Saturday Rave: Clair de Lune by Paul Verlaine.

Did you know Debussy's Clair de Lune has words?

Well, it does. In fact the words came before the music, and they were written by this man:



who may look like the minor schoolteacher he sometimes was, but he was a passionate man and an uncompromising poet - a poète maudit, or cursed poet, as he called himself. 

His name was Paul Verlaine, and he was brave, cowardly, straight, gay, loving, ferocious...but above all a poet. He wrote of dreams, drugs, mysterious forces, veils, fate and feelings, quite deliberately eschewing clarity and strength of argument for suggestion and mist and music. The music of words captivated him.

Here's his poem Clair de Lune.

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques,
Jouant du luth et dansant, et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques!

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune.
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur Bonheur,
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres,
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Your soul is a choice landscape

Where charming masked folk and revellers roam
Playing the lute and dancing and seeming almost
Sad under their fantastic disguises. 

Even while singing in a minor key
Of victorious love and good life
They don't seem to believe in their own happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight, 

With the sad and beautiful moonlight,
That makes the birds in the trees dream
And the fountains sob with ecstasy,
The slim fountains among the marble figures. 

******

What happens when we ourselves see a moonlit scene?

Perhaps what happens is that we discover if we're really poets.

Word To Use Today: moon. The Old English form of this word was mōna.