French poetry....?

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Vladimir ILL

La Fontaine is not a poet but a XVIITH century fabulist -

He is basic, for children, uses an obsolete language and is very quickly boring.

These are some poets that you could buy in a good translation : Rimbaud, Verlaine and above all Beaudelaire - even in English skip Mallarmé who is extremely difficult -

I'd like to recommend four contemporary ( XX th ) poets; I think they are a good aim of work for students, nice style, and not too esoterical :
- Verhaeren
- Apollinaire
- Prévert - some of his poems and songs are taught
in french schools ( Le Cancre )
- Eluard -

They were very decisive and influential in our century and also inspired our most beautiful chansons, in cooperation with Carco etc - those songs were sung by Juliette Greco, Mouloudji, Yves Montand, Serge Reggiani...

Don't ask me why and how I know all this and run and look for Prévert on Amazon ( no ad of course )

http://bonne-rentree.sitespourenfants.com/le-cancre.pdf

asso

start with La Fontaine,it's the basic we learnt at the
Lycee Francais,it's full of quotations that you use all the time
like for instance:ils sont trop verts,dit-il,meaning grapes who were too high to pick up.

Rillifane

Well that's a bit of a tall order given that you consider Shakespeare hard.

Put it this way...can you understand the following without the aid of a dictionary? I f you can't then you're not ready to read French poetry.

Maître corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Maître renard par l'odeur alléché ,
Lui tint à peu près ce langage :
«Et bonjour Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous êtes joli! que vous me semblez beau!
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le phénix des hôtes de ces bois»
A ces mots le corbeau ne se sent pas de joie;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
Il ouvre un large bec laisse tomber sa proie.
Le renard s'en saisit et dit: "Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l'écoute:
Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage sans doute."
Le corbeau honteux et confus
Jura mais un peu tard , qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus.

That is a French childrens poem by La Fontaine.

EDIT: Honestly, I'm not trying to be mean but just realistic. After all, if you have difficulties with a French children's poem its a mistake to try to proceed with reading serious French poetry.

If your desire to read French poetry is only because you fear looking foolish in France if you haven't then that is a baseless fear.

The French are not idiots. They know perfectly well that non-French speakers (especially 15 year olds) aren't going to be familiar with French poetry.

In fact, if you want to engage in discussions about poetry with intellectuals then it might be better to work on translating some poems from whatever your native language is into French. Then, if the subject of poetry comes up in conversation, you can recite some in your native language and they will be the ones who have to ask YOU what it means.

I'd much rather hear poetry from your country than discuss poetry from my own with you. After all, I can do that anytime.

Rose T

Great question! I love that you're thinking ahead and want to learn before you go.

To me, poetry in my native language is difficult because there are often so many nuances of meaning. I can't imagine trying to understand it in another language!

As part of your pre-trip preparation, don't forget to keep up with world events and politics. These are two topics that many French people like to discuss in depth.

Ravielsen

Hey, you should check out Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs de Mal". It's a whole book full of wonderful poems, in French of course. They're so good that I even considered setting a few of them to music! It helps to know French, but you sound like you're really ready to analyze! That's cool that you want to go to France for you're post secondary education...so do I!
Bonne chance!
Ravelinsky

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