Paris and River
Seine in French Poems*
Dr. Danny Susanto, M. A
Faculty of Humanities- Universitas Indonesia
Depok, Desember 2017
dcamilo@yahoo.com
Abstract
Paris, the capital of
France has the reputation of being the most
beautiful and romantic city in the world,
filled with historic associations,
and remaining enormously leading in culture, art, fashion, food and
design. Labeled the City of Light (la Ville Lumière) and Capital
of Fashion, it has plentiful iconic landmarks, such as the world's most visited
tourist site the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, Notre-Dame Cathedral the Arc de Triomphe
making it the most popular tourist destination in the world where some 45 million tourists come annually.
Paris with its river Seine has inspired a large number of
writers and poets from around the world. such as. Voltaire, Victor Hugo,
Baudelaire, Hemingway who have found their source of inspiration in Paris. The
city has conquered the hearts of these poets
and many literary works about this city
and river Seine have been created. They include Louis Aragon(1897-1982)
(Paris), Maurice Careme(1899-1978) (la tour Eiffel/Eiffel tower), Gérard de
NERVAL(1808-1855) (Notre Dame de Paris /Notre Dame of Paris), André
Laude(1936-1995)(Parisscope), Jacques Charpentreau (1926-2016)(
L'embouteillage/Traffic jam) and inspired
Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)(
Le pont Mirabeau/Mirabeau bridge). Some
poems venerate the beauty and the attraction
of the city including its important monuments, others deplore the
traffic jam and pollution suffered by the city. One poem narrates the unhappy
ending of a love story. The image consists of three elements (Seine, time and
love) that have some thing in common: to pass. They are paradoxically connected
to the Mirabeau Bridge, which represents stability.
Paris and River
Seine in French Poems
Paris the
capital of France, is one of the biggest agglomerations in Europe with the population of 2.2 millions
living in the central area and 12
millions living in surrounding metropolitan areas. Located in the northern part
of France and in the bank of River Seine, Paris has the reputation of being the most
beautiful and romantic city in the world,
filled with historic associations, and remaining enormously leading in culture,
art, fashion, food and design sectors Labeled the City of Light (la
Ville Lumière) and Capital of Fashion, it has world's best and most
luxurious fashion designers and cosmetics, such as L'Oréal ,
Lancôme, Yves Saint-Laurent, Guerlain Chanel, Clarins, Dior, etc.. A large part of the city,
including the River Seine, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.The city is
home of the second highest number of
Michelin restaurants in the world and has plentiful iconic landmarks, such as
the world's most visited tourist site the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre
Museum, Notre-Dame Cathedral the Arc de
Triomphe, Moulin Rouge, and Lido, making it the most popular
tourist destination in the world where some 45 million tourists come annually.
To cross Paris
along the river Seine is to taste a thousand escapades on the river, banks,
bridges and islands, day and night, left bank or right bank. By boat, on foot,
by bike, people laze, walk, or dine, dance
and of course shop!
Some tourist
spots a long the river Seine side include :Arsenal Port, Piscine Joséphine Baker, Jardin Tino-Rossi,
Typical booksellers on the banks of the Seine,
From the Royal Bridge to the Sully Bridge, Square of Vert-Galant, .the
bridges of Paris The thirty-seven Parisian bridges offer striking panoramas of
the city seen from the river, Orsay Museum.
Paris:
in the footsteps of great writers
Paris with its
river Seine has inspired a large number of writers and poets from around the world.
Thanks to Académie Française, the
Comédie Française and the Grande Sorbonne, Paris has become a literary capital
of France and shines throughout Europe. Legendary writers and poets such as.
Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, Hemingway have found their source of
inspiration in Paris. This beautiful and
romantic, city has conquered the hearts of these poets and many literary works about this city have
been created.
"Breathe
Paris, it preserves your soul," once Victor Hugo said. Many places in
Paris were meeting points of these
writers to meet each other to exchange and
write .
In the Latin Quarter of Paris, there is the
Quai Lanzun, at 17 Quai d'Anjou, the place that housed the "club of hashish
smokers" where poets including Balzac
or Baudelaire frequently spent their leisure time.
In the 6th
arrondissement, there is Café Procope (13 Ancienne Comedie street )the oldest
café in Paris where Franklin and
Voltaire were regular visitors. It was at the Café de Flore or Au deux magots (in
Saint Germain des Prés, opposite the church) that the philosophical and
subversive ideas of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Vian and Prévert were born. Albert
Camus resided for a while at the Hotel Madison, 143 Boulevard Saint Germain.
Montparnasse,
at the Closerie des Lilas, was frequented by Hemingway who wrote “The sun also
rises” in six weeks. For this American writer, "Paris is a party!"
People wanting
to tribute to some of the greatest writers, can visit Montparnasse cemetery where
the bodies of Sartre, Beckett, Huysmans, Baudelaire and Maupassant were buried .
Paris
and river Seine in poems
Here are some
most prominent poems about Paris written by some remarkable poets: We start with Louis Aragon(1897-1982)
surrealist, who wrote poem “Paris” at the age of 47. Written in strict in quintains, the poet glorified the city in the first lines of the first stanza and described it as
the city where every thing is fine
despite the bad times.
Où fait-il bon même au coeur de l’orage
Où fait-il clair même au coeur de la nuit
(Where
it feels good even in the heart of the storm
Where
it is clear even in the heart of the night.)
Despite the
suffering and humiliation and despite the war and the destruction as the result
of German occupation, Paris remains strong:
«
carreaux cassés l’espoir encore y luit « (broken tiles hope still shines
there)
The power of
Paris is further expressed in the lines of the third stanza:
Rien n’a l’éclat de Paris dans la poudre
Rien n’est si pur que son front d’insurgé
Rien n’est ni fort ni le feu ni la foudre
Que mon Paris défiant les dangers
Rien n’est si beau que ce Paris que j’ai.
(Nothing
has the brilliance of Paris in the powder
Nothing
is so pure as his insurgent front
Nothing
is strong neither fire nor lightning
May
my Paris defy the dangers
Nothing
is so beautiful as this Paris I have.)
Sharing
Aragon’s admiration for Paris, Maurice Careme(1899-1978) a poet of Belgian
origin also gave his tribute to the city through his poem : la tour Eiffel
(Eiffel tower), focusing on the city’s most well-known monument, Eiffel tower
built by Gustave Eiffel in the occasion of Paris Universal Exposition in 1889. This monument
has become the symbol of the French capital, and one of the main tourist sites.
Through his poem, “la tour Eiffel” (Eiffel tower), written in one single stanza of 18 lines, Careme
used metaphor to describe the tower comparing it with a giraffe in the first lines
Mais oui, je suis une girafe,
M’a raconté la tour Eiffel,
Et si ma tête est dans le ciel,
C’est pour mieux brouter les nuages,
(Yes,
I'm a giraffe,
Eiffel
Tower told me,
And
if my head is in the sky,
It
is to better graze the clouds),
Careme also raised
the diverse aspects offered by the city and
that those visiting Paris always have always some thing to do, some thing to
admire , some thing to enjoy . The river Seine is also evoked in this poem:
Mais
j’ai quatre pieds bien assis
Dans une courbe de la Seine.
On ne s’ennuie pas à Paris :
(But
I have four feet sitting well
In
a curve of the Seine.
We
do not get bored in Paris.)
The veneration
of abundance of Paris monuments is also portrayed by Gérard de NERVAL(1808-1855)
in his poem “Notre Dame de Paris “ denoting
French gothic cathedral, Notre Dame in
Paris), built in 1345. Composed in double sestets, the poem is an homage to the monument for its
strong attraction observable in the
first and second line of the second stanza:
Bien des hommes, de tous les pays de la terre
Viendront, pour contempler cette ruine austère,
(Many
people from all countries of the earth
Will
come, to contemplate this austere ruin,)
However, this
poet expresses his disquiet that this monument will not resist the test of time
in line: 2, 3, 4, 5:
Mais, dans quelque mille ans, le Temps fera broncher
Comme un loup fait un bœuf, cette carcasse lourde,
Tordra ses nerfs de fer, et puis d'une dent sourde
Rongera tristement ses vieux os de rocher !
(But
in a thousand years, Time will flinch
Like
a wolf becoming an ox, this heavy
carcass,
Will
twist his iron nerves and then with a
dull tooth
Will
consume sadly his old rock bones!)
On the other
hand, in "Pariscope", a poem composed by the poet André Laude(1936-1995), with one
pretty long stanza containing 23 lines, opposes two facets of the capital.
First,(in line 1 and 2) he talked about the great monuments and then proceed (line 3) with the pleasure of Parisians to walk aroun in
such a beautiful city:
C’est la parade
des grands monuments
Tour Eiffel Notre-Dame
La foule va et vient baguenaude des Champs-Elysées à la
Défense,
(It
is the parade of the great monuments
Eiffel
Tower Notre-Dame
The
crowd comes and goes from Champs-Elysees, to la Defense)
But the poem
quickly denounces the omnipresence of the cars and the pollution it generates (line
7, 8, 9,10, 11,12, 13):
Dans les voitures il y a des gens qui habitent
dans de grandes tours le long des grands boulevards
et qui achètent mille choses dans de grands magasins
et puis vont flâner le long des quais
pour oublier les fumées des usines
qui polluent la Seine
et tuent les légumes dans les jardins de banlieue.
(In
the cars there are people who live
in
big towers along the big boulevards
and
who buy a thousand things in department stores
and
then go strolling along the docks
to
forget the fumes of the factories
polluting
the Seine
and
killing vegetables in peripheral gardens)
The poet also
protests against the consumer society, against the false idols of today,
opposing them the Egyptian goddess Karomama(line 16 to 21):
Le
métro conduit aux musées
où derrière les vitrines lumineuses
la reine Karomama sourit avec ses lèvres orientales
et des jeunes filles rêveuses
vont acheter à la FNAC un album plein de photographies
de dieux et d’idoles qu’elles contemplent avec des yeux
tristes
(Subway
leads to museums
where
behind the light showcases
Queen
Karomama smiling with her oriental lips
and
dreamy girls
will
buy at the FNAC an album full of photographs
of
gods and idols they contemplate with gloomy eyes)
This unpleasant
side of Paris is also enunciated in the poem L'embouteillage(Traffic jam), also
having one single stanza of 22 lines by Jacques
Charpentreau (1926-2016) where he deplores the heavy traffic suffered by the city :
Les
voitures stoppent.
Blanches, grises, vertes, bleues,
Tortues à la queue leu leu,
Jaunes, rouges, beiges, noires,
Tortues têtues Tintamarre !
Bloquées dans vos carapaces
Regardez-moi bien : je passe !
The
cars stop.
(White,
gray, green, blue,
Turtles
in the tail one after the other,
Yellow,
red, beige, black,
Stubborn
noisy Turtles!
Clogged
in your shells
Look
at me: I am passing!)
And
finally, Paris’s river Seine has inspired Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)
to compose his famous poem Le pont Mirabeau (Mirabeau bridge) referring to one
of the bridges in the city. The poem has
4 quatrains and 4 couplets. Written following his separation from painter,
Marie Laurencin the poet narrated his love story with sad ending.
Le Pont
Mirabeau
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure
Mirabeau Bridge
Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine
with all our loves,
which I must recall,
joy forever following pain.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
Hand in hand let us stand face to face
while under
the bridge of our arms pass
our time-locked eyes in a lazy wave.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
And love runs like this running water,
love runs,
sure as life drags,
sure as hope forces.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
Days pass into weeks that pass.
Neither times passed
nor my love return.
Under Mirabeau bridge runs the Seine.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine
with all our loves,
which I must recall,
joy forever following pain.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
Hand in hand let us stand face to face
while under
the bridge of our arms pass
our time-locked eyes in a lazy wave.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
And love runs like this running water,
love runs,
sure as life drags,
sure as hope forces.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
Days pass into weeks that pass.
Neither times passed
nor my love return.
Under Mirabeau bridge runs the Seine.
Night sounds the hours, days depart, I remain.
Although the
images used by Apollinaire in the "Mirabeau bridge" may seem simple,
they are nevertheless renewed by the poet. This one broke the classical
structure of the comparison, usually composed of a compared and a comparing.
Here, the image consists of three elements (Seine, time and love) that have
some thing in common: to pass. They are paradoxically connected to the Mirabeau
Bridge, which represents stability. Each of these elements is thus at the same
time the compared and the comparing of the two others: the poet creates thus a
mobile and not fixed comparison, in the image of its three components.
Apollinaire
offers us in "The Mirabeau Bridge" a resolutely modern poem, in spite
of appearances. Apollinaire takes up
themes and registers of traditional poetry to better release the flipped images
by renewing them. The poet is thus faithful to the avant-garde approach of this
beginning of the century which wishes a poetic rupture.
Conclusion
Paris and its
river Seine have always been the center of attraction of visitors coming from
all over the world.
Similarly, they
have also been the source of inspiration for literary works including the
poems.
Many poets,
both French and non French, have written legendary and remarkable poems on
them.
Most adored the
beauty of the city including its monuments and its diversity. Some, however,
regreted the negative sides including traffic jump, pollution and consumerism
of its people.
The river Seine
has particularly inspired Apolines to narrate his rupture with his lover in one
of his masterpieces, le pont Mirabeau ( Mirabeau bridge) presenting double
ruptures: love rupture and poetic rupture
proving that he is one of
the pioneers of avant-garde poetry in
his time.
References
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à nos jours, Paris: Ellipses..
Delaveau P. (1988) La poésie française au tournant des années quatre-vingt. Paris: Corti.
Gleize J-M. (1992) A noir : poésie et littéralité : essai, Paris: Seuil.
Lepape P. (2003) Le Pays de la littérature, Paris: Seuil.
Maulpoix J-M. (2009) Du lyrisme, Paris: J. Corti.
Orizet J. (1988) Anthologie de la poésie française : les poètes et les oeuvres, les mouvements et les écoles. Paris: Larousse, 639.
Pinson J-C. (1995) Habiter en poète : essai sur la poésie contemporaine, Seyssel: Champ Vallon.
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Gleize J-M. (1992) A noir : poésie et littéralité : essai, Paris: Seuil.
Lepape P. (2003) Le Pays de la littérature, Paris: Seuil.
Maulpoix J-M. (2009) Du lyrisme, Paris: J. Corti.
Orizet J. (1988) Anthologie de la poésie française : les poètes et les oeuvres, les mouvements et les écoles. Paris: Larousse, 639.
Pinson J-C. (1995) Habiter en poète : essai sur la poésie contemporaine, Seyssel: Champ Vallon.
Reynaud-Paligot C. (2001) Parcours politique des surréalistes: 1919-1969: JSTOR.
Sapiro G. (2010) L'autonomie de la littérature en question. In: Martin J-P (ed) Bourdieu et la littérature. Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 45-61.
Speller JRW. (2011) Bourdieu and literature: Open Book Publishers.
Vercier B and Viart D. (2005) La littérature française au présent, Paris: Bordas.
* Disampaikan dalam Seminar
Internasional Sastra Indonesia, 6 s.d. 9 Desember 2017 di Banjarmasin.
MAKALAH SASTRA : PARIS AND RIVER SEINE IN FRENCH POEMS OLEH Dr. DANNY SUSANTO,M.A (Faculty of Humanities- Universitas Indonesia) Terjemahan Bahasa Indonesianya Baca dan Lihat selengkapnya di sini !!
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