30, 1431 she was burned to the stake in Rouen; she was 19 years old. Below is an an old French postcard depicting her as a young and courageous soldier.
I am thinking of her in my travels, reading and writing, and drawing inspiration and resolve from those who have walked before us, forging paths created with stepping stones of hope.
Thank you Patti.
I’m sitting here in bed in my Hotel room in Hiroshima, where they have just held the 2023 Summit.
I’m folding paper cranes in memory of another brave soul Sadako Sasaki. There have been some very inspiring women in history. Although you probably don’t think you are, you are also.
Thank you for this link. The Anchor Anthology, which I have in paper too, was also my introduction to French poetry, given to me by my best friend Heidi, who was a French literature major in college where we met. Our professor and friend, Georges Guy, did many translations from the French, some of which are in this anthology.
I confess that in spite of my excitement, some part of me was (and remains) anxious about embarking on this poetry because of how love and loss haunted it all is for me. This was a world in which I was immersed, guided by Heidi, for many years. When she died, at 45, I could not, for a long time, read any of these poets. I didn’t even will the famine from them. It came naturally, as if a word or phrase would catapult me into a state of pain that I could not bear. Her absence.
But I miss these poems, and encountering them is like seeing an old friend. The awe, admiration, sense of being transported, is still the same.
There are so many poems herein that resonate and remind me of Heidi. She in a black velvet dress, Georges Guy in a three piece suit even though we were in the country, me in my flannel shirt, poring over these works.
One of the poems by Gérard de Nerval that Heidi and I used to recite was “Le Point noir,” (“The Dark Blot”) translated by Richard Lattimore. I think of it now with the hope that I can look, with all of you, on these illuminations, bask in this splendor, and not be hurt, or not too badly.
THE DARK BLOT
He who has gazed against the sun sees everywhere he looks thereafter, palpitating on the air before his eyes, a smudge that will not go away.
So in my days of still-youth, my audacity,
I dared look on the splendor momentarily.
The dark blot on my greedy eyes has come to stay.
Since when, worn like a badge of mourning in the sight
of all around me where my eye may chance to light,
I see the dark smudge settle upon everyone.
Forever thus between my happiness and me?
Alas for us, the eagle only, only he
can look, and not be hurt, on splendor and the sun.