Poetry Wednesday 04/22/09: The White Dawn

Elaine
by Herbert Gustav Schmalz (1856-1935)
Oil on canvas

The White Dawn
By Charles Van Lerberghe (1861-1907)
(Translated from French)

The white dawn says to my dream:
“Wake up, the sun is shining.”
My soul listens and I raise
my eyelids slightly towards it.

A ray of light touches
the pale flower of my blue eyes.
A flame awakens my mouth,
a breeze awakens my hair.

And my soul, like a rose,
trembling slowly all day through,
wakes to the beauty of things,
as my soul wakes to their love.

Left: Charles Van Lerberghe

Hello, and welcome back again to Poetry Wednesday 04/22/09.

You can sign in today and take the tour thru Thursday, so take your time.

I’ll be your hostess again this week. My sister, Sans Souci, is on a break, putting together her own poetry book, but she will check in.

Before we get started, please make sure that your post has a link to get back to this page to make it easier to take the tour:

1) Copy and paste the following link that I have provided for you from this page to somewhere on your poetry post.

Link back to the Poetry Wednesday tour on Laurita’s page

2) Leave the link of your poetry post in the comments section below. This is the link guests will click on to read your poem.

Right: Gabriel Faure, French composer

Charles Van Lerberghe was Belgian poet, short-story writer, and playwright whose reputation rests largely on two collections of poems—Entrevisions (1898; “Glimpses”) and La Chanson d’Ève (1904; “The Song of Eve”)—that exemplify his lyrical talent and idealistic outlook.

Entrevisions consists of 64 poems, some written in free verse. Influenced by Henri Bergson’s theory of duration, these poems explore themes of transience and beauty through vague, indistinct images of the natural world. During this period Van Lerberghe traveled widely in Europe, eventually settling in rural Bouillon, Belgium, to write his masterpiece, La Chanson d’Ève. The predominantly free-verse poems of that volume, influenced by Italian painting, offer up a set of allegorical tableaux in which Eve appears as a primal poet symbolizing universal values. These poems were further publicized when, Gabriel Faure (French), one of the premier composers of the period, used them as text for one of his masterful song cycles. (Fauré also wrote song settings for another volume of Van Lerberghe’s poems, Le Jardin clos.).

Both poems that I used in this post are from “La Chanson d’Eve” and have been translated from the French text.

Clytie, 1895
by Frederic Leighton
Clytie is considered to be Leighton’s last masterpiece
Oil on canvas

Paradise
by Charles Van Lerberghe
(Translated from French)

It is the world’s first morning.
Like a misty flower exhaled by the night
on the new breath rising from the waters
a blue garden opens out.

Everything is still mingled and mixed:
leaves rustling, birds singing,
wings fluttering,
gushing streams, voices of air, voices of water –
an immense murmuring,
yet all composed of silence.

Opening her soft vague eyes to the light,
the divine young Eve
has awoken out of God,
and the world spreads at her feet like a beautiful dream.

And God said to her: “Go, human child,
and give to all the beings I’ve created
a word from your lips,
a sound to know them by.”

And Eve, obedient to her lord,
went out into her thicket of roses,
and gave to all things
a word, a sound from her flowerlike lips –

scurrying things, breathing things, flying things…

Meanwhile the day passes, and the Garden,
hazy at dusk as at dawn,
falls asleep and slips away
into the silence of a blue dream.

The voice has stopped, but everything listens for it,
everything remains expectant,
until at the rising of the moon
Eve sings.

[mp3j track=”ClaudeDebussyPetiteSuiteEnBateau.mp3″]

La Chanson d’Eve
Music Composed by Gabriel Faure
Based on the poetry of Charles Van Lerberghe

The tour starts here

12 CommentsChronological Reverse Threaded

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starfishred wrote on Apr 20, ’09

wonderful laurita here is mine
http://starfishred.multiply.com/journal/item/1286/poetry_wednesday-

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billatplay wrote on Apr 20, ’09, edited on Apr 22, ’09

Loved the mathematical allegorical stimulus in the preamble The verse did a good job of following that description. Beautiful.
Our wedding anniversary Wednesday http://billatplay.multiply.com/journal/item/150/Wednesday_Poem?replies_read=4 And http://billatplay.multiply.com/journal/item/153/Sequel_to_the_wedding

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lauritasita wrote on Apr 20, ’09

Here I am: http://lauritasita.multiply.com/journal/item/1271/Poetry_Wednesday_042209_The_Best_Thing_in_the_World

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bostonsdandd wrote on Apr 21, ’09

I’m up and ready :o).
http://bostonsdandd.multiply.com/journal/item/292

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caffeinatedjo wrote on Apr 21, ’09

I love the way he describes the soul in the first poem. Maybe my mind is warped, but I can imagine Eve baying at the moon, silhouetted again her tree, in the second one. 😉 Lovely works.
Can’t wait to read everyone’s poetry. This is me: http://caffeinatedjo.multiply.com/journal/item/5/Poetry_Wednesday