Does anyone have a link to or scan of an English translation of the poem "Le Dur Desire de Durer" by Paul Eluard?

December 8, 2004 2:24 PM

Can anyone supply me with a link to, or scan of, an English translation of a poem by Paul Eluard? Specifically, "Le Dur Desire de Durer" ("The Dour Desire to Endure")? Merci/Thanks.
posted by stonerose to media & arts (5 comments total)

If you can supply me with the poem, I can have a shot at translating it for you - having read a bit of Eluard, though, I don't fancy my chances at doing it well, so maybe I could accompany it with some explanation.

If you can tell me your level of French, and what you need the translation for, I could have a try.

IAAT
posted by altolinguistic at 2:42 AM on December 9, 2004

I wasn't able to find the poem online, but I did find this link where you can compare prices for a book of his last poems in French and translated into English.

While searching, I did find references to the title's translation as "The dour desire to endure" but also as "The persistent desire..." which seems more accurate, or even "The difficult desire...", as I would have chosen. Dour really doesn't have the same sense as "dur", but not having read the poem, I could be missing a subtle point.
posted by hazyjane at 5:57 AM on December 9, 2004

If you're still looking for the poem, drop me an email. The library here has several collections of his in english or english/french, and if I knew which one it was in, I'd be glad to help out.
posted by whatzit at 7:16 AM on December 9, 2004

I hope you're still looking for it, because I just put it online. I didn't resize the scans, so each page is large, but there they are.
posted by whatzit at 10:18 AM on December 11, 2004

For anyone else who finds that useful, the bibliographic information on that is:

"Last love poems of Paul Eluard"
Translated, with an Introduction, by Marilyn Kallet
bilingual edition
Louisiana State University Press
Baton Rouge and London
poems (c) 1977, translations (c) 1980
posted by whatzit at 8:21 AM on December 12, 2004