Beating a Computer at Poetry
Consider this poem generated by an AI interface. I requested it for its heuristic value in translating the final scenes of the Ancien Régime novel Dolbreuse. This poem, something of an elegy (a poem for the dead), comes after this line in a visit of the two protagonists to the island where Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ashes rest: “He fears, no doubt, that this portion of land, made sacred by the deposit he has entrusted to it, will be profaned by the vain curiosity of the crowd, who will see only a decorated tomb in the monument.
..which hides the ashes of this noble man.1
A boat then took us to this happy Isle,
Which our descendants will still visit for a while,
With reverence. We landed at its shore
As if a temple, we should then adore, 5
Where one collects themselves with quiet grace,
To enter with a more religious pace
. A cool breeze whispered through the poplars there,
Like zephyr in the springtime, light as air,
When gently it makes young leaves softly thrill,10
And treetops of the bushes, standing still.
The green appeared more vibrant to our eyes,
The air more pure, more tranquil were the skies.
The lake's clear waters, a crystal line
, Around the Isle, with murmurs soft and fine, 15
Caressed its fortunate and blessed strand.
One would have said that in this peaceful land,
All visible elements gained thought and life,
Regaining slowly, free from earthly strife,
The scattered parts of this wise man's remains,20
As earth's warm heat released them from its pains.
I had entered the constraints that it would have to be in iambic pentameter, reproduce the same rhyme scheme, and reproduce the same essential meaning as the original, which went like this.
qui couvre la cendre de ce grand homme. 1
Une barque nous conduisit à cette Isle heureuse ,
que nos derniers neveux visiteront encore avec
respect. Nous y abordâmes comme à la porte
d'un temple où l'on se recueille pour y entrer 5
avec un maintien plus religieux. Un vent frais
souffloit parmi les peupliers, comme le zéphyr
au tems de la prime-vere, quand il fait frémir
doucement les jeunes feuilles des arbres & la
cime des buissons. La verdure nous y parut plus 10
vive, l'air plus pur, le ciel plus serein. Les eaux
du lac formant une enceinte de cristal autour de
L’Isle, venoient battre, avec un doux murmure ,
son rivage fortuné. On eût dit qu'en ce lieu tous
les élémens visibles recevoient l'intelligence & la 15
vie, en reprenant par degrés les parties éparses
du corps de ce Philosophe, à mesure que la chaleur de la terre les faisoit évaporer.
Consider these notes, and read on to discover how I actually translated this poem from the novel Dolbreuse.
Line 1: A monument marking ashes can hardly be said to hide them. This monument—and any monument—generally does not hide a deceased person’s ashes—it is merely atop them because it clearly marks them (the verb here in French literally denotes the verb covers). And Rousseau was not literally a noble, which would be an interesting and problematic adjective to insert here. Rousseau undermined the titled nobility in many countries to a degree rivaled by few others with his repeated intellectual interventions on the topic of the general will”and the state of nature—writings that favor the will of the people and a truth beyond what the social elite were emphasizing. We can moreover say that he was a "giant.” The original line says he was a grand homme—great man. But that does not observe the appropriate meter either.
Line 2: In many eras, including the pre-Revolutionary 1780s, heureux was an adjective that described those who are actually said to be blessed by the heavens. The word happy has shades of such a meaning, but it is commonly lost in discussions of the word today. So I would say that this isle is blessèd once I have recourse to sussing out that the boat is a small craft for low-stakes crossings of what is practically a pond, etc. Note incidentally as well that the verbs are in the passé simple, what is now the historic past, but they could be used in the 1780s in many circumstances in which the passé composé alone can be used in 2025. This event is not in a remote past but may have quite recently happened involving living people.
Line 3: The AI eliminates the use of the noun nephews. I find that problematic, all the more so because the solution that we receive from it is descendants, which changes the meaning completely.Nephews, by contrast, inserts the idea of there being lines of filiation that engage with bloodlines but are in many ways untethered from it, in much the same way that many modern thinkers can be said to be descendants of Rousseau.
Line 4, 5: The AI eliminates reference to what may initially to French learners seem to be a temple door. At the end you will see how I rework this line and the next to be about a temple gate after crossing a strait. Incidentally, in certain Biblical contexts such as in Acts, as well as in the Mussorgsky symphonic piece and in many medieval contexts, gates are the word for what French expresses with the word portes.
Line 6: Quiet grace is an invention of the AI LLM. It is plausible but also involves making inferences that are not necessarily meant to be brought to the surface. It is even a trite and hackneyed line. Incidentally, the term religious pace is a loopy deduction of the source material, even if religiosity is mentioned. There are many different paces one can employ in religious devotion.
Lines 7,8: The AI fails to identify this crucial vivid detail: poplars native to Europe shake, or as the poem states, frémissent—quiver, as they are relatives of willows and aspens. The interface additionally produces the blunder of claiming a Zephyr is light as air. This is absurd since a zephyr is a light wind that blows from the west, which definitionally is composed of air, even if we can presume that the god Zephyrus, its namesake, would also contain some element other than air.
Line 13: The air more pure, more tranquil were the skies. This line is silly and fails to project the crucial distinction in French between mere air or mood at ground level, and ciel, which can also mean heaven as well as sky. (This is an opportunity to evoke a Janus-like moment in European Romanticism during the end of the Era of Enlightenment in which metaphysics and cold materialism are both ideologically available, making for the possibility of a sublime instability between registers and modes of thought.) All that said, I do see an opening for critique in the use of a verb at the end of this line. There can be a three-syllable adjective with the verb omitted, which is more consistent with the style of Wordsworth and Shelley.
The ambiguity between air as in physical atmosphere composed of gas at ground level and mood has somewhat disappeared from English well past the era of John Adams writing a letter about a certain character having a certain air about him, but the LLM does get credit for implying that lost world.
Line 14: I don’t like crystal line because it disguises that enceinte is often a kind of wall, particularly of a stronghold, which is important to bear in mind, even if it is used metaphorically here.
Lines 16, 17: The capacity to rhyme strand/land may be more advanced than where this tech was last year. It also is not good enough: in the French original, what is rendered as land is referring back to the island that holds the remains of Rousseau, which creates needless confusion. It very nearly implies that there is a general blessing being described, whereas in fact the little island is a special place. Other possibilities may work: such as shore and sheltered bar.
Line 19: A philosophe is not simply a wise man. It means a man who deliberates via reason that is supposed to be transparent to other thinkers. There are mystics who might appear wise after their own fashion, and they are not at all like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosophe tendency to be libertine is another consideration against a term that might hint in some minds at the idea of a mountain sage in a cave—or even one of the three Magi. The word philosophe would be tempting to retain. I, for the sake of originality, would like to call the fellow a reasoner, since Reason is central to the Enlightenment movement. I reserve the right to pass on to an editor the suggestion that if reasoner seems a bit too narrow, then Rousseau can simply be referred to as a Philosophe.
Line 20: The last line is perhaps the most egregious. If the original poem did not specify that life was painful for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, why should the translation? He was of course a high-strung Romantic. He was even pained to be excluded from many institutions and situations. But the French poem says nothing of the sort. This is perhaps less uncanny than the AI LLM specifying that the Earth’s heat was warm. Hot and warm are two different temperature qualities. It is also perhaps very nearly possible to say that this is a distinctly machinic hallucination: all heat has a warmth (a temperature). But of course, on the irrelevant scientific temperature scales, heat may be categorized as cold, and hence this misconstrual of chaleur is possible.
Addendum: The AI interface inserts two lines, if we gather that the final line can be clearly stated as two, a leap from 17 lines to 20.
So, here is my version. To repeat the introductory lines: “He fears, no doubt, that this portion of land, made sacred by the deposit he has entrusted to it, will be profaned by the vain curiosity of the crowd, who will see only a decorated tomb in the monument…
…Atop the ashes of that giant man. 1
We paddled then out to that blessèd isle
Our nephews far outliving us will too
Much as we approach it: like a temple gate—
Respectfully, haaving crossed the strait: 5
Venerating while we gathered up ourselves.
A fresh breeze shuddering through the poplars like
The Zephyr at spring’s first flush, when shaking
Overcomes the leaves of trees and bushes’
greenish heads, much more vital to our eyes,10
The air more pure, more heavenly the skies.
The crystal ramparts of a lake—clear glass,
Around the isle, the babbling waves refined,
Caressed the pebbles of its blessed shore.
One could have said: “Upon this sheltered bar, 15
These elements both life and insight hold,
About this reasoner’s body turned to ash,
That Terra’s heat released him from her grasp.