Poetry
Wry-Blue Loves
Les Amours jaunes
Tristan Corbière · 1873
Opening lines
Des essais?—Allons donc, je n'ai pas essayé!
Etude?—Fainéant je n'ai jamais pillé.
Essays? Come now, I have not essayed anything!
Studies? Idler that I am, I have never plundered.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
One hundred and one pieces, of widely varying forms and lengths, arranged in sections. The speaker practises irony and self-mockery, mixes the sublime and the trivial, humour and melancholy, and plays on puns as much as on double meanings. After Paris and the disappointments of love, the collection moves to Brittany, to the Armor, then to the sea, with its seafaring people painted without artifice, sailors and mariners.
Context
The collection appeared in Paris in 1873 from Glady frères, at the author's expense, printed in four hundred and ninety copies paid for by the poet's father; it brings together almost all of his verse work. It passed almost unnoticed. Ten years later, Verlaine devoted to Corbière one of his studies on the accursed poets, published in a review in 1883 and reprinted in volume form in 1884, alongside Rimbaud and Mallarmé: his reputation came from this.
Who it is for
A volume of poems made difficult by slang, wordplay and breaks of metre; an annotated edition helps.
Prizes and reception
It went almost unnoticed and owes its survival to Verlaine; Peter Dale translated it into English under the title Wry-Blue Loves.
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