Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DON JUAN, by THEOPHILE GAUTIER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DON JUAN, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: Heureux adolescents dont le coeur s'ouvre
Alternate Author Name(s): Theo, Le Bon
Subject(s): Don Juan




Happy teenagers, whose hearts barely open
Like a violet at the first breath
Of the spring that smiles,
Ames the color of milk, fresh hawthorn bushes
Where, under the pure ray, in the Argentine rain
Everything chirps and blooms;
O all of you who leave your mother's arms
Without knowing life and bitter knowledge,
And who wants to know,
Poets and dreamers! more than once no doubt,
At the edge of the woods, following your route
In the redness of the evening,
At the enchanting hour when on the tips of the branches
we see the white doves pecking each other
And the bullfinches in the nest,
When tired nature sighs as it falls asleep,
And the leaf in the wind vibrates like a lyre
After the song is finished;
When calm and oblivion come to all things,
And the sylph returns to the pavilion of roses
Beneath the folded perfume;
Moved by all this, full of worried ardor,
You wished for my list and my conquests!
You envied me
The feasts, the kisses on bare shoulders,
All these pleasures unknown at your age,
Kind and dear torment!
Zerline,
Elvira,
Anna, my
jealous Romans,
My beautiful Albion lilies, my
Andalusian brunettes,
All my lovely flock.
And you said to yourselves with the voice of your souls:

How did you manage to have more women?
What does the Sultan have?
How did you manage, despite locks and gates,
To slip into the beds of beautiful young girls,
Happy, happy Don
Juan!

Forgetful conqueror, only one of those
That you did not register, one among your least beautiful,
Your most modest flower,
Oh! how long and how long we would have adored her!
She would have embellished, in a golden urn,
The altar of our heart.

It would have been fragrant, this humble violet
Whose head bowed under the grass,
Our pale spring;
We would have collected her, and with our tears soaked,
This star with blue eyes, in the escaped ball
Has fickle fingers.

Adorable shivers of amorous fever,
Ramiers which descend from the sky on a lip,
Sharp and sweet kisses,
Falls of the last veil, and you, blond cascades,
Golden hair flooding a brown back with your waves,
When will we know you? ·
As children, I know them all, these pleasures that we dream of.
Around the fatal trunk the ancient serpent of Eve
Didn't twist better;
In mortal eyes, never has a dragon with the head of a man
Brought more brightly to the apple
From the forbidden tree.
Often, like nests of fierce warblers,
All ready to fly away, I have surprised on mouths
Nests of trembling confessions;
I have held ravishing ghosts in my arms,
Many virgins in bloom have poured me pure balms
From their white chalices.
To get the word out, cunning courtesans,
I pressed, under the makeup, your more worn lips
Than the sandstone of the paths.
Impure sewers where all the streams of the world go.
I dove beneath your waves; and you, filthy debauchery.
I saw your tomorrows.
I have seen the purest brows rolling after the orgy.
Among the waves of wine, on the reddened tablecloth.
I saw the end of the ball
And the sweat of the arms, and the paleness of the heads
More gloomy than
Death under their undone curls
In the morning sun.
Like a miner following an infertile vein,
I searched night and day deep existence
Without finding the vein;
I asked for life from the love that gives it,
But in vain; I never loved anyone
Having a name in the world.
I have burned more than one heart whose ashes I have trodden on.
But I always remained, like the salamander,
Cold in the middle of the fire.
I had an ideal as fresh as dew,
A golden vision, an iridescent opal
By the gaze of
God;
A woman like no sculptor has ever created.
Type bringing together
Cleopatra and
Mary,
Grace, modesty, beauty;
A mystical rose, where no worm hides;
The heat of the volcano and the spotless snow
Virginity!
At the dubious crossroads,
Y Greek of
Pythagoras,
I took the left branch, and I still walk
Without ever arriving.
Deceptive
Volupté, it was you I followed!
And perhaps, O
Virtue! the enigma of life,
It was you who knew it.
Why don't I, like
Faust, in my dark cell,
contemplate the trembling darkness on the wall?
From the golden microcosm!
What have I not, leafing through cabals and grimoires,
Near my stove, past the dark hours
Looking for the treasure!
I had a strong head, and I would have read your book
And drunk your bitter wine,
Science, without being drunk
Like a young schoolboy!
I would have forced
Isis to raise her veil,
And from the highest of the heavens brought down the star
In my dark workshop.
Do not listen to Love, because it is a bad teacher
. To love is to ignore, and to live is to know.
Learn, learn;
Throw and discard the probe at all times,
And dive deeper under this deep sea
What didn't our elders do?
Let
Leviathan breathe through his nostrils.
Let the weight of the seas deep in your chest
Squeeze your lung.
Search the black reefs that we have been able to recognize,
And in its golden chest you will perhaps find
Solomon 's Ring
!
Thus spoke don
Juan.
And under the cold vault,
Weary, but wanting to go to the end of the road.
I continued on my way.
Finally I emerged into a dreary plain
That a burning sky closed off on the boundless horizon
From a circle of carmine.
The ground of this plain was ivory white,
A river cut it like a ribbon of moire
The brightest red.
Everything was flat; neither wood, nor bell tower, nor turret;
And the bored wind swept her away
With a plaintive tone.
I first imagined that this strange tint,
This color of blood with which this wave was painted
Was only a vain reflection;
That chalk and tuff formed this ivory white;
But I saw that it was (leaning to drink from it)
Real blood flowing.
I saw that the earth was covered with whitened bones.
Cold snow of the dead, where no plant comes,
No flower germinated;
That this ground was made only of human dust,
and that a people filled
Thebes,
Palmyra and
Rome,
Was there sleeping.
A shadow, arched back, leaning forehead, in the breeze
Passed by.
It was really him, the gray frock coat
And the little hat.
A golden eagle hovered over his sacred head.
Searching, to settle there, worried, frightened,
A flag stick.
The skeletons stopped adjusting their heads,
The specter of the drum waved its sticks
At his sovereign step;
An immense clamor flew as it passed,
And a hundred thousand cannons singing in the storm
Their brass band.
He did not seem to hear this tumult.
And, like a
marble God, insensitive to his worship,
Walked silently;
Only sometimes, as if by stealth.
To find your fallen star in the sky
He looked up.
But the sky purple with the reflection of fire
Did not have a star, and the flame enlarged
Was going up, still going up.
Then, even paler than in the days of
Saint Helena.
He closed his arms around his chest, full
Of dull moans.
When he was before us: "
Great emperor," I said to him, "
This mysterious word that my destiny obliges me
To search here below,
This lost word that
Faust asked for in his book,
And don
Juan for love, to die or to live,
Wouldn't you know?
- "
O unhappy child! reads the imperial shadow,
Go back up there, the wind is icy.
And I'm all frozen.
You would not find, on the road, an inn
Where to warm your feet, because
Death alone shelters
Those who pass here.

Look...
It's done.
The star is eclipsed.
Black blood rains from the side of my wounded eagle
In the middle of his flight.
With the white flakes of eternal snow.
From the top of the dark sky, the feathers of its wing
Descend to the ground.

Alas! I cannot satisfy your desire:
I have searched in vain for the word of this life.
Like
Faust and Don
Juan,
I know nothing more than on the day of my birth, yet I did in my omnipotence
The calm and the hurricane;

Yet they called me par excellence i.'hom.su; :
They carry before me the eagle and the fasces, like
To the old
Roman Caesars;
Yet I had ten kings to hold my dress,
I was a
Charlemagne imprisoning the globe
In one of my hands.

I saw nothing more from the top of the column
Where my glory, tricolor rainbow, shines.
Than you others from below.
In vain with my heel I spurred the world:
Always the noise of the camps and the roaring cannon,
Assaults, battles;

Always silver dishes with city keys.
A concert of bugles and servite cheers,
Laurels, speeches;
A black sky, whose rain was grapeshot,
Dead people to salute on a battlefield;
This is how my days passed.

That your sweet honey name,
Laetitia, my mother,
Cruelly lied to my bitter fortune!
How unhappy I was!
I carried my wandering sorrow everywhere.
I had dreamed of the empire, and the ball of the world
In my hand sounded hollow.

Ah! the fate of the shepherds, and the beech where
Tityrus
retires in the heat of the day apart
And sings
Amaryllis,
The ringing bell and the bleating flock,
The pure milk flowing from a white udder
Between lily fingers;

The scent of green hay and the smell of the stable,
Brown bread from the pastors, a few nuts on the table.
A wooden bowl;
A seven-hole flute joined with wax.
And six goats, that's all I want,
I, the conqueror of kings.

A sheepskin will cover my shoulders,
Galatea laughing will flee under the willows,
bed I will pursue it there;
My verses will be sweeter than sweet ambrosia.
And
Daphnis will turn pale with jealousy
To the tunes that I will play.

Ah! I want to go to my island of
Corsica,
Through the woods whose bark the goat bites as it passes.
Through the deep ravine.
Along the hollow path where the cicada sings.
Follow nonchalantly in its uneven march
My wandering flock.

The
Sphinx has no mercy on anyone who makes a mistake.
Reckless, so you want him to slit your throat and blow you
The pure blood of your heart!
The only one who guessed this fatal riddle
killed
his father Laius, and committed incest:
Sad prize for the winner! ·
Here I am, back from this dark journey,
Where we have torches and stars in the shadows
Than the eyes of the owl;
Like, after a whole day of plowing, a buffalo
Returns with slow steps, gloomy and lowering its muzzle.
I will bend my neck.
Here I am, back from the land of ghosts;
But I still keep, far from silent kingdoms,
The pale complexion of the dead.
My garment, like funeral crepe
On an urn thrown, from my back to the ground
Hangs along my body.
I come out of the hands of a
Death more miserly
than that which watched over the tomb of
Lazarus;
She keeps her good:
She lets go of the body, but she retains the soul;
She returns the torch, but she extinguishes the flame;
And
Christ could do nothing about it.
I am no more, alas! than the shadow of myself,
That the living tomb where all that I love lies.
And I survive alone;
I carry with me the frozen remains
of my illusions, charming deaths
Whose shroud I am.
I am still too young, I want to love and live,
O
Death!... and I cannot bring myself to follow you-In the dark path;
I did not have time to build the column
Where glory will come to hang my crown;
O
Mon, come back tomorrow!
Virgin with beautiful alabaster breasts, spare your poet,
Remember that it was I who first made you
More beautiful than the day;
I changed your green complexion into diaphanous paleness,
Under beautiful black hair I hid your old skull,
And I courted you.
Let me live yet, I will speak your praises;
To adorn your palace, I will sculpt angels,
I will forge crosses;
I will make, in the church and in the cemetery,
Melt the marble into tears and the stone complain
Like at the tomb of kings!
I will dedicate my most beautiful songs to you:
For you I will always have bouquets of immortelles
Ht flowers without perfume.
I have planted my garden, O
Death, with your trees;
The yew, the boxwood, the cypress, cross over the marbles
Their branches are green-brown.
I said to the beautiful flowers, sweet honors of the flowerbed,
To the majestic lily opening its white crater,
To the golden tulip,
To the May rose that the nightingale loves,
I said to the dahlia, I said to the chrysanthemum,
To many more:

Don't cross here!" look for another land.
Fresh spring love; for this austere garden
Your glow is too bright;
The holly would wound you with its sharp points,
and you would drink the poison of the hemlocks from the air.
The pungent smell of yew. ·
Do not abandon me, O my mother, O
Nature!
You owe youth to every creature,
There is love for every soul:
I am young, and I feel the cold of old age,
I cannot love anything.
I want a youth,
Even if she only had one day!
Don't be a stepmother to me, O
darling Nature!
Restores a little sap to the withered plant
Who doesn't want to die;
The torrents of my eyes have drowned in their rain
Her gnawed button that no sun wipes away
And which cannot be opened.
Virgin air, crystal air, water, principle of the world,
Earth which nourishes everything, and you, fertile flame,
Ray of the eye of
God,
Do not let die, you who give life,
The poor flower which bends and which has no other desire
Just bloom a little!
Stars which from above see the worlds waltz,
Make it rain on me, with your fair eyelids,
Your diamond tears!
Moon, lily of the night, flower of the divine flower bed.
Shower me your rays, oh solitary white one.
From the depths of the firmament!
Eye open without rest in the middle of space,
Pierce, powerful sun, this passing cloud,
That I see you again!
Eagles, you who whip the sky with great strokes of your wings,
Griffons in the flight of fire, swift swallows,
Lend me your rise!
Winds, who take their fragrant souls from flowers
And confessions of love from beloved mouths;
Wild air of the
Encor mountains all impregnated with the scents of larch,
Ocean breeze where we breathe at ease,
Fill my lungs!
April, for me to lie down on, made a carpet of grass for me,
The lilac on my forehead blooms in a spray,
We are in spring.
Take me in your arms, sweet dreams of the poet,
Between your polished breasts lay my poor head
And rock me for a long time.
Far from me, nightmares, ghosts of the night!
Roses.
Women, songs, all beautiful things
And all the beautiful loves,
That's what I need.
Hail, O
ancient Muse,
Muse with fresh green laurel, with a white tunic,
Younger every day!
Brunette with lotus eyes, blonde with black eyelids,
O
Greek of
Miletus, on the ivory stool
Put your beautiful bare feet on!
What a ruddy nectar the cup is crowned with!
I drink to your beauty first, blanche
Théone,
Then to the
unknown Gods.
Your throat is more lascivious and more flexible than the wave.
The milk is not so pure and the apple is less round;
Let's go ! a beautiful kiss!
Let's hurry, let's hurry!
Our life, O
Théone,
Is a winged horse that
Time spurs;
Let us hasten to use it.
Let's sing
Io,
Péan!...
But who is this woman
So pale under her veil?
Ah! It's you, you infamous old woman!
I see your shaved head;
I see your big hollow eyes, filthy prostitute,
eternal Courtesan surrounding the world
With your skinny arms!








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