Voltaire
Être, Ou n'être pas
In Lettres philosophiques: Lettre XVIII, Sur la tragédie (1734) Voltaire comments on the state of the English theatre and its tragedies. There he provides two translations of the “To Be, or Not to Be” monologue from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: the ‘direct’ and the ‘liberal’.
Voltaire's liberal, or poetic Hamlet, translated below into rhyming English verse, seeks to transmit the beauty behind the original in a way which is suitable to the classical conventions of poetry and the theatre which Voltaire seems to have preferred.
Translation
Voltaire's To Be, or Not to Be
translated by Maria Athena (August 2023)
No small choice to be made in the blink of an eye:
Pass from essence to nothing, to be choose to die.
Just gods, lease me your strength should this fate be your plan.
Would you have me grow old, bowed by enemy hand?
Bear or end this: my lot, each unfortunate breath?
Who am I? What’s to stop me? Alack, what is death?
It’s the end of our ills, the one refuge that’s mine;
After long, drawn-out anguish, it’s sleep most sublime,
For we sleep and it ends. But we may rude awake,
Torn from that tranquil sleep in whose dreams we partake
If the barrage of torment that this short life brings
Ceases not with the end but in death to us clings.
Death, oh death ! destined doom ! horrid peace that thou art,
What fear thy name alone strikes in every heart!
Who could shoulder without thee the weight of this hour?
Stomach two-faced display from such frauds as wield power?
Court a mistress whose transgressions charm naught but spite?
Kiss the feet of one sneering from eminent height?
And lay bare the core-deep melancholy inside
To cheap friends unobliged to fain friend at his side?
Death will be all too gentle on last mortal day.
But doubt threatens us, screams, throws base morals our way,
And forbids that we take just revenge in our hand,
Telling fierce, fighting hero: he’s naught but a man.
“Demure; Il faut choisir” [‘Être ou n’être pas’]
Voltaire (1734)
Demeure, il faut choisir et passer à l'instant
De la vie à la mort et de l'être au néant.
Dieux justes, s'il en est, éclairez mon courage.
Faut-il vieillir courbé sous la main qui m'outrage,
Supporter ou finir mon malheur et mon sort? 5
Qui suis-je ? Qui m'arrête ? et qu'est-ce que la mort ?
C'est la fin de nos maux, c'est mon unique asile;
Après de longs transports, c'est un sommeil tranquille;
On s'endort, et tout meurt. Mais un affreux réveil
Doit succéder peut-être aux douceurs du sommeil. 10
On nous menace; on dit que cette courte vie
De tourments éternels est aussitôt suivie.
O mort ! moment fatal ! affreuse éternité !
Tout coeur à ton seul nom se glace épouvanté.
Eh ! qui pourrait sans toi supporter cette vie ? 15
De nos fourbes puissants bénir l'hypocrisie ?
D'une indigne maîtresse encenser les erreurs ?
Ramper sous un ministre, adorer ses hauteurs ?
Et montrer les langueurs de son âme abattue
A des amis ingrats, qui détournent la vue ? 20
La mort serait trop douce en ces extrémités.
Mais le scrupule parle, et nous crie : arrêtez.
Il défend à nos mains cet heureux homicide,
Et d'un héros guerrier fait un chrétien timide.
Source: Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, Garnier, 1879, tome 22 (p. 148-156) ↗
A Note From the Translator
There is only one Hamlet on the English stage and there are a thousand thousand Hamlets. Each century, new actors seek to capture, to portray the turmoil at the heart of the mad, melancholy prince whose father’s murder robs him of more than just his rightful crown. Beyond this there are the translators of Hamlet, not few in number, whose creative choices bound unvaried interpretation across languages, cultures and times in fixed ink form.
I decided to translate Voltaire’s poetic Hamlet back into English rhyming verse as a challenge and experiment with metre, form and characterisation. I have attempted to preserve the nuances of Voltaire’s Hamlet with reference to the Hamlet encapsulated in Shakespeare’s original blank verse. For example, Voltaire’s Hamlet is a classical tragic figure, and the question: To be, or not to be? has already been answered; rendered literally, he ‘must now choose, namely, to pass from life to death and from being to nothing’. His speech is less a weighing of taking action, but an acceptance of his role as doomed epic hero. Fittingly, Voltaire presents death as ‘la mort’, ‘néant’, ‘moment fatal’, ‘affreuse éternité, but curiously avoids use of the verb ‘mourir’ apart from one instance, ‘tout meurt’—‘everything ceases’. ‘To die’ is too passive for Voltaire’s Hamlet. However, choosing ‘to be’ in order ‘to die’, as per my translation, attempts to allude to the structure of both the English poem and Voltaire’s characterisation.
Stages of Translation with Notes on the Objectives
Stage 1 Before translating the text I read Voltaire’s liberal and direct Hamlet translations line-by-line in parallel to Shakespeare’s original as it appears in William Shakespeare: The Completed Works, 2nd Edition, edited by Jowett, Montgomery, Taylor, and Wells, Oxford University Press, 2005. In doing so I aimed to identify which lines/concepts/plot points/characters the poetic translation alluded to. Following this I made a spontaneous and rather direct translation, defining key words using a monolingual French and French-English dictionary as needed. Closer reference to a digital 16th or 17th century dictionary would have improved my understanding of certain terms in this initial stage.
Stage 2 It was at this stage that I met with my French instructor in order to discuss my understanding and clarify certain sentence structures, grammatical forms, and individual word useage. I was especially curious to know how drastically the writing style differed from modern writing from a native speaking teacher’s persective. It was necessary to provide some background details on the plot and characterisation of Hamlet, including the ways in which an actor’s delivery of the monologue greatly impacts the audience’s understanding of that particular realisation of the complex character and serves as a window to his philosophy.
Stage 3 I then memorised and practised reciting the Voltaire text for a period of time, considering how pausing would impact its reception to audiences who, like Voltaire’s, were already familiar with Hamlet the character and Hamlet the play. Following this, I analysed the poem couplet by couplet, considered the main communicative aim behind each couplet, and brainstormed possible rhymes which would allow me to express a similar sentiment using the same metre in English.
Stage 4 The French and the English rhyming verse were then recited in parallel, both by couplet and in full so that I could improve the matching flow of the translation.