"PREFACE" et "SYMPHONIE EN BLANC MAJEUR", par Théophile Gautier / Timothy Adès

Preface

 

During the imperial strife

Goethe, to grim cannon’s noise,

wrote his Westerly Divan,

art’s oasis, breath of life:

 

chose the Bulbul, shunned the Swan,

wore the scent of sandalwood,

and in oriental voice

penned the love-song of Hudhud.

 

As Goethe, propped on his divan

at Weimar, totally withdrawn,

plucked petals from Hafiz’s rose,

 

so I, despite the hurricane

that lashed the panes that I drew close,

made my Enamels and Cameos.

 

Symphony in white major   

 

Curving their white necks’ sinuous line,

we see in Northern fairy-lore

swan-women on the storied Rhine

sing as they swim beside the shore.

 

We see them doff their plumage bright,

hang on some branch their feathered gown,

so that their skin shines forth, more white

yet than the snow of their own down.

 

Of these swan-women there is one

who steers to us her odysseys,

and she is white as gleaming moon

on glaciers under frozen skies.

 

Her beauty boreal, frigid-fresh,

leads the besotted reeling mind

to banquets of pearl-tinted flesh,

orgies of whiteness unconfined!

 

Her breast, snow moulded in a globe,

challenges all the white camellias,

taunts the white satin of her robe,

enters on duels contumelious.

 

In all these whiteness-jousts hard-fought,

the only victor is that bosom:

jealous, though no revenge is sought,

yellows the satin, and the blossom.

 

On her shoulder dazzling white,

Parian marble sparkle-grained,

as upon a polar night,

frosts invisible descend.

 

Of what snowy granule pure,

of what marrow of a reed,

host or candle of the choir,

is her body’s whiteness made?

 

Did they take the milky sap

spilt on winter sky’s blue vault,

or the silver lily’s pap,

or the sea’s white spume of salt;

 

pallid flesh of chill white marble,

seat of live divinities;

shineless silver, milky opal

that mild glimmers iridise;

 

ivory, when her hands take wing,

and like two white butterflies

hang their kisses shuddering

on frail tips of melodies;

 

ermine that, unsullied, pure,

lest they shiver, shields and warms,

swathes with whiteness of its fur

high-born shoulders, coats-of-arms;

 

quicksilver in mazy pattern,

blooms on hallowed glass; the sprite,

weeping, at the pools of fountains,

tears in sharp air lacy-white;

 

thorn-tree bowed by all its flowers,

white with hoar-frost of the may;

alabaster that endowers,

prinks the pallors of dismay;

 

white down snowing from the dove,

falling on the manor’s eaves;

stalactites dropt from above,

a white tear in a black cave?

 

From Norway’s fjords and Greenland’s floes

the Seraphita does she bring?

She, the Madonna of the snows,

white sphinx of winter’s fashioning,

 

a sphinx by avalanche interred,

guarding the glacier seas star-studded,

with secret, white, and frozen word

safe in her own white breast embedded?

 

Who shall melt that heart’s repose,

thaw its ice-bound reverie,

introduce a tint of rose

in that whiteness sans merci?