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by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949)
Translation © by Sophie Huet

Serre chaude
Language: French (Français) 
Our translations:  ENG ENG
Ô serre au milieu des forêts !
Et vos portes à jamais closes !
Et tout ce qu'il y a sous votre coupole !
Et dans mon âme en vos analogies !

Les pensées d'une princesse qui a faim,
L'ennui d'un matelot dans le désert,
Une musique de cuivreaux fenêtres des incurables.
Allez aux angles les plus tièdes !
On dirait une femme évanouie un jour de moisson :
Il y a des postillons dans la cour de l'hospice ;
Au loin, passe un chasseur d'élans, devenu infirmier.

Examinez au clair de lune !
(Oh! rien n'y est à sa place !)
On dirait une folle devant les juges,
Un navire de guerre à pleines voiles sur un canal,
Des oiseaux de nuit sur des lys,
Un glas vers midi,
(Là-bàs sous ces cloches !)
Une étape de malades dans la prairie,
Une odeur d'éther un jour de soleil.

Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu ! Quand aurons-nous la pluie,
Et la neige et le vent dans la serre !

Text Authorship:

  • by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949), "Serre chaude", written 1889, appears in Serres chaudes, Paris, Éd. Léon Vanier, first published 1889 [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 Ernest Amédée Chausson (1855 - 1899), "Serre chaude", op. 24 no. 1 (1896) [ high voice and piano ], from Serres Chaudes, no. 1 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Thomas Oboe Lee (b. 1945), "Serre chaude", copyright © 2020 [ voice and piano ], from Chansons de Maeterlinck, no. 6 [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • ENG English (Barbara Miller) , "Hothouse", copyright © 2004, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • ENG English (Sophie Huet) , "Hothouse", copyright © 2009, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 22
Word count: 158

Hothouse
Language: English  after the French (Français) 
O hothouse in the forest!
And your never-closed doors!
And all there is beneath your glass dome!
And analogies in my soul! 

The thoughts of a starving princess,
The boredom of a sailor marooned in the desert,
Brassy music at hospital windows.
Go to the shallowest angles! 
It's like a woman who faints on harvest day,
There are postillons in the hospital's yard,
A hunter turned nurse passes in the distance

Examined in the moonlight. 
Oh! nothing is in its place. 
It's like a crazy woman in front of the judges,
A warship with full sails
on a canal of nightbirds on lilies
A knell at noon
(There, under those bells!) 
A series of invalids in the prairie
An ether smell, a sunny day

My God! My God! When will it rain
and snow and blow wind in the hothouse!

Text Authorship:

  • Translation from French (Français) to English copyright © 2009 by Sophie Huet, (re)printed on this website with kind permission. To reprint and distribute this author's work for concert programs, CD booklets, etc., you must ask the copyright-holder(s) directly for permission. If you receive no response, you must consider it a refusal.

    Sophie Huet.  Contact: sophiehuet (AT) gmail (DOT) com

    If you wish to commission a new translation, please contact: licenses@email.lieder.example.net

Based on:

  • a text in French (Français) by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949), "Serre chaude", written 1889, appears in Serres chaudes, Paris, Éd. Léon Vanier, first published 1889
    • Go to the text page.

 

This text was added to the website: 2009-04-15
Line count: 22
Word count: 140

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This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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