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20 Books of Summer #1 : Lisbon Poets
Lisbon Poets. French title: Poètes de Lisbonne. Translated from the Portuguese by Elodie Dupeau.
This is the first billet of my 20 Books of Summer challenge, one of the ghosts of trips past. I bought the poetry collection Lisbon Poets during a trip to Lisbon. Obviously.
It’s a lovely bilingual edition of poems by Luís de Camões, Cesário Verde, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Florbela Espanca and Fernando Pessoa. The same book exists in English, Italian, German and other languages.
The French translation is new, there’s a foreword by Anne-Marie Quint, professor at the Sorbonne. Original drawings by André Carrilho illustrate the book and all this attention to details makes of this edition a nice book to have in hands.
Now I’m not a great reader of poetry and imagine the challenge to write a billet in English about poems you’ve read in a Portuguese/French bilingual edition. I’ll be brief.
Poet seems to be a dangerous profession in Portugal if you look at these poets’ untimely death. Except for Luís de Camões who lived 56 years in the 16th century, they all died young. Cesário Verde was 31 when he died in 1886, Mário de Sá-Carneiro was 26 when he committed suicide in 1916, Florbela Espanca was 36 when she killed herself in 1930 and at 47, Fernando Pessoa was an old man compared to the others when he died in 1935.
Bilingual editions of poetry are great, at least for western languages. I wouldn’t get anything out of a Japanese/French book but for Latin languages, it’s wonderful. Portuguese is a funny language for me as a French: when I read it, I recognize a lot of words but when I hear it, I don’t understand anything. Since I read the poems, having the original beside the French translation was a treat and useful.
I wasn’t so keen on Cesário Verde and Mário de Sá-Carneiro. I found Verde a bit whiny and I disliked Feminina by Mário de Sá-Carneiro because I found it mysoginistic.
My favorite poems were by Luís de Camões, Florbela Espanca and some by Fernando Pessoa. I loved Alma minha gentil, que tepartite by Camões, a beautiful poem about his grief after his lover died. I enjoyed the sensuality in Florbela Espanca’s poems, her assertiveness as a woman. In A uma rapariga (To A Young Girl), she urges girls to live their life, to be bold and go for what they want. Fernando Pessoa’s poems are beautiful. I loved O livro de Cesário Verde, his others full of thoughts about life.
I’m aware that my comments are trite but think again of my challenge here. Even in French, I would struggle to have anything clever to say about poems, so in this context, it’s even worse. I’ll stop then and urge you to get this little gem if you ever go to Portugal. It seems like a good introduction for Portuguese poetry.
Literary escapade: Elsinore
I have seen Hamlet on stage once. It was a modern version where Hamlet ended up naked while Rage Against the Machine was blearing to get you in the mood, I guess. Teenagers had come with their teachers and were giggling at the nakedness. I can’t say it’s my best experience in a theatre. I’m French, so I’ve never studied Shakespeare in school, I discovered his plays by myself afterwards. This probably explains why I thought Elsinore was as real as the Sleeping Beauty’s castle. I assumed that Shakespeare had invented a place, outside of his own country, to be sure not to offend his queen with his plays. Imagine my surprise when I realized that Elsinor actually existed and was a mere thirty minutes away from Copenhagen where I was headed for a long weekend.
So I bought a bilingual edition of Hamlet, brought it with me to Denmark and started to read the play on the way to Elsinore. I love those bilingual editions by Folio. On the left page, you’ve got the original text and on the right page, you have the French translation. You can follow the text line by line, it’s very useful and relaxing as you can switch to French when Shakespearian English becomes too difficult.
I am not going to review Hamlet. Really, what could I say that has not been said?
Let’s talk about Kronborg castle in Helsingør (Elsinore in Danish). Kronborg castle was improved by King Frederic II at the end of the 16th century. In 1629, a fire destroyed part of the castle and King Christian IV had it renovated. What we see today in the castle mostly pictures King Christian IV’s times. This means it didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s times but older parts are preserved, like the door on this picture.
I understand that Hamlet comes from a Danish old legend, reported by the French writer François de Belleforest in his book Histoires prodigieuses in 1582. Then Thomas Kyd made a play out of Belleforest’s tale and it gave Shakspeare the idea to write Hamlet. This explains why it’s set in Denmark and Kronborg was, in Shakespeare’s times, where the King of Denmark used to live. It is established that Shakespeare never set a foot in Elsinore but Shakespeare has his sculpture engraved in the castle’s wall anyway. And the marketing team at Kronborg castle plays the Shakespeare card as much as possible. They organise Shakesperian tours on the premises.
As for me, I like to imagine that Shakespeare had at least seen paintings or drawings of Elsinore or that he had read about it. Here’s the terrace where Hamlet is supposed to have met with his father’s ghost.
And here’s a general view of the castle. Even if Shakespeare never went to Elsinore, it’s still a nice visit to do and a great opportunity to read Hamlet.
Book Around the Corner 