I always think it's nervy to use a word like depletion.
It's a word hopelessly connected with Texas and oil and taxes.
And yet, I think part of one's business as a writer,
is to keep rescuing perfectly good words
from special connections of that sort.
A few years ago, I defied the New Yorker.
They didn't like my using the word irradiated in conjunction
with a story about the Virgin Mary.
They thought it was undignified because the supermarkets, they
said, were full of irradiated dog food, et cetera.
And I said to them what I just said to you,
that we have to keep rescuing these words,
and publishers have to help.
And they were very ashamed, and published the poem.
Let's see.
Here's a translation from Voltaire, who is commonly
thought of as, emotionally, a bit thin,
and I think this poem, by itself,
suffices to disprove that.
It's a very nervy poem, a very brave poem,
written to Voltaire's long time friend, Madame du Chatelet.
It's brave because he's saying something in the poem,
and saying it gracefully, too, which puts him
in danger of being ridiculous.
The poem amounts to a statement to Madame du Chatalet
that he is no longer capable of passionate love,
that the time has come for him to embark
on the age of friendship.
"If you would have my heart love on,
grant me such years as suit the lover,
and teach my twilight to recover (if but it could)
the flush of dawn.
Time takes my elbow now, in sign that I must bow
and to turn away from gardens where the god of wine
divides with Love his pleasant sway.
Let us from rigorous Time obtain what
timely blessings may assuage.
Whoever will not be his age knows
nothing of his age but pain.
Leave then to sweet and giddy youth
those ecstasies which youth can give:
two moments only do we live; let there be one for sober truth.
What!
Will you leave me thus forlorn, o tenderness, illusion,
folly- heavenly gifts whereby I've borne life's bitterness
and melancholy?
Two deaths we suffer.
To forgo loving, and being loved in turn,
is deathly pain, as now I learn.
Ceasing to live is no such woe.
Thus did I mourn the loss of all those years
when I was young and mad, my slow heart
sighing to recall the furious beat which once it had.
Friendship, descending from above,
came then in mercy to my aid; she was as kind, perhaps,
as Love, but not so ardent, and more staid.
Touched by her charms, so fresh they were,
and by her radiance calm and clear,
I followed her; yet shed a tear that I
could follow none but her."
Some of you may know a very interesting rendition
of that poem by Ezra Pound.
He did it into, kind of, imagist prose,
as if to show that Voltaire, had he lived in the right period,
could have written this imagistically.
My effort is a much more literal rendering,
but do look at Pound's.
It's full of life and the transformation he insists on
is fascinating to observe.
For example, capitalized Love, meaning the god of love
as one might see him on a statue in a garden,
becomes lovers lying on the grass.
And as for the god of wine, who would also
be a little bit of garden statuary,
that turns into actual grapes in his version.