Stephane Mallarme: "The Swan" (Le Cygne)

Will the virginal, strong and handsome today

Tear for us with a drunken flap of his wing

This hard forgotten lake which the transparent glacier

Of flights unknown haunts under the frost!

A swan of former times remembers that it is he

Magnificent but who without hope gives himself up

For not having sung of the region where he should have been

When the boredom of sterile winter was resplendent.

All his neck will shake off this white death-agony

Inflicted by space on the bird which denies space

But not the horror of the earth where his wings are caught.

Phantom whom his pure brilliance assigns to this place,

He becomes immobile in the cold dream of scorn

Which the Swan puts on his useless exile.

1885, published in La Revue

Independante (translation by

Wallace Fowlie, Mallarme, 1953)

La vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui

Va-t-il nous dechirer avec un coup d'aile ivre

Ce lac dur oublie que hante sous le givre

La transparente glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui

Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se delivre

Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre

Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.

Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie

Par l'espace infligee a l'oiseau qui nie,

Mais non l'horreur du sol ou le plumage est pris.

Fantome qu'a ce lieu son pur eclat assigne,

Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mepris

Que vet parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.