Monday, January 30, 2012

Does anyone have a easy, short french poem with an english translation?

I am doing something in french called "Prof du jour" and my teacher told me to find a short easy french poem to read to the class and to make sure the poem is like a paragraph and to have really easy words such as "Demander" or "regarder". I also don't know how to translate a french poem in french and I am not allowed to use a english translator on the enternet -.-

Thank you so much guys :)Does anyone have a easy, short french poem with an english translation?
Je souhaite dans ma maison

Une femme ayant sa raison

Un chat passant parmi mes livres

Des amis en toute saison



Sans lesquels, je ne peux pas vivre



[Guillaume Apollinaire]



I want, at home,

A sensible woman

A cat that walks among my books

And faithful friends



Without these things I cannot live.



....



Apollinaire says 'des amis en toute saison' :: 'friends in all seasons'. He means he doesn't want just fairweather friends, so I have translated it 'faithful friends'.



Apollinaire had an unusually interesting life. He wrote one of the most famous lovepoems in French (Le Pont Mirabeau). He was seriously wounded in WWI, but recovered, only to die in the 1918 Spanish 'flu epidemic.



He wrote what many people consider the first truly modernist poem (Zone), probably invented the word Surrealism, and developed a kind of poetry called a Calligramme (second link).

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