[In the following essay, Frank provides a brief explication of Verlaine's “Chevaux de bois.”]

“Chevaux de Bois”

Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois,
Tournez cent tours, tournez mille tours,
Tournez souvent et tournez toujours,
Tournez, tournez au son des hautbois.
Le gros soldat, laz plus grosse bonne
Sont sur vos dos comme dans leur chambre;
Car, en ce jour, au bois de la Cambre,
Les maîtres sont tous deux en personne.
Tournez, tournez, chevaux de leur coeur,
Tandis qu'autour de tous vos tournois
Clignotte l'oeil du filou sournois,
Tournez au son de piston vainqueur.
C'est ravissant comme ça vous soûle
D'aller ainsi dans ce cirque bête!
Bien dans le ventre et mal dans la tête,
Du mal en masse et du bien en foule.
Tournez, tournez, sans qu'il soit besoin
D'user jamais de nuls éperons,
Pour commander à vos galops ronds,
Tournez, tournez, sans espoir de foin.
Et dépêchez, chevaux de leur âme,
Déjà, voici que la nuit qui tombe
Va réunir pigeon et colombe,
Loin de la foire et loin de madame.
Tournez, tournez! le ciel en velours
D'astres en or se vêt lentement.
Voici partir l'amante et l'amant.
Tournez au son joyeux des tambours.

—Paul Verlaine

“Wooden Steeds”

Go round, go round, fine steeds of wood,
A hundred, thousand times go round,
Go round again and round for good,
And round about to the oboe sound.
The hefty soldier and heftiest maid
(For today her masters also wander
On a lark in the part at Cambre)
On your backs, as though in private, ride.
Go round, go round, steeds of their heart,
While all around your merry-go-round
Pickpockets wink their sly retort,
Go round to the conquering cornet sound.
Amazing how to turn like that,
In vicious cycle, intoxicates you!
Fine for the belly but hard on the head,
A lot of ill and a lot of good.
Go round, go round, without the need
Of using spurs on either side
To help govern your circular ride,
Go round, go round and forget the feed.
And steeds of their soul, come now, come,
Already here the falling night
The pigeon and the dove unites,
Far from the fair and far from Madame.
Go round, go round! The velvet sky
Slowly puts its gold stars on.
Here lover, beloved, say good-bye.
Go round to the sound of the merry drums.

—Translated by Bernhard Frank¹

“Wooden Steeds” (“Chevaux de Bois”) was inspired by the St. Gilles fair in Brussels when Verlaine, accompanied by the younger poet, Rimbaud, was visiting there in August, 1872. It appeared first in Romances Sans Paroles, 1874 and later, in revised (and modified) form, in the first edition of Sagesse. To understand why it has been called “technically one of the most brilliant poems [Verlaine] was ever to write,”² we must look at the subtle yet precise manner in which the poet replicates the motion of the carousel horses.

To establish the circular movement Verlaine opens the first and last line of all the odd-numbered quatrains with the word “tournez” (“go round”). In this fashion, the carousel completes a cycle at the end of every other stanza.

Yet the poet goes further. He succeeds in regulating the speed of the turns. Thus, in the opening stanza “tournez” appears twice in every line, providing the extra energy needed to overcome inertia. In the first and last lines of later odd-numbered stanzas, the word appears either once or twice-in-a-row, with the repetition giving an additional impetus.

In the final stanza, the second and third lines are end-stopped, halting the motion long enough for the lovers to get off the carousel. It resumes its turning, albeit a bit sluggishly—with only one “tournez” in the last line—now that the passion has gone out of it. Or has the passion gone out of the circus-crier/narrator who has been egging it on?

“Wooden Steeds,” it has been pointed out, alternates stanzas of masculine and feminine rhymes.³ The effect of this alternation is reenforced by another device: written in vers impairs of nine syllables, the stanzas also approximate, alternately, the English trochaic and iambic meters. Consequently, all the odd-numbered stanzas are imbued with a driving energy, while the even-numbered ones slacken markedly. Thus has Verlaine given us, in a splendid technical feat, not only the circularity and speed of the carousel, but also the see-saw motion of its steeds.

Notes

1. Offering: Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke and Paul Verlaine (Buffalo: Goldengrove Press, 1986), p. 8.

2. Lawrence and Elizabeth Hanson, Verlaine: Fool of God (New York: Random House, 1957), p. 175.

3. E.g., Georges Zayed, La Formation Littéraire de Verlaine (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1962), p. 363.