Translation | “Mourir de ne pas mourir” from Capitale de la douleur by Paul Éluard (1926)

À André Breton

The Equality of Sexes

Your eyes are revenues of an arbitrary country
Where no one has ever known what a look is
Neither knew the beauty of eyes, beauty of stones,
The water droplets, the pearls in the cupboards.

Of stones naked and without skeleton, Ô my statue,
The blind sun holds up a mirror to you
And if he seems obey to powers of evening
It’s that your head is closed, ô fallen statue.

By my love and by my wild ruses.
My still desire is your last support
And I bring you without battle, ô my image,
Broken à my weakness and taken from my links.

At the Heart of My Love

A beautiful bird shows me the light
It is in their eyes, in full view.
It sings on a mistletoe ball
At the middle of the sun

*

The eyes of singing animals
And their songs of anger or of vague
Have forbidden me de go out to this bed
I’ll spend my life there.

The dawn in countries without grace
Take the appearance of the forgetting.
And that the woman falls asleep, in the dawn,
The head the first, its fall illuminates it.

Constellations,
You knew the form of her head
Here, everything goes dark :
The landscape is complete, blood of joys,
The masses decrease and flow in my heart
With the sleeping.
And that thus wants to take my heart.

*

I never dreamed to one such a beautiful night.
The women of the garden look for kissing me
Heavenly supports, the motionless trees
Kiss well the shadow which them support.

A woman at the pale heart
Take the night in her clothes.
The love have discovered the night
On her impalpable breasts.

How pleasure take to all?
Rather all erasing.
The man of all the movements,
Of all the sacrifices and of all the conquests
Sleep. He sleeps, he sleeps, he sleeps.
He crosses the tiny, invisible night with his sighs.

It’s neither cold nor hot.
His prisoner escaped — pour sleeping.
He didn’t pass away, he sleeps.

When he fallen asleep
All astonished,
He played with passion,
He watched,
He heard.

His last speak :
“If it was to restart, I meet you without you seek.”
He sleeps, he sleeps, he sleeps.
The dawn has had beautiful rinsing of the head.
He sleeps.

To Get Caught in the Trap

It’s a restaurant like the others. Should we believe that I don’t look like to person? A big woman, on the side of me, beats eggs with her fingers. A traveller lays his clothes on a table and holds me up. It’s tormented, I don’t know nothing mystery, I don’t know same the meaning of words : mystery, I’ve never search yet, nothing find, he’s wrong to insist.
The thunderstorm that, at times, comes out of the mist turns my eyes and shoulders. The space has then the doors and the windows. The traveller declares to me that I’m not more the same. More the same! I pick up the debris of all the wonders. It’s the big woman which said to me that they are the debris of wonders, these debris. I throw them to the rapid brooks and planes of birds. The sea, the calm sea is among them like the sky in the light. The colours too, then they talk to me of colours, I don’t look more. Speak to me of the forms, I have grand want to concern.
Big woman, talk to me of the forms, or I fall asleep and I lead the high life, the hands take in the head and the head in the mouth, in the mouth much close, internal language.

Lovers

She is standing on my eyelids.
And her hair is in the mine,
She has the form of my hands,
She has the colour of my eyes,
She sinks into my shadow
Like a stone on the sky.

She has always the eyes open
And doesn’t let me sleep.
Her dreams in vast light
Make vanish the suns,
Make me laugh, sweep and laugh,
Speak without having nothing to tell.

The deaf and the blind

Will we win the sea with bells
In our pockets, with the noise of the sea
In the sea, or will we be the bearers
Of a water more pure and silent?

The water scrubs the hands sharpen the knives.
The warriors are found their arms in the flows
And the noise of their hits is seem to this one
Rocks smash the ships in the night.

It’s the storm and the thunder. Why not of the silence
Of the flood, because we have in all we the dreamed space
For the most big silence and we breathe
Like the wind of the terrible seas, like the wind

That crawls slowly on all the horizons.

Habit

All my little friends are dented :
They like their mother.
All my animals are required,
They have feet of marble
And by hands of window.
The wind deforms,
It needs a habit to mesure,
Excessive.
This is why
I say the truth without the saying.

In the Dance

Small childish table,
there’s women which of eyes are like the pieces of sugar,
there’s serious women like the movements of the love that we don’t surprise
there’s women of pale faces,
of others like the sky to the watch for the wind
Small golden table of the days of festival,
there’s women of green wood and dark
those which weep,
of dark and green wood :
those which smile.

Small table too low or too high.
there’s women greasy
with the light shadows,
there’s hollow dresses
dry dresses
dresses that at the door of her room and which the love don’t bring out.

Small table,
I don’t like the tables on which I dance,
I had no idea.

List of Poetry Translations
(Français, English, Español, Italiano, Deutsch, Nederlands, Svenska)
Anna de Noailles, Francis Jammes, W. B. Yeats, Rupert Brooke, etc.

Translation | “Répétitions” Capitale de la douleur by Paul Éluard (1926)

Max Ernst

On a corner the agile incest
Turn around on the virginity of a small robe
On a corner the sky delivered
To the thorns of the storm let the white baubles

On a corner more clear with all eyes
It wait the fishes of anguish.
On a corner the car of greenery of the summer
Glorious, still and forever

In the glow of youth
Of lamps are lite very late.
The first appear their breasts killed by red insects.

Suite

For the light of the day of happinesses in the air
For living easily of tastes of colours
For enjoying loves for laugh
For open the eyes at the last minute

It has every kind of complaisance.

Mania (Fads)

After of years of wisdom
During when the world was as transparent as a needle
Is cooing something else?
After having competed to give graces and squandered the treasure
More of a red lip with a red point
And more of a white leg with a white foot
Where we believe ourselves so?

More Close to Us

Run and run issuing
And all finding all collect
Issuing and richness
Running so fast which the wire breaks
To the noise which make a big bird
A flag always surpassed.

Opened Door

The life is very lovely
Come to me, so I go to you it’s a play,
The angels of bouquets of which the flowers change colour.

Suite

Sleeping, the moon in an eye the sun in the other,
A love in the mouth, a beautiful bird in the hair,
Adorned like the roads, the woods and roots and the sea,
Beautiful and adorned like everyone

Run through the landscape,
Entre les branches of smoke et all the fruits of the wind,
Legs of stone at basses of sand,
Waist grip, to all river muscles,
And the last concern on the transformed face.

The speak

I have the simple beauty and it’s happy.
I glide on the top of the winds
I glide on the top of the seas
I don’t know more the conductor
I don’t move more silk on ice
I have disease of flowers and pebbles
I love the more Chineses to the skies
I love the naked one with the bird’s wings
And the shadow which go down to the large windows
Spare the black heart of my eyes every night

The River

The river that I have under my tongue,
The water that it doesn’t image, my small boat
And, the curtains drawn, talk.

The Shadow with the Sighs

Shallow sleep, small helix
Small, lukewarm, heart to the air
The love of magician,
Heavy sky of hands, vein flashes,

Running in the street without colours,
Caught in its trail of cobblestones
It release the last bird
Of its aura of yesterday–
In each shaft, a only snake

You might as well dream of opening the gates to the sea

Nothing

What is said: I went through the street for the sun didn’t existe more. It makes very hot, same in the shadow. There is the street, four stages and my window at the sun. A casquette on the head, a casquette to the hand. Would you please not shout like that, this is madness!

*

Des invisible blinds prepare the lines of the sleeping. The night, the moon and their heart follows.

*

To a cry of his own : “the footprint, the footprint, I don’t see more foot print. At the end, I can’t rely on you more.”

Poems

The heart under the tree you didn’t have that to pick it up,
Smile and laugh, laugh and gentleness of outer sense.
Win, winner and lights, pure like an angel,
High towards the sky, with the trees.

Far away, whines a beautiful man who wants to fight
And that can’t, lying at the foot of the hill.
And that the sky is either miserable or transparent
It can’t see it without love it.

The days like the fingers folding their phalanx.
The flowers are dried, the seeds are lost,
The heatwave wait the grand white frosts.

To the eye of the poor passes away. Pain of porcelains.
A music, white arms all naked.
The winds and the birds come together — the sky change.

Limit

Think of the suffering cut under faulty sails
To the little enthusiasts of revolving rivers
Where promenade for drowning
We will be without pleasure
In the water stream

We will have a boat

The Sheep

Close the eyes face black
Close the gardens of the street
The intelligence and the boldness
The boredom and the tranquility
These evening sadnesses to all moment
The bottle and the door glazed
Comfortable and sensible
Light and the tree to fruits
The tree to flowers the tree to fruits
Leak.

The Unique

She had in the tranquility of her body
A small freak of snow flowing in eye
She had on the shoulders
A spot of silence a spot of rose
Cover to its aureole
Their Hans and arches flexible and singers
Blaze the light

She sang the minutes sans sleep.

The Life

Smile to the visitors
That go out to their hideaway
When she go out she sleep.

Each day more early
Each season more naked
More refreshing

For follow her watches
She’s swaying.

Null

He set a bird on the table and close the flaps. He brushes his hair, his horses in his hands are softer than a bird.

*

She said the future. And I am charged by the certitude.

*

The heart wounded, the soul painful, the hands broken, the white hair, the prisoners, the water entire all is on me like a bare wound.

Interior

In some seconds
The painter and his model
Will flee

More virtues
Or less misfortunes
Je see a staue

A kind of almond
A medal vanished
For the most grand bore.

Beside

The night more long and the root more white.
Lamps I am more close to you that the light.
A butterfly the bird normally
Broken wheel of my tiredness
Of the good mood place
Sharp sign and sign
To the clock fan.

Beside

Sun shakes
Void signal and signal to the clock fan
To the caresses unit of a hand on the sky
To the birds opening the book of blinds
And of a wing after the other between this hour and the other
Drawing the horizon making bending the shadows
That limits the world when my eyes are down.

The Enthusiastic

If sadness of its miscalculations
That it registers its numbers in reverse
And sleeps.

A woman more beautiful
And never found,
Find the pink ideas of fifteen years hardly,
Laughed without the knowledge
To youths of time.

To the meeting
Of it that was just passing by
The other day,

By the woman who bored,
The Hans to the ground,
Under the cloud,

The lamp lighted up to crimes of the storm
To good days of August without failures,
The caress-ante embraced the air, the delights of its companion.

The eyes closed
And like the leaves the evening
Lost in the horizon.

Without Music

The muets are the mentors, speak.
I am truly in anger of only speaking
And my talk
Awake the errors

My little heart.

Reading

Earth impeccably cultivated,
Honey of dawn, sun in flowers
Runner still holding on by a thread to the sleeper
(Node by intelligences)
And the flyer on his shoulder :
« It never be more new,
It never be so heavy. »
Wear and tear, il will be more light,
Helpful.
Clear sun of summer with :
Its hotness, its sweetness, its tranquility
And, quickly,
The porters of flowers in the air touch to the earth.

The big uninhabitable house

At the middle of a strange island
That its members cross
It lives in a dazzled world.

The charm of which shows the curious
Wait there like the crops
The hight on the banks.

In waiting for to see more far
The eyes more big open at the wind of her hands
She imagine that the horizon own pour she unbuckled her belt.

The Passing Away in the Conversation

Who has your face?
The good and the bad
The beauty imaginable
Gymnastics to infinity
Going beyond in movement
The colours and the kisses
The grand moves at night.

Reason Moreover

The lights in the air,
The air on a turn half past, half brilliant,
Make go to the children,
All the salutes, all the kisses, all the thanks.

Around the mouth
Her smile is always different,
It’s a pleasure, it’s a desire, it’s a torment,
It’s a crazy, it’s the flower, a Creole woman who goes by.

The nudity, never the same
I am very ugly.
At the time of treatment, of snows, grasses in treatment,
Snows in crowd,
At the time in fixed hours,
The supple satins of the statues.
The temple is become fountain
And the hand replaces the heart

It needs I had known to the these era for love me.
Sure of the next day.

Which Ones?

During that it’s easy
And during that it’s delight
Let’s get dressed and undressed.

Rubans

The material alarm where, without excuse, appears the future pain.
It’s nice : almost insensible. It’s a sign de more of dignity.
No surprise, a lady or a graceful child of fine cloth and straw, ideas of grandeur,
Their eyes rose earlier than the sun.

*

The sacrifices make a gesture that doesn’t say nothing among the lace of all the other gestures, imaginaries, to five or six, towards the place of rest where there is no person.
Observed that they are refused in the naked branches of a desperated politeness, of a crown carved to blows of wind.
Take, cords of the life. Could you have taken more liberties?

*

Of small instruments,
And the hands that knead a ball for make it lighten, for that the blood of the man bursts out in his face.
And the wings that are attached like the earth and the sea.

The Friend

The photography : a group.
If the sun passed,
If you move.

Make-up. To the interior, white and varnished,
In the tunnel.
« At the time of sparks
It came out the light. »

Posterity, mentality of the people.
The very beautiful painting.
The evidence, spread.
The hope of cantharides
Is a very beautiful hope.

Voluntarily

Blind clumsy, ignorant and light,
Today for opening,
The following month for drawing
The corner of street, the alleys as far as I can see.
I imitate them for lie down
In a deep and large night of my age.

By the minute

The instrument
Like you see it
Hopefully
And
Hopefully
Goodbye
Don’t you dare
That the eyes
Like you see it
The day and the night are very successful.
I watch it I see it.

Perfect

A miracle of fine sand
Pierce to the leaves the flowers
Bursting in the fruit
And fills the shadows.

All is finally divided
All deforms and is lost
All breaks and disappeared
The passing away without consequences.

Finally
The light have no the nature
Ventilator greedy star of heat
It abandoned the colours
It abandoned her face

Silent blind
She is everywhere alike and empty.

Ronde

Under a sun emerges from the landscape
A woman gets carried away
Friezing her shadow with her legs
And of she alone hopes for the most mysterious things

I find it without suspicions without no doubt in love
At the street of ways assemble
By the light in a point decreased
And the movements impossible
The large door of the front
At the plans discussed adopted
At the emotions of thinking
The travel disguised and the arrival of reconciliation

The large door of the front
The view of precious stones
The play from the more weak in more strong.

It’s Not the Poetry That…

With of eyes similar
That all is similar
School of naked.
Tranquilly
In a face untied
We have taken the grantees
A hand hit for quick hair
The mouth of voluptuous inferior plays and falls
And we launch the chin spinning like a top.

Deaf Eye

Make my portrait.
It will modify for fill all the voids.
Make my portrait without noise, only the silence
To less that – if it – unless – expected –
I didn’t wait for you.

It involves, it doesn’t involve more.
I wish look like –
An unfortunate coincidence, among other major events.
Without tired, heads tied
In the hands of my activity.

List of Poetry Translations
(Français, English, Español, Italiano, Deutsch, Nederlands, Svenska)
Anna de Noailles, Francis Jammes, W. B. Yeats, Rupert Brooke, etc.