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Malaysian Pantoum:
Pantoum malais
This is not a work of Hugo but is associated with him because he was the first to publish it. He took it directly from a letter from Ernest Fouinet, and published it (and several other poems) in a note in Les Orientales associated with the poem Nourmahal la Rousse.
The pantoum is a Malaysian verse form in which the lines of one verse make up the next in a new context. You can read more in this Absolute Write online magazine article, which, despite getting my name wrong (it's Geoffrey Barto) is pretty good.
As far as I know, Hugo wrote no pantoums of his own, at least that were published. But Harmonie du soir, by Baudelaire, seems to fit the bill (thanks to Briant Sarris, sometime co-translator, for pointing it out).
For an amusing pantoum that effectively demonstrates the form, visit Bob Newman's page on the pantoum.
Pantoum malais
French translation by Ernest Fouinet
English translation by Geoffrey Barto
The butterflies flit about on butterfly wings;
They fly to the sea, near the line of rocks.
My heart has ached in my breast,
From the start of my days to this present moment.
They fly to the sea, near the line of rocks...
The vulture sets his course and ascends toward Bandam.
From the start of my days to this present moment,
I have truly admired the young.
The vulture sets his course and ascends toward Bandam.
And lets a few feathers fall at Patami.
I have truly admired the young;
But nothing compares to the object of my desire.
It lets a few feathers fall at Patami.
Here are two young pigeons!
No young man compares to him I desire.
Clever as he is at touching my heart.
It should be noted that in a proper pantoum, the lines ought be identically reproduced. Needless to say, my translation does not do this. Nor did Fouinet's. In my Notes on French Versification and my Thoughts on Translation, among other places, I discuss how the French language shapes the poetry written in it and the problems this poses for the translator. I am not a scholar of Malay, and cannot begin to do the type of analysis I've done for French, as though that analysis were not miniscule enough. However, having looked a little at Malay and the related Indonesian, I would note the following:
Malay and Indonesian have a much more fluid structure than either French or English. Many words can be left out. Roots can be used, if need be, in place of fully articulated forms. Tense and aspect (ongoing versus finished actions) are marked not by verb conjugation, but by particles that can be left out if the writer so chooses. And grammatical gender is non-existent. This should make a pantoum much easier to write in Malay or Indonesian. And nearly impossible to duplicate in French or English. Further, because English can be less precise than French, in translating from Malay to French to English, one is at odds to know when to preserve something about which the French is specific and when to assume that the French language required the specificity, not that the poem included it, and that the ambiguities of English can be exploited to more closely approximate the pantoum form. For an example of what can be done if you're starting with the French, see the Baudelaire piece linked above.
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