Lucie became a talented and prolific poet, writer, journalist, sculptor and designer.
On 5th June 1900, Lucie married the translator and oriental studies expert Joseph Charles Mardrus and travelled with him to North Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Italy. By the time WW1 broke out, Lucie had become famous.
Divorced in 1915, Lucie volunteered as a nurse in Hospital 13 in Honfleur. After the war she lived and worked in Paris. Lucie died in Honfleur on 26th April 1945.
Lines, written by Lucie on 16th August 1914:
Toi mère et toi, ma soeur Marie
Pour moi recitez un Ave
Allons enfants de la patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Divorced in 1915, Lucie volunteered as a nurse in Hospital 13 in Honfleur. After the war she lived and worked in Paris. Lucie died in Honfleur on 26th April 1945.
Lines, written by Lucie on 16th August 1914:
Toi mère et toi, ma soeur Marie
Pour moi recitez un Ave
Allons enfants de la patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé.
Oh Mother and my sister, Marie
Please say a prayer for me
Come children of our country
The day of glory is here.
Régiments
Tous ces garçons qui sont partis,
Tous ces soldats dressés dans l’horreur de la guerre,
Ils ont été des tout petits
Emmaillotés au chaud dans les bras d’une mère.
Orgueilleux et casqués de fer,
Ils s’en vont vers le bruit de la foudre qu’on lance,
Laissant derrière eux l’autre enfer,
Pauvre enfer féminin des pleurs et du silence.
— Vous avez porté vos enfants,
Mères ! au plus profond de votre chair intime.
Alors, vaincus ou triomphants,
Vous croyez, quand ils sont tués, que c’est un crime.
Moi, voyant défiler ces gas,
J’évoque avec stupeur leur naissance et ses drames,
Et je songe, et je dis tout bas:
« Toutes ces têtes d’homme ont fait mal à des femmes. »
“Regiments”
All those boys who have left,
These soldiers reared to abominate war,
Were little babies once, held
Snug and swaddled in a mother’s arms.
All a-swagger in steel helmets,
They march towards the crack of flung lightning,
And leave behind that other hell,
The sorry female hell of tears and silence.
Mothers, in your inmost being, deep
Flesh of your flesh, you carried your children;
For you, victory and defeat
Are one: you hold your children’s death a crime.
But I just watch these lads march away,
And think in stupefaction of their birth;
And deep inside myself I say:
‘All these men’s heads have torn women with pain.’
— by Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, translated by Ian Higgins
Professor Ian Higgins: Lucie Delarue-Mardrus “Souffles de tempête” (Fasquelle, 1918). I included it, with a number of others by her (and poems by other female poets), in my Anthology of First World War French Poetry (University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1996)
Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Mes Memoires, Gallimard, 1938, p. 196.
Ian says: I find 'Régiments' very vivid and moving in its simplicity. It's so simple, in fact that the last line is a brute to translate. It really doesn't make explicit reference to being torn; it just says the heads have hurt women. But 'hurt' is so all-encompassing a word that it's quite dilute. In the context of the 'drames' of birth and all those heads bobbing up and down to the rhythm of the march, 'hurt' seems altogether too feeble ('how terribly hurtful'...). 'Given women pain' sounds equally limp-wristed. So I decided I had to produce a particularising translation (i.e. adding explicit detail that's only implicit in the French). Hence the 'torn'. But certainly, if I'd translated it thus as a student in the early 60s, there'd have been a sarcastic red pen put through it!
Mr Ian Higgins, Honorary Senior Lecturer
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| Lucie by Jean Cocteau (1889 - 1963) |
