Verse Translations
Poems of Francois Villon. Translated to the original verse-forms by Norman Cameron. (Cape. 10s. 6d.) AT a moment when the translation of verse into prose—or alter- natively into verse-forms considerably, looser than the originals-- is becoming the fashion, it is bracing to find so accomplished a poet in his own right as Norman Cameron attempting a full-blooded version of Villon, correct in rhyme and metre, and careful in its scholarly detail. Nevertheless, if it fails, as in the final test it does, it is because so much labour has gone to its making that the direct almost off-hand tone of the French is lost. Mr. Cameron has defied the modern trend by choosing to make his version in seventeenth- century language, a course which he justifies by claiming that Villon's fifteenth-century French corresponds to Elizabethan language " in maturity, in richness and in the degree of its resemblance to the modern tongue.'.! Certainly a vocabulary drawing on Spenser and Shakespeare, supplemented by more up-to-date words to choice, affords a translator an ample choice of rhymes. Unfortunately it also provides a fair number of obsolete words, and of phrases that have been reduced in the interval to clichés. A single famous stanza from the " Great Testament " will show the strengths and weaknesses of Mr.
Cameron's method : " Be't Paris's or Helen's death, Whoever dies, he dies in smart So great, he lacketh wind and breath ; His gall breaks in upon his heart,
And from his brow the sweat doth start—
God knows what sweat 1 And none will aid, For there is none would take his part And go as hostage in his stead."
While incomparably more robust and accurate than Swinburne in his over-adjectival attempt at the same lines, Mr. Cameron still fails to capture the effortlessly conversational tone of Villon's :
" Et mourut Paris et Helene, Quiconques mcurt, mcurt a douleur.
Celluy qui perd vent et alaine, Son fiel se creve sur son cucur " However, to anyone without sufficient French—and really not much is needed—to tackle the original, Norman Cameron 's version will convey a great deal of Villon's meaning, if little of his spontaneity. He has indeed many felicities, but they are never long sustained ; only too soon he becomes bogged down in his hosts and haths. .
The Hafiz translations are pleasantly cadenced, but do not attempt the single rhyme-scheme of the original Persian. The poetry adheres to an allegorical tradition that is at first a little difficult to accept. For the metaphors have a stock mystical connotation. The night- ingale is a lover, the dawn breeze is his messenger, and drunkenness stands for religious ecstasy. But the love convention is itself only figurative. For the lovers are no earthly lovers, and their wooing is that of the Creator and the human soul. Yet once the convention, which occurs also in Spanish poetry, is mastered, there is a delicate charm about such lines as these : " Again the garden has got the glitter of Spring
The nightingale hears good news, for the rose is come.
Soft wind returning to the young plants of the meadow, Greet for us the rose, the cypress and the sweet basil. They are spread for the wedding-feast of the wine-seller's son."
J. M. COHEN.
Previous page
