Poetry
La Chanson d'Eve
Not translated into English
Charles Van Lerberghe · 1904
Opening lines
Je voudrais te la dire,
Dans la simplicité claire
De mon bonheur,
Sans une image, sans une fleur,
En n’y mêlant que la lumière
Et l’air où je respire.
I would like to tell it to you,
In the clear simplicity
Of my happiness,
Without an image, without a flower,
Mingling with it only the light
And the air I breathe.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from fr.wikisource.org
Synopsis
“It is the first morning of the world”: Eve awakes in a garden where everything still merges, leaves, birds, springs, and she learns to name what surrounds her. A prelude and four parts, announced from the title page, follow her voice in ninety-six poems: the first words, the temptation, the fault, the twilight. Things answer her, then comes the fruit picked and tasted, and the evening when she asks the dark angel who he is. The language remains clear and song-like, and the subject is a consciousness opening to the world.
Context
The collection, written in Bouillon where its author had retired, appeared at the Mercure de France in January 1904. Between 1906 and 1910 Gabriel Fauré made from it a cycle of ten songs, the longest he composed: he took chiefly the first words and the twilight, and left aside the eighteen poems of the fault. The sources differ on who made him aware of these verses, the Liège critic Mockel according to some, the Brussels organiser Octave Maus according to others.
Who it is for
Short poems, written directly in French, which read from beginning to end as a single movement; the text is freely available on Wikisource and Gallica.
Prizes and reception
The author's best-known work, which Britannica regards as his masterpiece, and the one through which he entered French mélodie.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.