The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #42055   Message #609151
Posted By: Sorcha
13-Dec-01 - 03:01 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Les Djinns (Victor Hugo)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Les Djinns, really a poem, song chal
Yes, it is Hugo, and here is a translation, don't know how good it actually is:
  Djinns

Walls, city,
And port,
Asylum
Of death,
Gray sea
Where breaks
Breeze,
All sleeps.

In the plain
Is born a noise.
It is the breath
Night.
It slab
Like a heart
That a flame
Always follows!

The higher voice
Seem a grelot.
Of a dwarf who jumps
It flees, springs,
Then in rate
On a foot dances
At the end of a flood.

The rumour approaches.
The echo repeats it.
It is like the bell
Of a convent maudit;
Like a noise of crowd,
Who thunders and who rolls,
And sometimes collapses,
And sometimes grows,

God! the sepulchral voice
Djinns!... What a noise they make!
Let us flee under the spiral
Deep staircase.
Already my lamp dies out,
And shade of the slope,
Who along the wall crawls,
Go up up to the ceiling.

It is the swarm of the Djinns which passes,
And whirls while whistling!
Yews, that their flight crashes to pieces,
Crack like an extreme pine.
Their herd, heavy and fast,
Flying in empty space,
Seem a livid cloud
Who carries a flash to the side.

They are near! - Tenons closed
This room, where narguons we them.
What a noise outside! Hideous army
Vampires and dragons!
The beam of the roof loosened
Ploie as well as a wet grass,
And the old rusted door
Tremble, to uproot its hinges!

Cries of the hell! voice which howls and which cries!
The horrible swarm, pushed by the north wind,
Undoubtedly, ô sky! falls down on my residence.
The wall bends under the black battalion.
The house shouts and staggers leaning,
And it would be said that, of the ground torn off,
As it drives out a dried sheet,
The wind rolls it with their swirl!

Prophet! if your hand saves me
Of these impure demons of the evenings,
I will go prosterner my face bald person
In front of your crowned encensoirs!
Make that on these faithful doors
Their breath of sparks dies,
And that in vain the nail of their wings
Squeak and shouts with these black stained glasses!

They passed! - Their troop
Fly away, and flees, and their feet
Cease beating my door
Their multiplied blows.
The air is full with a noise of chains,
And in the nearest forests
All the large oaks shiver,
Under their flight of fire folded!

Their remote wings
The beat decrease,
If confused in the plains,
If weak, that one believes
Ouïr the grasshopper
To shout of a spindly voice,
Or to sparkle hail
On the lead of an old roof.

Strange syllables
Us come encor;
Thus, of Arabic
When the horn sounds,
A song on the strike
Per moments rises,
And the child who dreams
Fact of the gold dreams.

Funeral Djinns,
Wire of the demise,
In darkness
Their steps have a presentiment of;
Their swarm thunders:
Thus, deep,
Murmur a wave
That one does not see.

This vague noise
Who falls asleep,
It is the wave
On the edge;
It is the complaint,
Almost extinct,
Of holy
For a death.

One doubts
The night...
I listen: -
All flees,
Any master key
Space
Erase
Noise.

It would make an interesting song; I hear something like "Night on Bald Mountain".....