Anna de Noailles, translated by Chris Mustazza

Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) was one of the most famous French poets of her day. While her work has mostly fallen out of fashion, I’ve opted to translate this poem because it was one of (if not the) first poems ever recorded to sound by a female poet. Her recording at the Sorbonne, made in the early 1920s, causes this ars poetica to realign itself with the performance of the poem rather than the written text. It speaks to pertinent questions of posthumous reception and the archive, through a light, playful, sexual mode: the nachlass as seduction. --Chris Mustazza

 Listen to poem here

I Write for the Day 

I write for the day when I’ll no longer be
So you’ll know the deep pleasure I breathed,
And so this book carries to the future
How I loved life and lusted for nature.

I kept an eye on the house and on the fields,
Counted the days, the seasons, the years,
Because the water, the dirt, the fire
Is never as real as in my mind!

I told it like I saw it, called it how I felt,
Won’t shy from the truth or anything else.
And your reception made me long
To still be loved even after I’m gone,

And for a young guy someday reading what I write
Who Feels himself moved, unsettled, surprised,
Thinks of his real wife and then he forgets her,
Then invites me in because he likes me better.

––Anna de Noailles, translated by Chris Mustazza

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Poems by Anna de Noailles translated by Anthony Howell: Fortnightly Review
Noailles web site