"Seul est mien" by Marc Chagall - a translation

It is mine alone,
the land found within my soul;
I enter it without a passport,
as if into my house,
which sees my sadness
and my loneliness.
It puts me to sleep,
blanketing me like a fragrant tombstone.

Within me, gardens bloom
with all my invented flowers;
the streets belong to me,
but there are no houses;
they were all destroyed during childhood
–their inhabitants float like apparitions
in search of a home;
they live in my soul.

That’s why I smile
when my sun barely shines
or I cry
like a soft rain
in the night.

There was a time when I was of two minds;
There was a time when these two aspects
were veiled with a lovely dew
that faded like the fragrance of a rose.

Now, it seems to me
that even as I retreat,
I move forward,
up towards a high portal
with extended walls beyond which
extinguished thunder
and broken lightning sleep.

It is mine alone,
the land found in my soul.

rendered in English by Elisabeth T. Eliassen © 2017

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Marc Chagall, one of my favorite artists, wrote this poem, perhaps during his years in France; I don’t know. What an extraordinary life he led, and what a testament to life he bequeathed to the world in his art in an evolving style and color sense that boldly strode through the length of the modern period from impressionism, cubism, fauvism, suprematism and symbolist through surrealism and beyond. How difficult it must have been to write this poem, a love letter, as it seems to be, to his interior life.

I have seen many translations of this poem over the years, and felt a need to add my own sense and touch to it. So many of the versions I've seen are too literal, as if the translator knew nothing about Chagall’s life and could not see that there are references embedded in the statement.

I don’t claim to know more than anyone else, but certain choices presented themselves to me, and I take the opportunity to present them.

The soul is the one aspect of life each individual owns completely and utterly. I think this is a very stark and very true, very transparent declaration; less an allusion than a truism. Two bits that were very difficult for me to incorporate in a holistic presentation reside in the expressions, “d'une pierre parfumée,” and “Il fut un temps où j'avais deux têtes / Il fut un temps où ces deux visages.”

In the case of the phrase including “d'une pierre parfumée,” I took a leap, as I am unaware of any idiom that would impart a more specific meaning. (Perhaps someone can enlighten me!) If the artist’s soul is his house, within which an entire world stretches forward, populated by nature and people, but not other structures, because they have been destroyed by war, then the soul that houses that world must be protected by something very strong. The soul can only be known, explored and owned by the individual, and when the individual dies, the world of that soul also dies. While the soul is alive, however, it needs rest and safety. This is what dictated my choices in those lines.

To some extent, Chagall never left the Liozna shtetl near Vitebsk, but he became an international figure. In 1944, a New York newspaper printed Chagall’s open letter to Vitebsk, in which he said, “I did not live with you, but I did not have one single painting that did not breathe your spirit and reflection.” It is on this point that I chose to express “j'avais deux têtes” as “was of two minds” and “ces deux visages” as “these two aspects.” A case could also be made that “j'avais deux têtes” is a reference to his first wife Bella… that is for someone else to explore.