Sanglots

Sanglots - Guillaume Apollinaire

Notre amour est réglé par les calmes étoiles
Or nous savons qu'en nous beaucoup d'homme respirent
Qui vinrent de très loin et sont un sous nos fronts
C'est la chanson des rêveurs
Qui s'étaient arraché le coeur
Et le portaient dans la main droit
Souviens-t'en cher orgueil de tous ces souvenirs

Des marins qui chantaient comme des conquérants
Des gouffres de Thulé, des tendres cieux d'Ophir
Des malades maudits, de ceux qui fuient leur ombre
Et du retour joyeux des heureux émigrants.
De ce coeur il coulait du sang
Et le rêveur allait pensant
À sa blessure délicate
Tu ne briseras pas la chaîne de ces causes
Et douloureuse et nous disait
Qui sont les effets d'autres causes
Mon pauvre coeur, mon coeur brisé
Pareil au coeur de tous les hommes
Voici nos mains que la vie fit esclaves
Est mort d'amour ou c'est tout comme
Est mort d'amour et le voici
Ainsi vont toutes choses
Arrachez donc le vôtre aussi
Et rien ne sera libre jusqu'à la fin des temps
Laissons tout aux morts
Et cachons nos sanglots
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Our love is ruled by calm stars
we only know that around us that many sentient (breathing) people
who would have come from far away and are now inside our heads.
It's the song of the dreamers
whose hearts have been torn out of their chests,
carried aloft in the right hand.
Remember that in the fierce pride of all these memories.

Sailors who would have sung like conquerors
of the Gulfs of Thule and the tender skies of Ophir
of cursed sick, of  those fleeing their shadows
and of the joyous return of happy emigrants.
And of this heart where the blood curdles
and the dreamer thinks of his wound.
You will not break the chain of these causes
and sufferings and say to us,:
who are the effects of other causes.
My poor heart, my broken heart,
equally like the hearts of all mankind.
Here are our hands which life has enslaved.
It's the death of love which
becomes the death of everything
Ripped out from everyone else, too.
Nothing will be free until the End of Time
Leave everything to the dead
and hide our sobs (image of blood)

Lest we forget - Bleuet Poulenc

Just as the Poppy symbolizes war to the British, the cornflower symbolizes loss and memory for the French. The Western Front was in France and Belgium, lest we forget....... French soldiers wore blue uniforms, hence the multiple connotations of the word "bleuet".

At right, Francis Poulenc aged 21, in uniform, painted by a friend. "Jeune homme /de vingt ans /Qui as vu des choses si affreuses /que penses-tu des hommes /de ton enfance/la bravure et la ruse" wrote Guillaume Apollinaire. Read the whole poem HERE in Emily Ezust's Lieder and Song Texts page, because Apollinaire sets the poem out so it descends diagonally across the page, as if the very words were marching. Apollinaire's visual layout emphasises the meaning of the poem,where phrases break off and the word "Mourir" stands alone.

"Young man of 20 , who has seen things so awful, what do you think of  the men of your childhood, of courage and cunning?

"You who have faced death in the face more than 100 times, you take it as if it were life.  Transmit your fearlessness to those who will come after you. Young man, you are joyful. Your memory is soaked in blood, your soul is red. with joy. You have absorbed the life of those who died next to you."

"For you it is decided.  It is 5 o'clock and you're going to die. If not better than those who went before you, at least more piously, because you know death better than you know life." 

"Ô douceur d'autrefois, Lenteur immémoriale"
.O sweetness of former times, to linger in eternity.

Apollinaire was injured badly at the front in 1917. Poulenc, writing his setting in October 1939, reflected not on militarism or glory, but on the tenderness with which Apollinaire depicted the waste of youth and life.