La Maison de Claudine by Colette

Anyone who enjoys gardens will surely enjoy Colette.

Here is an extract that I've translated from Colette's La Maison de Claudine, Où sont les enfants ?

As usual, first the original text in French followed by my translation into English.

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OÙ SONT LES ENFANTS ?
La maison était grande, coiffée d'un grenier haut. La pente raide de la rue obligeait les écuries et les remises, les poulaillers, la buanderie, la laiterie, à se blottir en contre-bas tout autour d'une cour fermée.

Accoudée au mur du jardin, je pouvais gratter du doigt le toit du poulailler. Le Jardin-du-Haut commandait un Jardin-du-Bas, potager resserré et chaud, consacré à l'aubergine et au piment, où l'odeur du feuillage de la tomate se mêlait, en juillet, au parfum de l'abricot mûri sur espaliers. Dans le Jardin-du-Haut, deux sapins jumeaux, un noyer dont l'ombre intolérante tuait les fleurs, des roses, des gazons négligés, une tonnelle disloquée… Une forte grille de clôture, au fond, en bordure de la rue des Vignes, eût dû défendre les deux jardins ; mais je n'ai jamais connu cette grille que tordue, arrachée au ciment de son mur, emportée et brandie en l'air par les bras invincibles d'une glycine centenaire…

La façade principale, sur la rue de l'Hospice, était une façade à perron double, noircie, à grandes fenêtres et sans grâces, une maison bourgeoise de vieux village, mais la roide pente de la rue bousculait un peu sa gravité, et son perron boitait, six marches d'un côté, dix de l'autre.

Grande maison grave, revêche avec sa porte à clochette d'orphelinat, son entrée cochère à gros verrou de geôle ancienne, maison qui ne souriait que d'un côté. Son revers, invisible au passant, doré par le soleil, portait manteau de glycine et de bignonier mêlés, lourds à l'armature de fer fatiguée, creusée en son milieu comme un hamac, qui ombrageait une petite terrasse dallée et le seuil du salon… Le reste vaut-il la peine que je le peigne, à l'aide de pauvres mots ? Je n'aiderai personne à contempler ce qui s'attache de splendeur, dans mon souvenir, aux cordons rouges d'une vigne d'automne que ruinait son propre poids, cramponnée, au cours de sa chute, à quelques bras de pin. Ces lilas massifs dont la fleur compacte, bleue dans l'ombre, pourpre au soleil, pourrissait tôt, étouffée par sa propre exubérance, ces lilas morts depuis longtemps ne remonteront pas grâce à moi vers la lumière, ni le terrifiant clair de lune – argent, plomb gris, mercure, facettes d'améthystes coupantes, blessants saphirs aigus –, qui dépendait de certaine vitre bleue, dans le kiosque au fond du jardin.

Maison et jardin vivent encore, je le sais, mais qu'importe si la magie les a quittés, si le secret est perdu qui ouvrait – lumière, odeurs, harmonie d'arbres et d'oiseaux, murmure de voix humaines qu'a déjà suspendu la mort – un monde dont j'ai cessé d'être digne ?…

WHERE ARE THE CHILDREN?
Topped with a high attic, it was a big house with stables and outhouses, chicken coops, a washhouse and a dairy that because of the steep slope of the street were forced together in a huddle around an enclosed, lower courtyard.

Leaning against the garden wall, I could scratch the roof of the chicken house with my finger. The upper garden overlooked the lower garden: a narrow and warm kitchen garden set aside for growing aubergines and peppers, where, in July, the smell of tomato leaves mixed with the scent of the apricots ripening on their espaliers. In the upper garden: two twin pines, a walnut tree whose unforgiving shade killed off any flowers, roses, a neglected lawn, a dislocated tunnel… A sturdy iron fence at the bottom of the garden along the length of the rue des Vignes must have once protected the two gardens but I only ever saw the fence twisted and torn from its cement base and brandished in air by the invincible branches of a hundred year old wisteria…

Overlooking the rue de l’Hospice the front of the house was unattractive. Blackened with age, it was adorned with large windows and a stone stairway that led to the front entrance; an old, bourgeois, village house whose serious bearing was eased slightly by the steep slope of the road, which seemed to cause the perron, with 6 steps on one side and 10 on the other, to limp.

Large and austere-looking, with a porch and carriage gate with an enormous old prison latch, it was a house that smiled on one side only: the back where, out of sight of the passer-by, bathed in sunlight, it sported a cloak of wisteria and bignonia that shaded a small, tiled terrace and the door to the living room, a cloak that weighed heavy on the tired iron framework, which had sunk like a hammock in the middle… Is there any point in continuing my description when words alone are not enough? I wont be able to help anyone envisage the splendour that endures in my memory of the red ribbons of the autumn vines collapsing under their own weight, clinging as they fall to some conifer branches. I cannot make the clumps of lilacs - whose compact flowers, blue in the shade, purple in sunlight, quickly fade, suffocated by their own exuberance – I cannot make lilacs that died years ago reach again out towards either the sunlight or the terrifying light of the moon which, as it passed through the blue window lights of the kiosk at the bottom of the garden could turn from silver, lead-grey mercury, to sharp facets of amethysts and sapphir.

The house and garden are still there, I know, so does it matter if the secret ingredient that brought to life a harmony of trees and birds, a murmur of human voices that have already put death on hold, the magic that opened a world of light and smell of which I am no longer worthy, does it matter if this has gone?

For the love of a single flower

Here's another literary text that has something to say about gardening or caring (for plants) at least. I'll post more extracts from Le Petit Prince as the Flower features quite prominently in this story, and there is more to be said about caring for her.

Le Petit Prince is available on line at : http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php

As before, the original text first and then my translation... in orange.

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Extract from

Le Petit Prince par Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Chapitre VII

– Mais non ! Mais non ! Je ne crois rien ! J’ai répondu n’importe quoi. Je m’occupe, moi, de choses sérieuses !
Il me regarda stupéfait.
– De choses sérieuses !
Il me voyait, mon marteau à la main, et les doigts noirs de cambouis, penché sur un objet qui lui semblait très laid.
– Tu parles comme les grandes personnes !
Ça me fit un peu honte. Mais, impitoyable, il ajouta :
– Tu confonds tout… tu mélanges tout
Il était vraiment très irrité. Il secouait au vent des cheveux tout dorés :
– Je connais une planète où il y a un Monsieur cramoisi. Il n’a jamais respiré une fleur. Il n’a jamais regardé une étoile. Il n’a jamais aimé personne. Il n’a jamais rien fait d’autre que des additions. Et toute la journée il répète comme toi : « Je suis un homme sérieux ! Je suis un homme sérieux ! » et ça le fait gonfler d’orgueil. Mais ce n’est pas un homme, c’est un champignon !
– Un quoi ?
– Un champignon !
Le petit prince était maintenant tout pâle de colère.
– Il y a des millions d’années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d’années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n’est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien ? Ce n’est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs ? Ce n’est pas plus sérieux et plus important que les additions d’un gros Monsieur rouge ? Et si je connais, moi, une fleur unique au monde, qui n’existe nulle part, sauf dans ma planète, et qu’un petit mouton peut anéantir d’un seul coup, comme ça, un matin, sans se rendre compte de ce qu’il fait, ce n’est pas important ça !
Il rougit, puis reprit :
– Si quelqu’un aime une fleur qui n’existe qu’à un exemplaire dans les millions et les millions d’étoiles, ça suffit pour qu’il soit heureux quand il les regarde. Il se dit : « Ma fleur est là quelque part… » Mais si le mouton mange la fleur, c’est pour lui comme si, brusquement, toutes les étoiles s’éteignaient ! Et ce n’est pas important ça !

Il ne put rien dire de plus. Il éclata brusquement en sanglots. La nuit était tombée. J’avais lâché mes outils. Je me moquais bien de mon marteau, de mon boulon, de la soif et de la mort. Il y avait, sur une étoile, une planète, la mienne, la Terre, un petit prince à consoler ! Je le pris dans les bras. Je le berçai. Je lui disais : « La fleur que tu aimes n’est pas en danger… Je lui dessinerai une muselière, à ton mouton… Je te dessinerai une armure pour ta fleur… Je… » Je ne savais pas trop quoi dire. Je me sentais très maladroit. Je ne savais comment l’atteindre, où le rejoindre… C’est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes.

"No of course not! I don't believe in anything." I was just talking for the sake of it. "I'm busy. I've got serious work to do."

He looked at me, amazed. "Serious work?"

He was watching me. I had a hammer in my hand, my fingers were black with oil and I was leaning over something that to him was very ugly.

"You sound just like an adult!"

That made me feel rather ashamed. But he was pitiless and added:

"You're confusing everything. You're muddling everything."

He was really annoyed and his golden locks were shaking in the wind.

"I know a planet where there is a purple-faced gentleman. He's never smelt a flower. He's never wondered at the stars. He's never loved anyone. He's never done anything other than his sums. And all day long he says the same thing over and over again, just like you: I'm an important man. I'm an important man. And that puffs him up with pride. But he's not a man! He's a mushroom!"

"A what?"

"A mushroom."

The Little Prince was now white with anger.

"For millions of years flowers have been growing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating those very same flowers. Don't you want to know why flowers take so much trouble to grow thorns that are never any good for anything? Doesn't it matter that the sheep and the flowers are at war? Isn't that more important, doesn't that count more than the fat purple-faced man's sums? And what if I know a flower, a flower like no other in the world, which only grows on my planet. What if one day, one morning, a sheep were to eat my flower, annihilating it in a single bite without even realizing what he's done. Doesn't that matter?"

He was turning red. Then he said:

"If you love a flower that is so unique that it only grows in one place in the whole of the Universe, that should be enough to make you happy because wherever you are you always know that your flower is out there somewhere. But if a sheep were to eat your flower, it would be like all the stars in the Universe suddenly disappearing. Doesn't that matter to you?"

He couldn't say anymore. Then, suddenly, he started crying. It was dark now. I'd already put my tools down. I didn't care about my hammer, my bolt, being thirsty or dying. They didn't seem to matter anymore. Out there, on a planet somewhere under the stars, on my planet, on Earth, there was a little prince who needed comforting. I put my arms around him and rocking him gently said: "Your flower is safe. I'll draw a muzzle for the sheep. I'll draw a shield for your flower. I'll..." I didn't really know what to say. I felt very awkward. I didn't know how to reach him. I didn't know where he was. He was in such a strange, sad place.

L'Immoraliste by Gide

L'Immoraliste is available on-line at :http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php


Extract from L'Immoraliste (1902) by Gide
Part I, Chapter IV
First the original version then, in orange, my translation.

"Marceline, cependant, qui voyait avec joie ma santé enfin revenir, commençait depuis quelques jours à me parler des merveilleux vergers de l’oasis. Elle aimait le grand air et la marche. La liberté que lui valait ma maladie lui permettait de longues courses dont elle revenait éblouie ; jusqu’alors elle n’en parlait guère, n’osant m’inciter à l’y suivre et craignant de me voir m’attrister au récit de plaisirs dont je n’aurais pu jouir déjà. Mais, à présent que j’allais mieux, elle comptait sur leur attrait pour achever de me remettre. Le goût que je reprenais à marcher et à regarder m’y portait. Et dès le lendemain nous sortîmes ensemble.

Elle me précéda dans un chemin bizarre et tel que dans aucun pays je n’en vis jamais de pareil. Entre deux assez hauts murs de terre il circule comme indolemment ; les formes des jardins, que ces hauts murs limitent, l’inclinent à loisir ; il se courbe ou brise sa ligne ; dès l’entrée, un détour vous perd ; on ne sait plus ni d’où l’on vient, ni où l’on va. L’eau fidèle de la rivière suit le sentier, longe un des murs ; les murs sont faits avec la terre même de la route, celle de l’oasis entière, une argile rosâtre ou gris que le soleil ardent craquelle et qui durcit à la chaleur, mais qui mollit dès la première averse et forme alors un sol plastique où les pieds nus restent inscrits. – Par-dessus les murs, des palmiers. A notre approche, des tourterelles y volèrent. Marceline me regardait.

J’oubliais ma fatigue et ma gêne. Je marchais dans une sorte d’extase, d’allégresse silencieuse, d’exaltation des sens et de la chair. A ce moment, des souffles légers s’élevèrent ; toutes les palmes s’agitèrent et nous vîmes les palmiers les plus hauts s’incliner ; - puis l’air entier redevint calme, et j’entendis distinctement, derrière le mur, un chant de flûte. –Une brèche au mur ; nous entrâmes.

C’était un lieu plein d’ombre et de lumière ; tranquille, et qui semblait comme à l’abri du temps ; plein de silences et de frémissements, bruit léger de l’eau qui s’écoule, abreuve les palmiers, et d’arbre en arbre fuit, appel discret des tourterelles, chant de flûte dont un enfant jouait. Il gardait un troupeau de chèvres ; il était assis, presque nu, sur le tronc d’un palmier abattu ; il ne se troubla pas à notre approche, ne s’enfuit pas, ne cessa qu’un instant de jouer. Je m’aperçus, durant ce court silence, qu’une autre flûte au loin répondait. Nous avançâmes encore un peu, puis : « Inutile d’aller plus loin, dit Marceline ; ces vergers se ressemblent tous ; à peine, au bout de l’oasis, deviennent-ils un peu plus vastes… Elle étendit le châle à terre : -Repose toi. »

Combien de temps nous y restâmes ? je ne sais plus ; - qu’importait l’heure ? Marceline était près de moi ; je m’étendis, posais sur ses genoux ma tête. Le chant de flûte coulait encore, cessait par instants, reprenait ; le bruit de l’eau… Par instants une chèvre bêlait. Je fermai les yeux ; je sentis se poser sur mon front la main fraîche de Marceline ; je sentais le soleil ardent doucement tamisé par les palmes ; je ne pensais à rien ; qu’importait la pensée ? je sentais extraordinairement…

Et par instants, un bruit nouveau ; j’ouvrais les yeux ; c’était le vent léger dans les palmes ; il ne descendait plus jusqu’à nous n’agitait que les palmes hautes.

Le lendemain matin, dans ce même jardin je revins avec Marceline ; le soir du même jour j’y allai seul. Le chevrier qui jouait de la flûte était là. Je m’approchai de lui, lui parlai. Il se nommait Lassif, n’avait que douze ans, était beau. Il me dit le nom de ses chèvres, me dit que les canaux s’appellent séghias ; toutes ne coulent pas tous les jours, m’apprit-il ; l’eau, sagement et parcimonieusement répartie, satisfait à la soif des plantes, puis leur est aussitôt retirée. Au pied de chacun des palmiers un étroit bassin est creusé qui tient l’eau pour abreuver l’arbre ; un ingénieux système d’écluses que l’enfant, en les faisant jouer, m’expliquer, maîtrise l’eau, l’amène où la soif est trop grande."

"The clown and the flute"

Lithograph by Chagall

"For the last few days however, Marceline, who was watching with joy my health finally return, had started talking to me about the wonderful groves of the oasis. She loved the fresh air and walking. My illness had provided a certain liberation leaving her free to go for walks from which she returned elated. Up until then she had said very little about this, fearing that I might be tempted to follow her or be disheartened by her talk of pleasures that, as yet, were still beyond me. But now I was getting better she was relying on the appeal of these excursions to complete my recovery. I was being carried along by my renewed enjoyment of walking and watching. The very next day we went out together.

She led the way along a strange path the like of which I had never seen before in any country. The path ambles its way indolently between two fairly high terracotta walls that borders gently sloping gardens ; from the start it twists and turns and sometimes it seems to just stop ; a deviation will soon cause you to go astray and you no longer know where you have been or where you are going. Always close, the river skirts one of the walls, which are made with the same earth as the road and the oasis as a whole : a pinkish-grey clay that the blistering sun causes to crack, that hardens in the heat but then softens again with the first drop of rain when it becomes soft and malleable enough for naked feet to leave their imprints. – Above the walls, palm trees. Our arrival causes turtledoves to take flight. Marceline looked at me.

I forgot my fatigue and my discomfort. I was walking in a state close to ecstasy almost, of quiet joy, of exaltation of the flesh and the senses. A light breeze was picking up, stirring the palm trees and we watched as the tallest of the palms swayed backwards and forwards. Then the air became calm again and I could quite distinctly hear the sound of a flute coming from behind the wall. – A gap in the wall tempted us in.

It was a place full of light and shade ; a tranquil place where time stood still. A place full of the sound of silence, rustling, streams quietly watering the palms, and, escaping from one tree to the next, the discreet cooing of turtledoves. A child was playing a flute. He was tending a herd of goats. He was sitting down, almost naked, on the trunk of a fallen palm tree. As we approached, he didn’t get up. He didn’t run away. Only for a moment did he stop playing his flute.

During this short silence, I noticed that another flute could be heard answering in the distance. We went further into the grove, then Marceline said : “There’s no point in going any further, the groves all look the same, maybe they get a bit bigger near the end of the oasis.” She spread the shawl out on the ground. “Rest a while.”

How long did we stay there ? I don’t know – what did time matter ? Marceline was at my side ; I lay back and rested my head on her knees. The flute music flowed once more, stopping for a moment here and there before starting again ; the sound of water… From time to time a goat bleated. I closed my eyes ; I felt Marceline’s cool hand resting on my forehead ; I felt the hot sun gently filtered by the palms ; I wasn’t thinking of anything ; why bother thinking ? I felt extraordinarily…

Then, from time to time, a new sound ; I opened my eyes ; a light wind too high to disturb us, played with the tops of the palms.

The following morning, I returned to the garden with Marceline ; then later that same evening, I went back alone. The goatherd boy who had been playing the flute was there. I went up to him, spoke to him. He was called Lassif ; he was only 12 ; he was beautiful. He told me what his goats were called ; he told me that the canals are called séghias ; the water didn’t flow every day, he told me. Water was distributed wisely and parsimoniously : just enough to quench the plants’ thirst and then it was switched off. Each tree had a narrow trough hollowed at its base to hold the water it needed. And, an ingenious system of sluices, with which the child toyed as he explained its workings to me, controlled and directed the water to where the thirst was greatest."

Lithograph by Chagall

From English to French

A few days adrift in the blogosphere and I'm beginning to feel more at home with the basic functions of my blog. So, after summoning a little more courage (Me, afraid of blogs ?), it's time to start the next stage of this virtual Odyssey : the release of a French version of Colourful Language.

The layout of Expressions Colorées is done, which means I now just have the posts to translate, or "adapt". I say "adapt" because these are my writings and as such I can indulge myself and, if I so wish, make a few alterations here and there to the original texts.

And to celebrate this crossing of the language barrier, I've posted an illustration with a definite French kick.

Expressions colorées is now showing at a blog near you ! Just click on the dzee little French bird at the top of the blog. Or if the little bird has flown, try clicking here :

http://expressionscolorees.blogspot.com/

or on the link in the Blogroll.

Pictures in windows

When studying for my first degree in fine art I was fortunate enough to win a travel bursary, which allowed me to spend a number of weeks in France doing some preliminary research on stained glass windows. (Incidently, this is how I started learning French.)

The English term stained glass, when applied to medieval glass at least, is really a misnomer as, at this stage in its development, the technology was such that the glass used to make stained glass windows was in fact coloured and produced by the addition to the glass in its molten state of metal oxides. Small pieces of different coloured glass were then assembled in mosaïc fashion and held together with strips of lead to create an image. Moreover, the constraints of the media were such that the imagery produced is flat and decorative. Although the colour is undeniably rich, there is no sense of depth or perspective. Later, silver yellow stain came to be used as a means of actually staining the surface of clear glass to produce within a single piece of glass discrete areas of colour of various hues of yellow and orange.Together with the development of enamels, this technique allowed artists to introduce perspective into their images. Indeed, as the craft developed so many stained glass windows began to acknowledge or even reproduce contemporary paintings . Paintings by Raphaël were popular, for example. Thus, the flat, decorative language that is so characteristic of early stained glass windows gave way to a pictorial language that was more closely aligned to contemporary oil paintings.

Whilst windows of this type have some admirable qualities, I find windows that work with the constraints and celebrate the unique qualities of this media more appealing, more authentic when compared to windows that seek to transpose painted representations or the language of oil paintings to stained glass.

In more recent times, artists such as Georges Rouault, Georges Braque and Marc Chagall have very successfully moved from canvas to glass. I think this is because these artists are less concerned with perspective, which of course breaks/disrupts the surface of an image as the eye is drawn towards a vanishing point. The vocabulary of these artists, so at ease with rich colour, is more decorative and is such that it finds expression as much in the language of glass as paint.

With hindsight, I can't help wondering if my observations on stained glass have been a lesson on translation too. Aren't the differences in imagery produced by the use of the different media (in this case oil painting and glass) available to artists and the constraints and qualities of these media akin to translation where the same problems and issues of transposition, adaptation and modulation in different languages arise ?

In any case, thinking about all this has prompted me to browse the internet for photographs of stained glass windows. Take a look at the window by Jacques Gruber at the aquarium at the Ecole de Nancy.

http://photos.maisonpage.info/albums.php/33-Aquarium-du-parc-Ecole-de-Nancy-(musee)

Gruber's work is wonderfully decorative. There is no attempt to render the glass "invisible". By that I mean the viewer is always conscience of the media ; you know you are looking at a coloured glass window. Nevertheless, there is an expression of movement and light that evokes an aquatic environment. Gruber achieves this I think by playing with the differences in the opacity of the glass... to beautiful effect !