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Proud of a false liberty,
Sex, who believe yourselves the master,
At least be worthy of being so.
Justify your pride;
And then, it will be our affair,
When you have well deserved it,
To surpass you to please you.
Forgive me this candor,
Which may appear to you an outrage,
But which suits my mood.
Lively, independent & flighty,
My pen obeys my heart.
To discourse is your share:
It is very noble assuredly;
Ours is amusement,
Which, proving less, is worth more
To your most serious argument,
We respond while playing,
With a word of mockery.
Our frivolous Areopagus:
Gives laws to your Heroes,
And we hide your dark offices,
Under the pom-poms of banter.
You fight much better than we;
You know how to wield weapons:
A great saber has charms for you
With you force aids wrath.
Yes, Gentlemen, I will dare to say it,
For a long time it has been known;
It is from her that your empire comes;
Ours, it is true, is not there.
Heaven also compensates us.
If force fails our wishes,
In our hearts it places courage;
How dreadful our battles are!
In those plains, which Mars ravages,
Yours are less painful;
And the enemy you must fear,
Not knowing how to please or feign,
Less dear, is much less dangerous.
Must you devour tears,
Resist your conqueror?
Without shame, you surrender your arms.
But, under a feigned sweetness,
When Love wounds our heart;
Too sincere not to believe,
Weeping over pain or happiness,
And defeat & victory,
And the triumph of honor,
Or the loss of our glory,
We find misfortune everywhere.
Do you know how to conquer Nature?
Do you know all these torments,
You, slaves of your inclinations,
You, whom impunity reassures?
I am wrong, I condemn you in vain
All my reproaches are crimes:
Do you not have your Latin,
Which makes you sublime beings?
Yes, Gentlemen; the chattering Sex
Owes everything to the reasoning Sex.
Too happy, I am sincere,
That demi-Gods, such as you
Deign to descend to us,
And humanize yourselves, to please us.
Philosophers, Thinkers,
Geometers, Doctors,
Whose discourses are admirable,
And whose writings are inexplicable,
Occupy themselves with pretty children!
Sometimes lose their good sense over them!
Around us play without ceasing
Stoop to our weakness…
Such is nonetheless our power.
Let Nature form a sage,
And if the sage comes to see us,
Does she recognize her work?
In short, everything adores our chains;
Everything follows the instinct that guides us:
By our graces, by our ways,
If one wishes, by our vertigo,
We chain this universe.
We prove to him, thanks to prestige,
That in sketching you before us,
Heaven, jealous of our honor,
For the end kept its prodigy,
And that the hand of the Creator
Began quickly with the stem,
To give its care to the flower.
fanny-de-beauharnais
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-men-fanny-de-beauharnais/