The Translation of Pantun to French or the Printed Flight of the Butterfly

Abstract

Pantun is a fixed form of poetry (forme fixe) that came from Malaysia and which was introduced into French poetry in a peculiar way in the 19th century. The pantun began to spread through a translation from a note at the end of Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales and by other Arabic and Persian translations provided by a renowned orientalist of the time, Ernest Fouinet. Together, these series of translations participate in the justification of romantic aesthetics. After this first appearance, the pantun became subject of exploration throughout the 19th century. Some of its images are evoked insistently in various texts of some poets and their form encourages them to explore the effects of the alternate and organized repetition of the lines. Over time, “Harmonie du soir” by Beaudelaire has become the most immediate reference model of this poetic structure. The structure of the pantun developed in France possesses a unique mechanism of repetition of lines (the second and fourth lines of each stanza are taken up again in the first and third lines of the following) that creates an analogy that accurately distinguishes nature and experience. As well as observing the characteristics and conditions of its first insertion in Victor Hugo’s work, the purpose of this article is to reflect on the functions performed by a fixed form imported from another culture and the circumstances that allow its assimilation in French literary history.