Стихотворения

by François Villon, Франсоа Вийон, Васил Сотиров (Translator)

A French classic in paperback.

Genres: Poetry, France

150 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

François Villon (in modern French, pronounced [fʁɑ̃swa vijɔ̃]; in fifteenth-century French, [frɑnswɛ viˈlɔn]) (c. 1431 – after 5 January 1463) was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison. The question "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?", taken from the "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" and translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti as "Where are the snows of yesteryear?", is one of the most famous lines of translated secular poetry in the English-speaking world.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading was an interval, the book was at hand when my primary materials were not. I have maintained a cache of books in the car my entire life. There are sound reasons for such: I mean apart from my hoarding proclivities, of course.

I indulged and appreciated the second approach to The Testament, this translation (Peter Dale) appeared to crackle in comparison with the somber tone of that other edition.

Villon was a rapscallion and one perhaps purposefully opaque. The subsequent fog of history has served his legacy well. I have a biography which I might start during these days of abbreviated sunlight and rueful cold.

[Велислав Върбанов · Rating 5 out of 5]

Балада за прошка


„Монаси, плувнали във лой,
и монахини на диета,
кибици, фукльовци безброй,
слугини, знаещи секрета
за свалянето на корсета,
и куртизанки с галещ глас,
и самовлюбени контета —
за прошка моля всички аз.

Жени (и то какви — от сой!)
със напращели деколтета,
мъже, налитащи на бой,
и акробати по гащета,
освирквани и от хлапета,
че ни разсмиват час по час
със глупости на търкалета —
за прошка моля всички аз.

Но ненамерил миг покой
сред развилнелите се псета,
от глад претръпнал в студ и в зной,
какво му пука на поета!
Бих пръднал (мамка им проклета!)
на техния фасон със бяс,
но като дупката девета
за прошка моля всички аз.

Да бъдат бити тия псета
с какво ли не и час по час,
докато станат на парчета —
за прошка моля всички аз.“





Балада за обратните истини


„На врага се осланя човек
и е петимен всеки за глад,
който спи като пън, е нащрек,
вкус на плява — каква благодат,
колко смел е превитият врат,
нежност има в сърцето от лед
и почтеност във злия пират,
а на влюбен умът му е в ред.

На изгнаника пътят е лек,
чист е, който се къпе в разврат,
изнудвачът — на почит човек,
луда радост — ритникът отзад,
лицемерът е верен събрат,
най-добре е да нямаш късмет,
всичко бяло е в черния цвят,
а на влюбен умът му е в ред.

Всяко бреме е пухен дюшек,
а простакът — духовно богат,
жив е, който лежи във ковчег,
да крадеш е почтен занаят,
всеки пъзльо е смел акробат,
от ядосан се иска съвет,
във бардаците няма разврат,
а на влюбен умът му е в ред.

Вас ви дразни подобен похват?
Изигран, аз съм всъщност богат.
Йезуитът е доблестен гад.
От трагизъм сме смешни наглед,
Няма истини без маскарад.
А на влюбен умът му е в ред.“


Превод: Васил Сотиров

[Bro_Pair أعرف · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn! This was a thunderclap. All you Bukowski fanboys need to get off you bar stool and stop aping Mickey Rourke; here's the guy from whom ole Charlie lifted his act. "The Testament" is an extended riff on "de profundis," the whole extended piece embossed in the kind of maudlin, screeching self-pity the French (Celine, Proust, even Baudelaire) seem especially adept at spinning into comic gold. The energy is palpable from word one; by framing "Testament" within a superb, time-tested plot (he has to go on the run from the law), Villon imbues each "item" with a terrible fierceness. It's not for nothing Villon's quoted at the start of H.S.T.'s "Hells Angels." Ballads and chansons seem to suit Villon best, and there's a healthy offering of those as his "legacy" throughout the long poem. Even better than "Testament" might be the late pieces, written upon being sentenced to hang. And even better than those are the really wiseassed ones he wrote after the sentence was commuted. The translator Peter Dale had a really tough job, and it's a bit rocky at times, but he's a natural poet himself, and at times, so good that it's hard to believe Villon didn't write in English. Avoid Robert Lowell's translations.

[Денис Олегов · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Пороят ни изми. Изпепели
ни зноят. Вече всеки е безок,
че ни кълваха гарваните зли,
дордето стане тъмно като в рог.
Покой не знаем и от трън на глог
нестихващ вятър (с песен на уста!)
подмята ни безспир като листа,
че никой за обесници не страда…
Не ни корете зарад участта —
молете за душите ни пощада!"

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Преполагам, че на повечето хора е известен с оксиморонните си рими (и прочутата Балада за конкурса в Блоа), трагикомичният и самоироничен елемент, драматичното преживяване на света и пренебрежението към традиционните ценности. Смятам, че преводът на Васил Сотиров е по-хубав, защото е запазил „духа” на стиха. Когато прочетох същите стихотворения на английски, бях потресена от буквалността на превода.

Край извора от жажда ще загина,
край огъня треперя вкочанен,
в родината си сякаш съм в чужбина,
като във пещ пламтя и съм студен.
Съвсем съм гол и царски пременен,
усмихнат плача, чакам без отрада,
посрещам мъката като награда,
могъщ и слаб в един и същи час,
от радостта не чувствувам аз наслада,
добре приет и нежелан съм аз.
...
Сбрах, господи, от знания грамада,
а сред невежество душата ми пропадa,
пристрастен, искам равенство за нас.
Залог ли търся? Чакам ли пощада?
Добре приет и нежелан съм аз.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good to have the original poems affectionately rendered in rhymed verse but if you want a more literal translation this one aint it.

[Noah Goats · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francois Villon was a rascal. Well, maybe "rascal" isn't strong enough. He was a lowlife robber and killer with a gift for writing poetry, but not delicate, high-flown, pretty poetry. He wrote the kind of earthy, gritty, occasionally obscene, and sometimes frankly unpleasant poems that you might expect from a criminal lowlife, providing the view from the streets of Paris in the late middle ages. He wrote about death, sex, aging, crime, and relationships, and he settled some scores while doing it.

This is a bilingual edition of these poems. The archaic French was hard-going for me, so I stuck mostly to the English side of the page. Because this is a verse translation, the translator sometimes had to stray pretty far from the literal translation and get creative, but as far as I can tell he's done a great job at keeping to the spirit of the original while breaking it apart and reassembling it as English verse.

[Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A BOOK A DAY – FRANCOIS VILLON – SELECTED POEMS TRANSLATED BY PETER DALE – PENGUIN POETRY
by Ampat Varghese Varghese on Wednesday, 23 February 2011
I dug this book out to read all day because I had been stuffed to my gills with C S Lewis, religion, God, spirituality, and that kind of high-strung material. I thought a good shot of Villon would bring me down to earth and, yes, it worked. Like intoxicants.
Villon, of course, was villainous. Born in 1431 and well educated by 1442, he then embarked on a rebel pathway. In 1455 he was supposed to have been involved in a fight which got a priest killed. He was later involved in robberies, went on the lam, was imprisoned for a while, and generally lived the dissolute life of a poete maudite. He was sentenced to death but escaped with a lesser penalty of being banished from Paris.
Villon was supposed to be a master craftsman and the translation attempts to be strictly metrical, trying to be faithful to Villon’s ballade stanzas without losing the spirit of his writing. The translator admits that Villon is extremely flexible and versatile in his understanding and use of the French language in terms of being satirical and generating puns, not to mention that he caricatured fellow beings and situations through his poems, making things even more difficult for a translator. Peter Dale says he “dislocated” Villon.
The collection consists primarily of two long poems – The Legacy and The Testament – followed by some shorter poems. Villon is delightful in his appeals to God and Christ to judge between himself and a variety of people whom he disparages in his poetry. He is not ashamed to admit his own unworthiness in a tongue-in-cheek manner and yet he believes in the mercy and goodness of God to support him in his nefarious and illicit acts. In other words, his poetry stems from his acceptance of himself and his circumstances. He is not ashamed of affirming his being and his calling.
In one sense, Villon’s poetry was “light” reading but as I entered into it, I found myself increasingly underlining memorable lines and phrases and occasionally bursting into mad bouts of laughter. For instance, it seems at first glance that he regrets losing women who claimed to love him but then reading between the lines one senses a great releif, a positive attitude of self-mockery and liberation, and an exposure of the woman’s idiosyncrasies.
Item: to the lady mentioned above/who overturned my applecart/and drove me from the joys of love/I leave the relic of my heart/pale, piteous and dead. Her part/it was that tossed me to this fate/and ruined pleasure for a start;/may God show mercy on her state.
That little twist proves how Villon took the untoward happenings in his life with a pinch of salt and turned them into words dipped in vitriol. Of course, only one who is able to laugh at himself has the right to laugh at others and Villon is always ironic and often deprecatory when speaking of himself, one can hear him chuckling to himself as he writes:
So love has made a fool of me/run me out and locked the door/No man has tricks enough, I see/though mercurial his wits and more/to come off lightly on this score/with even a rag to call his own/Like me, he’s beaten to the floor -/”The Reject Lover”, I’m well known.
And then it is exciting for one like me that Villon has no qualms about being risque, bawdy, raunchy and that he does not pull his punches in his attacks on his peers, colleagues, ministers of law and state and neighbours all of which resort to sexual innuendo – he makes or mars their reputations by his assessment of how skilled or not they are in terms of sexual prowess.
So this is human beauty’s end/arms writhed, crazed hands too weak to lift/back hunched until the shoulders bend./My breasts? No tits to nudge a shift;/my tail the same, skin all adrift,/My quim, for Christ’s sake! And thighs?/No more than hafts, skin, bone and rift/all blotched like sausages. Some prize!
The Legacy and The Testament are written in the same vein – people are atttacked, one is not certain whether Villon respects God or verges on blasphemy, he is obsequious in part and rebellious and irreverent otherwise, he lauds his nomadic state and looks back upon compatriots gone to seed with a twisted sneer while at the same time seeming to repent for having spent his youth unwisely and now finding himself without home or soft bed. He bequeaths all that he has, well itemised, to a string of people he has had the fortune or misfortune to encounter in life. Nor is he squeamish when speaking of bodily functions and excrement that are part of his encounters.
We make peace then in bed. She takes my fill,/gorged like a dung-beetle, blows me a bad and mighty poisonous fart …/Though when we stir, her quim begins to tease./She mounts, I groan beneath the weight – I’m splayed!
Ah, Villon, he is worldly wise, street smart, earthy, well read in history and the Scriptures, wields a mighty fine turn of phrase and ,all in all, is delightful to one who does not swear by the sacred. So, moving from these long pieces, one then encounters a piece written in a very different style - The Debate between Villon’s Heart and Body. And what lies therein suits me – the Body ignores the plaintive pleadings of the Heart. The Body has it’s own life. And then, of course, Villon is well aware that all good things must come to an end and so he offers many a time readymade epitaphs unto himself as, for instance in this quatrain:
Francis I am, which weighs me down/born in Paris near Pontoise town/and with a stretch of rope my pate/wil learn for once my arse’s weight.
Or better still:
If any ask me why the way/I speak of love is so unkind/then let this saying win the day:/”A dying man may speak his mind.”

[David Lai · Rating 1 out of 5]

Consists mainly of two long poems each in the form of a will, with the English translation facing the original fifteenth-century French. The poet lists his nasty virtual bequests to all those whom he resents. I concluded that Villon was a scallywag, coarse, mean-spirited and vindictive, the kind of crim who was always bleating that he never done it and always nursing his grievances against the law. The English translations are awkward to say the least, and often baffling; Villon's supposed wit comes through feebly, if at all.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dales versions are fine verses, but I can't shake the feeling I'm not getting villon, how much is he giving up to maintain the rhyme scheme?

[Steve Clark]

Penguin Classics (1993)