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Stanzas
I
Without doubt it is too late to speak of her again;
Since she is no more fifteen days have passed,
And in this land fifteen days, I know it,
Make of a recent death an old piece of news.
Whatever name regret may be called by,
Man, in every land, soon has enough of it.
II
O Maria-Felicia! the painter and the poet
Leave, in dying, immortal heirs;
Never does the dreadful night take them entirely.
Lacking action, their great restless soul
Undertakes the conquest of death and time,
And, struck in the struggle, they fall as warriors.
III
That one on bronze has engraved his thought;
In a golden rhythm the other set it to measure;
From the moment one hears it, one becomes his friend.
On his canvas, in dying, Raphael left it,
And, so that the void may not touch him,
A child asleep on his mother suffices.
IV
Like a faithful flame within a lamp,
In the depths of the Parthenon the uninhabited marble
Keeps the eternal memory of Phidias,
And the young Venus, daughter of Praxiteles,
Still smiles, standing in her divinity,
At the powerless centuries conquered by her beauty.
V
Receiving from age to age a new life,
Thus the glories of former times go to God;
Thus the vast echo of the voice of genius
Becomes the universal voice of mankind…
And of you, dead yesterday, of you, poor Marie,
In the depths of a chapel there remains to us a cross!
VI
A cross! and oblivion, night and silence!
Listen! it is the wind, it is the immense Ocean;
It is a fisherman singing by the great road.
And of so much beauty, glory and hope,
Of so many sweet chords from a divine instrument,
Not a faint sigh, not a distant echo!
VII
A cross! and your name written on a stone,
Not even your own, but that of a spouse,
That is what after you you leave on the earth;
And those who go to see you at your final home,
Not finding there the name that was loved by us,
Will not know where to place their knees to pray.
VIII
O Ninette! where are they, lovely adored muse,
Those accents full of love, charm and terror,
That fluttered in the evening on your inspired lip,
Like a light perfume on the flowering hawthorn?
Where now vibrates that tearful voice,
That living harp attached to your heart?
IX
Was it not yesterday, joyful and madcap girl,
That your mocking wit animated Corilla,
And that you launched at us with Rosina
The amorous roulade and the Spanish glance?
Those tears on your bare arms, when you sang the Willow,
Was it not yesterday, pale Desdemona?
X
Was it not yesterday that in the flower of your age
You crossed Europe, a lyre in hand;
Into the sea, laughing, throwing yourself to swim,
Singing the tarantella under the Neapolitan sky,
Heart of angel and lion, free bird of passage,
Mischievous child this evening, holy artist tomorrow?
XI
Was it not yesterday that, intoxicated and blessed,
You dragged at your chariot a transported people,
And that London and Madrid, France and Italy,
Brought to your feet that gold so coveted,
That gold twice sacred which paid for your genius,
And which often your charity left at your feet?
XII
What have you done to die, O noble creature,
Beautiful image of God, who gave along the way
To the rich a little joy, to the unhappy bread?
Ah! who then strikes thus in mother nature,
And what blind reaper, hungry for pasture,
Dares to lay his hand on the best of us?
XIII
Is it not enough then for the angel of darkness
That scarcely of this time there remains to us a great name?
That Géricault, Cuvier, Schiller, Goethe and Byron
Have been asleep since yesterday beneath the funeral slabs,
And that we have seen so many other famous dead
In the half-open abyss follow Napoleon?
XIV
Must we lose still our dearest heads,
And come weeping to close their eyelids,
As soon as a ray of hope has shone in their eyes?
Does heaven become envious of its elect?
Or must we believe, alas! what our fathers said,
That when one dies so young one is loved by the gods?
XV
Ah! how many, since recently, have departed full of life!
Under the ancient cypresses how many new willows!
The ashes of Robert scarcely cooled,
Bellini falls and dies! – A slow agony
Drags Carrel bleeding to eternal rest.
The threshold of our century is paved with tombs.
XVI
What will remain to us if the insatiable shadow,
As soon as we build, comes to bury everything?
We who already feel the ground so shifting,
And, over so much debris, walk toward the future,
If the wind, beneath our steps, thus sweeps away the sand,
With what mourning does the Lord wish to clothe us?
XVII
Alas! Marietta, you still remained to us.
When, on the furrow, the bird sings at dawn,
The plowman stops, and, his brow in sweat,
Breathes in the pure air a breath of happiness.
Thus your fresh and sonorous voice consoled us,
And your songs carried sorrow away into the heavens.
XVIII
What we must weep for on your hasty tomb
Is not divine art, nor its learned secrets:
Someone else will study this art that you created;
It is your soul, Ninette, and your naive grandeur,
It is that voice of the heart which alone reaches the heart,
That no other, after you, will ever give back to us.
XIX
Ah! you would still live without this indomitable soul.
That was your only ill, and the secret burden
Under which your beautiful body bent like a reed.
It long sustained the inexorable struggle.
It is the all-powerful God, it is the implacable Muse
Who in her fiery arms carried you to the tomb.
XX
Why did you not stifle it, that burning flame
That your palpitating breast could not contain!
You would live, you would see follow and applaud you
The indifferent crowd of this blasé public,
Which lavishes today its inconstant favor
On people not one of whom, certainly, must die of it.
XXI
Did you know so little of human ingratitude?
What dream then did you dream to kill yourself for them?
Did a few bouquets of flowers make you so vain,
That you came to pour real tears on the stage,
When so many famous actors and artists,
Crowned a thousand times, do not have them in their eyes?
XXII
Why did you not turn your head aside to smile,
As is done here when one feigns to be moved?
Alas! you were so loved that no one would have seen it.
When you sang the Willow, instead of that delirium,
Why did you not occupy yourself with carrying your lyre well?
Pasta does thus: why did you not imitate her?
XXIII
Did you not know then, imprudent actress,
That those senseless cries that came out of your heart
Increased the pallor of your emaciated cheek?
Did you not know then that, on your burning temple,
Your hand from day to day rested more trembling,
And that it is tempting God to love sorrow?
XXIV
Did you not feel then that your beautiful youth
From your tired eyes flowed away in streams,
And from your noble heart exhaled in sobs?
When of those who loved you you saw the sadness,
Did you not feel then that a fatal intoxication
Rocked your wandering life on its last branches?
XXV
Yes, yes, you knew it, that on leaving the theater,
One evening in your shroud you would have to lie down.
When they brought you back colder than alabaster,
When the doctor, from your bluish vein,
Watched drop by drop a black blood flow out,
You knew what hand had just touched you.
XXVI
Yes, yes, you knew it, and that, in this life,
Nothing is good but to love, nothing is true but to suffer.
Each evening in your songs you felt yourself grow pale.
You knew the world, and the crowd, and envy,
And, in this broken body concentrating your genius,
You also watched the Malibran dying.
XXVII
Die then! your death is sweet, and your task is fulfilled.
What man here below calls genius
Is the need to love; outside of that all is vain.
And, since sooner or later human love is forgotten,
It belongs to a great soul and a happy destiny
To expire like you for a divine love!
Alfred De Musset
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-to-the-malibran-alfred-de-musset/