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Renée Vivien English Translations
Renée Vivien (1877-1909), born Pauline Mary Tarn, was a
British poet who wrote primarily in French. She was one of the last major poets of
Symbolism. Her work included sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse and prose poetry.
Pauline Mary Tarn was born in London to a British father and American mother.
She grew up in Paris and London. Upon inheriting her father's fortune at age 21,
she emigrated permanently to France. In Paris, her dress and lifestyle were as
notorious as her verse. She lived lavishly, as an open lesbian, harboring a
lifelong obsession for her closest childhood friend, Violet Shillito – a
relationship that apparently remained unconsummated. In 1900 Vivien abandoned
this chaste love to engage in a public affair with the American writer and
heiress Natalie Clifford Barney. The following year Shillito died of typhoid
fever, a tragedy from which Vivien never fully recovered.
Song
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
When the moon weeps,
illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful,
my memories creep
back to you, wrapped in flightless wings.
It's getting late; soon we will sleep
(your eyes already half closed)
steeped
in the shimmering air.
O, the agony of burning roses:
your forehead discloses
a heavy despondency,
though your hair floats lightly ...
In the night sky the stars burn whitely
as the Goddess nightly
resurrects flowers that fear the sun
and die before dawn ...
Undine
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Your laughter startles, your fingers rake.
Your cold kisses love the evil they do.
Your eyes are pale blue,
like lotuses floating upon a lake
and the water lilies are less pallid than your face.
You move like water parting.
Your hair falls in rootlike tangles.
Your words rise like treacherous rapids.
Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle,
choking me
like the long reeds of the river.
I shiver
in their enlacing embrace.
Drowning in agony without an illuminating moon,
I vanish without a trace,
lost in a nightly swoon.
The following are links to various translations by Michael R. Burch:
Wulf and Eadwacer
Sweet Rose of Virtue
How Long the Night
Caedmon's Hymn
The Wife's Lament
Deor's Lament
Lament for the Makaris
Ancient Greek Epigrams and Epitaphs
Basho
Oriental Masters/Haiku
Sappho
Miklós Radnóti
Rainer Maria Rilke
Renée Vivien
Ono no Komachi
Allama Iqbal
Bertolt Brecht
Ber Horvitz
Paul Celan
Primo Levi
Tegner's Drapa
Robert Burns
Ahmad
Faraz
Sandor Marai
Wladyslaw Szlengel
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