Guillaume Apollinaire Guillaume Apollinaire

Le Pont Mirabeau The Mirabeau Bridge

Translated by Mikhail Lanier

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Under the Mirabeau Bridge the Seine flows
Et nos amours Likewise our loves
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne Must I remember those
La joie venait toujours après la peine Joy always comes on the heel of the blows

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure The night comes the hours drain
Les jours s'en vont je demeure The days leave while I remain

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face With hands in hands let us stay face to face
Tandis que sous While underneath
Le pont de nos bras passe The bridge of our arms race
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse The waves worn down by eternal showcase

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure The night comes the hours drain
Les jours s'en vont je demeure The days leave while I remain

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante Love goes away just as this water sways
L'amour s'en va Love goes away
Comme la vie est lente Just as if life delays
Et comme l'Espérance est violente Just as if all Hope violently affrays

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure The night comes the hours drain
Les jours s'en vont je demeure The days leave while I remain

Passent les jours et passent les semaines Each day goes just as well as each week goes
Ni temps passé No time bygone
Ni les amours reviennent Nor loves their path oppose
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Under the Mirabeau Bridge the Seine flows

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure The night comes the hours drain
Les jours s'en vont je demeure The days leave while I remain

Alcools (1912) Alcools (1912)

Translation rationale (before comparing with other translations):
When reading the poem for the first time, I appreciated Apollinaire’s clarity of
expression. His emotions are not obscured, a feature that I realized really emerged with Dadaism
and the Surrealists and definitely had roots in poems like Le Pont Mirabeau. I wanted to make
clarity the top priority of the translation, which came into play selecting certain key words:
‣ Je demeure → I remain
I played around with using “tarry” or “stay” but the first has a bit of a connotation
with negligent time-keeping and the second seemed too simplistic. “Remain” in this
sense indicates a kind of consistency contrasted with the transience of the river which
I believe is faithful to Apollinaire’s intention.
‣ Les mains dans les mains restons face à face → With hands in hands let us stay face to
face
It was really important to maintain the plural sense of the hands being held. In
English, it is far more natural to say “hand in hand”; however, this implies people
side by side which contradicts the actual image Apollinaire wishes to convey. I
considered “Hands holding hands” or “Hands in each other’s hands” but both make
the line too long.
I also attempted the challenge of maintaining the rhyme scheme of the original poem.
Apollinaire’s poems are varied when it comes to rhyme and meter, so when there is formal
structure, it is significant. Each stanza is really composed of three ten-syllable lines ending in
feminine rhymes with the second split in two parts of four and six syllables. Other than the
gender of the rhyme, which is nearly impossible to replicate in English, the length and rhyme of
the original poem are maintained. The first iteration of my translation was unambitious and only
preserved meaning. I then passed over the poem again to incorporate similar rhymes which
thankfully left almost every line too short. A third, less intensive pass reworked a few of the lines
by stretching the word count where necessary to match the original.
Additionally, I took a bit of creative liberty in order to meet the restrictions I added:
‣ Comme la vie est lente → Just as if life delays
Et comme l’Esperance est violente Just as if all Hope violently affrays
This change turns adjectives into verbs and arose mainly to keep the rhyme. Life and
hope are now active participants in the third stanza which makes the bitterness of passing
love a bit more poignant. Overall, I almost see this as an improvement with maybe only
slight misgiving arising from the use of the archaic “affrays” which is not entirely faithful
to the meaning of Apollianire’s description.
‣ Ni les amours reviennent → Nor loves their path oppose
I tried several times to maintain the meaning of revenir, but the rhymes refused to
cooperate. My solution was to instead rely on the context of the image to approximate the
meaning.
 Guillaume Apollinaire
The Mirabeau Bridge
Translated by Richard Wilbur
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Must I recall
Our loves recall how then
After each sorrow joy came back again
Let night come on bells end of day
The days go by me still I stay
Hands joined and face to face let’s stay just so
While underneath
The bridge of our arms shall go
Weary of endless looks the river’s flow
Let night come on bells end of day
The days go by me still I stay
All love goes by as water to the sea
All love goes by
How slow life seems to me
How violent the hope of love can be
Let night come on bells end of day
The days go by me still I stay
The days the weeks pass by beyond our ken
Neither time past
Nor love comes back again
Under the Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
Let night come on bells end of day
The days go by me still I stay
7 June 1980
Source:
Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) was an
American poet and avid translator. He was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry twice
and was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant
in Poetry to the Library of Congress. His
main translation endeavors focused on
Molière, Racine, and Corneille. This
translation was Wilbur’s contribution to a
poetry anthology assembled by Paul Auster
and is taken from their recorded
correspondence in Translating Poetry: The
Double Labyrinth by Daniel Weissbort (231-
234).
Thoughts:
In line 3, with the use of an imaginary
comma, line 4 is pulled into the action of
remembrance while it remains detached in
my translation save for the context of the
verb. This translation includes the bell tolls
of the original in the refrain which is a
missing sound in my translation. I substituted
instead the idea of hours draining by, which
is maybe just as evocative, but entirely
visual. L’Espérance is rendered as “hope of
love” in order to distinguish the concept from
the “well-known Christian virtue” (231). On
reading this, I realized my translation seems a
bit existential suggesting that all hope, not
just romantic hope, is violent for resisting
time and change. The choice of “stay” in the
refrain seems too simplistic to me as I’ve said
before.
 Guillaume Apollinaire
Le Pont Mirabeau
Translated by Frederick Seidel
Under Eads Bridge over the Mississippi at
Saint Louis
Flows the Sein
And our past loves.
Do I really have to remember all that again
And remember
Joy came only after so much pain?
Hand in hand, face to face,
Let the belfry softly bong the late hour.
Nights go by. Days go by.
I’m alive. I’m here. I’m in flower.
The days go by. But I’m still here. In full
flower.
Let night come. Let the hour chime on the
mantel.
Love goes away the way this river flows
away.
How violently flowers fade. How awfully
slow life is.
How violently a flower fades. How violent
our hopes are.
The day pass and the weeks pass.
The past does not return, nor do past loves.
Under the Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine.
Hand in hand, standing face to face,
Under the arch of the bridge our outstretched
arms make
Flows our appetite for life away from us
downstream,
And our dream
Of getting back our love of life again.
Under the Pont Mirabeau flows the Seine.
Source:
Frederick Seidel (1936 – present) is an
American poet who was born and raised in
St. Louis, Missouri. His poems are intended
to shock the audience often containing
disturbing violence or sexual imagery as well
as harsh political critiques. He was a finalist
for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and has
worked as editor of the Paris Review since
1961 in which he submitted this translation
for issue 202.
Thoughts:
The translation method here is bold. Seidel
has fused his style with Apollinaire’s work
and strayed far beyond the source material.
Translators are free to a wide variety of
goals, but this is the first translation I have
come across with a complete reworking of
the structure and even some of the content.
The loss of the original poem’s lyricism is
lamentable considering that its fame has
partially grown from musical arrangements
of the work. The addition of the idea of being
in flower is odd and seems far too natural or
pastoral for the spatial setting at Pont
Mirabeau. I will say that the idea of inserting
the translator into the translation so obviously
right from the opening line is interesting.
Seidel has become part of the work by
universalizing this river of passing time, the
Seine. This opens up Apollinaire’s feelings
and thoughts to absolutely anyone, and
having look into Apollinaire’s poetic theory,
I think he would have appreciated it.
Additionally, despite all the changes, the
emotion of the original work still shines
through.