The Stoics
A Bilingual Critical Edition
Published on 18. February 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
248 pages
978-0-271-09554-7 (ISBN)
Description
Louisa Siefert was a prolific poet, critic, playwright, and novelist who published many works that were bestsellers in nineteenth-century France. This bilingual critical edition of Siefert's Les Stoiques (1870) aims to restore Louisa Siefert's intellectual legacy while providing ample material for further scholarship on her unique poetic voice.
Siefert's intellectual power and aesthetic originality are especially pronounced in her Les Stoiques, a volume that exemplifies her transdisciplinary mind and rich sonnet practice. The more than forty poems collected here are presented in the original French with masterful translations into English by Norman R. Shapiro, one of the most highly regarded English translators of French poetry. Shapiro's inspired translations of Siefert's texts give readers gain a sense of her prosodic mastery and flair as well as the way she uses poetry to think about the relation between mind and body. In her introduction, Adrianna M. Paliyenko reconstructs from original archival research the reception of Les Stoiques from May 1870 to the present, describing how many nineteenth-century readers considered Siefert's philosophical verse to be central to her contribution to French poetic history and, in turn, how the gendering of poetic expression and the canon sidelined Siefert's intellectual accomplishment.
A monumental achievement, this book brings the work of a major French poet to a broader audience. Siefert's poetic primer on the Stoic way of thinking about why humans suffer or find serenity and joy, and other big questions of life, will strike a chord with modern readers.
Siefert's intellectual power and aesthetic originality are especially pronounced in her Les Stoiques, a volume that exemplifies her transdisciplinary mind and rich sonnet practice. The more than forty poems collected here are presented in the original French with masterful translations into English by Norman R. Shapiro, one of the most highly regarded English translators of French poetry. Shapiro's inspired translations of Siefert's texts give readers gain a sense of her prosodic mastery and flair as well as the way she uses poetry to think about the relation between mind and body. In her introduction, Adrianna M. Paliyenko reconstructs from original archival research the reception of Les Stoiques from May 1870 to the present, describing how many nineteenth-century readers considered Siefert's philosophical verse to be central to her contribution to French poetic history and, in turn, how the gendering of poetic expression and the canon sidelined Siefert's intellectual accomplishment.
A monumental achievement, this book brings the work of a major French poet to a broader audience. Siefert's poetic primer on the Stoic way of thinking about why humans suffer or find serenity and joy, and other big questions of life, will strike a chord with modern readers.
Reviews / Votes
"This edition of Les Stoiques makes an important literary work accessible to audiences of varying levels of French and English and advances our knowledge of nineteenth-century poetry in important ways. In particular, it reconstitutes the original context in which Siefert wrote and the response her work received within poetic circles and within her world."-Mary Rice-DeFosse Women in French Studies "Paliyenko and Shapiro provide readers with the opportunity to discover an underrated yet gifted nineteenth-century French poet in a bilingual edition that is powerfully supported by the introduction, notes, and bibliography. The Stoics situates itself within a vibrant movement to rediscover and reassess female writers, and the case is eloquently made for a revision of Siefert's position in the canon."
-Rosemary Lloyd, Emerita Fellow, Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
University Park
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
22 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
358 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-271-09554-7 (9780271095547)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Adrianna M. Paliyenko is Arnold Bernhard Professor in Arts and Humanities at Colby College. She is the author of Genius Envy: Women Shaping French Poetic History, 1801-1900 and the editor of volumes on nineteenth-century French women writers Madame A. Cashin, Anais Segalas, Marie Krysinska, and Louisa Siefert.
Content
A Note About the Translator
Acknowledgments
Reading Les Stoiques Anew
THE STOICS (1870)
Dedicace / Dedication
Le Depart / Leaving
Au large / At Sea
Soupir / Sighs
Immortalite / Immortality
Lune d'avril / April Moon
Jour tombant / Dying Day
Bonheur / Happiness
La Combe / The Valley
Automnales / Autumnalia
Soir d'hiver / Winter Eve
Les Vieilles Gens / The Old Folks
"Tous les rires d'enfant ont les memes dents blanches . . ." / "The same white gleam in all children's laughter . . ."
"Il sera grand & fort, il est deja si tendre . . ." / "Tall and strong will he be, so gentle too . . ."
"Pour ce petit enfant tant d'espoirs & d'alarmes . . ." / "For this babe, so much hope, so many fears . . ."
"Ce soir, quand la ville engourdie . . ." / "This evening, when the town, chilled numb . . ."
"Car, o pauvres parents navres . . ." / "For, O poor parents, when child dies . . ."
Au long des quais / Along the Embankments
Le Premier Froid / The First Chill
A ce qui n'est plus / For What Exists No More
"L'orage a passe; mais les flots sont durs . . ." / "The storm is past; still, the waves brutally . . ."
Sotto voce / Sotto voce
Chanson triste / Sad Song
"Et je pense a la mort, & toujours cette idee . . ." / "And so I think of death; ever that thought . . ."
Temps perdu / Time Lost
"La tristesse a vaincu, je souffre & je me tais . . ." / "Sadness has won, silent my suffering . . ."
Promenade d'automne / Autumn Stroll
"Jadis enfant joyeuse & folle . . ." / "A child was I, gay, undeterred . . ."
"O privileges saints que Dieu m'accorde encor . . ." / "O sacred favors God yet grants to me . . ."
"Inutile! ce mot pese sur bien des fronts . . ." / "'Useless'? Word that weighs hard on many a brow . . ."
"L'amour! un mot encor, mais sublime & sauvage . . ." / "'Love'! Simple word . . . One that-savage, sublime . . ."
"Un cimetiere aux champs est chose rassurante . . ." / "A country graveyard comforting appears . . ."
"Je ne puis feuilleter mes livres, mon tresor . . ." / "Scarce can I leaf through treasured books, than there . . ."
"C'est vrai, j'ai peu d'egards aux vains regrets d'autrui . . ." / "True it is, I care little for the ills . . ."
Sur la premiere page de Joseph Delorme / On the Title Page of Joseph Delorme
La Divine Tragedie / The Divine Tragedy
Le Sacrifice d'Abraham / Abraham's Sacrifice
"Le ciel est sombre, il pleut, &, la tete lassee . . ." / "The sky is dark with rain. My brow, distraught . . ."
La Pierre d'attente / Marianne's Bust
"A l'honneur du combat qu'importe la victoire . . ." / "What matters victory to combat's course . . ."
"O morts qui ressemblez a des apotheoses . . ." / "O you, apotheosis-like dead souls . . ."
"Quand Jesus s'en allait de bourgade en bourgade . . ." / "When Jesus went from town to town . . ."
Epilogue / Epilogue
Appendix: Selected Pages from Louisa Siefert's Papers
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Poems
General Index
Acknowledgments
Reading Les Stoiques Anew
THE STOICS (1870)
Dedicace / Dedication
Le Depart / Leaving
Au large / At Sea
Soupir / Sighs
Immortalite / Immortality
Lune d'avril / April Moon
Jour tombant / Dying Day
Bonheur / Happiness
La Combe / The Valley
Automnales / Autumnalia
Soir d'hiver / Winter Eve
Les Vieilles Gens / The Old Folks
"Tous les rires d'enfant ont les memes dents blanches . . ." / "The same white gleam in all children's laughter . . ."
"Il sera grand & fort, il est deja si tendre . . ." / "Tall and strong will he be, so gentle too . . ."
"Pour ce petit enfant tant d'espoirs & d'alarmes . . ." / "For this babe, so much hope, so many fears . . ."
"Ce soir, quand la ville engourdie . . ." / "This evening, when the town, chilled numb . . ."
"Car, o pauvres parents navres . . ." / "For, O poor parents, when child dies . . ."
Au long des quais / Along the Embankments
Le Premier Froid / The First Chill
A ce qui n'est plus / For What Exists No More
"L'orage a passe; mais les flots sont durs . . ." / "The storm is past; still, the waves brutally . . ."
Sotto voce / Sotto voce
Chanson triste / Sad Song
"Et je pense a la mort, & toujours cette idee . . ." / "And so I think of death; ever that thought . . ."
Temps perdu / Time Lost
"La tristesse a vaincu, je souffre & je me tais . . ." / "Sadness has won, silent my suffering . . ."
Promenade d'automne / Autumn Stroll
"Jadis enfant joyeuse & folle . . ." / "A child was I, gay, undeterred . . ."
"O privileges saints que Dieu m'accorde encor . . ." / "O sacred favors God yet grants to me . . ."
"Inutile! ce mot pese sur bien des fronts . . ." / "'Useless'? Word that weighs hard on many a brow . . ."
"L'amour! un mot encor, mais sublime & sauvage . . ." / "'Love'! Simple word . . . One that-savage, sublime . . ."
"Un cimetiere aux champs est chose rassurante . . ." / "A country graveyard comforting appears . . ."
"Je ne puis feuilleter mes livres, mon tresor . . ." / "Scarce can I leaf through treasured books, than there . . ."
"C'est vrai, j'ai peu d'egards aux vains regrets d'autrui . . ." / "True it is, I care little for the ills . . ."
Sur la premiere page de Joseph Delorme / On the Title Page of Joseph Delorme
La Divine Tragedie / The Divine Tragedy
Le Sacrifice d'Abraham / Abraham's Sacrifice
"Le ciel est sombre, il pleut, &, la tete lassee . . ." / "The sky is dark with rain. My brow, distraught . . ."
La Pierre d'attente / Marianne's Bust
"A l'honneur du combat qu'importe la victoire . . ." / "What matters victory to combat's course . . ."
"O morts qui ressemblez a des apotheoses . . ." / "O you, apotheosis-like dead souls . . ."
"Quand Jesus s'en allait de bourgade en bourgade . . ." / "When Jesus went from town to town . . ."
Epilogue / Epilogue
Appendix: Selected Pages from Louisa Siefert's Papers
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Poems
General Index