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L'étoile a pleuré rose au cœur de tes oreilles, L'infini roulé blanc de ta nuque à tes reins ; La mer a perlé rousse à tes mammes vermeilles Et l'Homme saigné noir à ton flanc souverain.
About the headline (FAQ)
Confirmed with Paterne Berrichon, Jean-Arthur Rimbaud: le poète (1854-1873), Paris: Mercure de France, 1912, page 166.
Text Authorship:
- by Arthur Rimbaud (1854 - 1891), no title [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Rudolf Escher (1912 - 1980), "L'étoile a pleuré rose", 1970, from Univers de Rimbaud, no. 3 [sung text not yet checked]
- by Ferenc Farkas (1905 - 2000), "Quatrain", 1996 [ high voice and cello ], from Quatre quatrains avec 4 cordes, no. 2, unpublished [sung text not yet checked]
- by Léo Ferré (1916 - 1993), "L'étoile a pleuré rose" [ 2 voices, harp, piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Hans Krása (1899 - 1944), "Quatrain", 1943 [ baritone, clarinet, viola, and violoncello ], from 3 Lieder, no. 1, also set in Czech (Čeština) [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Christophe Sirodeau , "L’étoile", op. 7 (2001) [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:
- Also set in Czech (Čeština), a translation by Vítězslav Nezval (1900 - 1958) ; composed by Hans Krása.
Other available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- CHI Chinese (中文) [singable] (Dr Huaixing Wang) , copyright © 2024, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- ENG English (Feiyue (Queenie) Dai) , copyright © 2025, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Quartina", copyright © 2012, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Grant Hicks [Guest Editor]
This text was added to the website: 2009-02-08
Line count: 4
Word count: 35
The star cried pink in the hollow of your ears, The infinite white rolls from the nape of your neck to the small of your back; The sea has pearled red on your vermillion breasts And Man bled black at your sovereign flank.
About the headline (FAQ)
Translated titles
"L'étoile a pleuré rose" = "The star cried pink"
"L'étoile" = "The Star"
Notes provided by Laura Prichard
Line 1: 1. Rocroi, near Charleville-Mézières, is called "La cité étoilée” [The Starry City]. It lies in the Ardennes region, in the borderlands where a lot of the Franco-Prussian war was fought, (over which and over related soldier’s graves, tears were shed).
A sentry “listening” post was based in those hills and hollows. Rimbaud was a teenager during this war, so the Ardennes is a possible setting for this poem.
Line 2 ("The infinite white"): Cannon smoke was often white and the sound of cannon and gun fire rolled over (often foggy/hazy) battlefields. White is also a color associated with purity and women’s skin in the classical literature that Rimbaud read as a young man.
Line 2 ("From the nape of your neck to the small of your back": Soldiers were moved to the lowlands of the Rhine valley (the waist, or the lower back) from higher ground, such as the inland cities and mountains (the neck).
Line 3 ("vermillion breasts"): This could refer to bloody battlefields or to a woman’s body, such as red nipples on the breasts of Venus, who Rimbaud evoked in other poems. “Vermeil” can refer to both gilded silver and to an intense shade of red.
Text Authorship:
- Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2025 by Feiyue (Queenie) Dai, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you may ask the copyright-holder(s) directly or ask us; we are authorized to grant permission on their behalf. Please provide the translator's name when contacting us.
Contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net
Based on:
- a text in French (Français) by Arthur Rimbaud (1854 - 1891), no title
This text was added to the website: 2025-10-17
Line count: 4
Word count: 43