— Adam Donaldson Powell
« Ne me dictez rien ! » is a poem written in classical Alexandrines (the strict twelve-syllable meter that dominated French poetry into the early 20th century, favored by poets like Paul Valéry and Edmond Rostand), featuring alternate rhyming patterns (rimes croisées, AABB or ABAB) with rich, lyrical French phrasing. I have formulated the fictional text as Marcel’s reaction to being analyzed as a parrot of the philosopher Henri Bergson’s ideas:
“I have enough to do without trying to turn that philosophy of M. Bergson into a novel!”
— Marcel Proust (in a letter addressing comparisons between their work)
Ne me dictez rien !
Ne venez plus me dire où doit pencher ma plume,
Ni régenter la nuit où s’éveillent mes vers !
L’art ne s’invente pas dans les traits d’une enclume,
Il éclôt dans le temps qu’on croyait à l’envers.
Qu’on cesse de lier mes récits et mes songes
Aux savantes leçons du grand Monsieur Bergson !
J’ai bien assez d’un monde où le temps nous ronge,
Sans dresser sa doctrine au rang d’une chanson.
Matière et Mémoire a teinté notre époque,
Je le sais, je le sens au creux de mon esprit ;
Mais ma mémoire est mienne et nulle main ne troque
La tasse d’un thé chaud contre un dogme qu’on écrit.
Laissez-moi murmurer ce que l’oubli réclame,
Mes clochers de Martinville et mes baisers perdus.
Je ne dois qu’à moi seul les détours de mon âme,
Et le temps qu’on retrouve est un bien qui m’est dû.
____________________________
English version:
Do Not Dictate to Me!
Come no more to tell me where my pen should lean,
Nor rule the night where my verses awaken!
Art is not forged on the strike of an anvil,
It blossoms in the time we thought was undone.
Let them stop binding my tales and my dreams
To the learned lessons of the great Monsieur Bergson!
I have enough with a world where time gnaws at us,
Without turning his doctrine into a song.
Matter and Memory has tinted our era,
I know it, I feel it in the depths of my mind;
But my memory is mine, and no hand trades
A cup of warm tea for a dogma put in print.
Let me whisper what oblivion claims,
My steeples of Martinville and my lost kisses.
I owe only to myself the turns of my soul,
And the time regained is a treasure owed to me.
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