Excuse to Ariste

Poem by Pierre Corneille Themes MiscellaneousPeriod 17th century

… I know what I am worth, and believe what is said of me.
To make myself admired I form no league:
I have few voices for me, but I have them without intrigue;
And my ambition, to make more noise,
Does not go seeking them from hiding place to hiding place;
My work without support mounts on the stage;
Everyone freely blames or idolizes it there.
There, without my friends preaching their sentiments,
I sometimes win too much applause;
There, content with the success that merit gives,
By illustrious advice I dazzle no one;
I satisfy together both People and Courtiers;
And my verses in all places are my only partisans;
By their beauty alone my pen is esteemed;
I owe to myself alone all my renown,
And think, however, to have no rival
To whom I do wrong in treating him as an equal…

Pierre Corneille

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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