Les petites choses brillantes

Again      this evening      ancient      rain       Is singing      the same      ancient      song In persistent      drumming      incessant      drumming      Verlaine’s      hulking form      suddenly      appears, Making      its way      between      the sheds.

But I found the whole poem in French

Pluie dans la nuit – image de Verlaine –

La pluie ce soir encore entonne sa chanson, Sa chanson monotone. Lalala, lalala, toujours la même chanson. Et voilà la carcasse de Verlaine Qui passe dans la ruelle au milieu des entrepôts.

Dans la ruelle des entrepôts, c’est l’éclair de la cape, L’ironie radine de la tourbe. Mais au bout de la ruelle, Au bout de la ruelle, l’espoir luit faiblement … Qu’y a-t-il d’autre que cet espoir ?

A quoi bon toutes ces voitures ? A quoi bon toutes ces lumières ? Yeux globuleux, et vitreux, des lampes des cafés ! Au loin la chimie chante.

And of course I got the reference, why does the rain make him think about Verlaine? Because it's the theme of one of his best known poems.

Il pleure dans mon cœur (Paul Verlaine)

Il pleure dans mon cœur Comme il pleut sur la ville; Quelle est cette langueur Qui pénètre mon cœur? Ô bruit doux de la pluie Par terre et sur les toits! Pour un cœur qui s’ennuie Ô le bruit de la pluie! Il pleure sans raison Dans ce cœur qui s’écœure. Quoi! nulle trahison? … Ce deuil est sans raison. C’est bien la pire peine De ne savoir pourquoi Sans amour et sans haine, Mon cœur a tant de peine.

You can have an English translation too.

Tears fall in my heart English translation © Richard Stokes

The main criminal from Yokohama and his meow meow

(on the phone screen:

He was washing dishes when a delegation came to inform him he had been chosen to become cardinal but refused to talk with them before he had finished his job. To him menial work was far more holy and important than glitter and power and he even told the delegation to hang the cardinal robes on a tree outside while he continued washing dishes.

I was directed to the English translation at the recommendation of @tenlittlebullets and am very glad I found it because Charles Godfrey Leland is a hoot! At first blush and in no particular order, some of my favorite bits are:

The mysterious man on a black pony with a Spanish mustache holding a red-and-black banner with "Liberty or Death" written on it, who somehow didn't manage to make it into any adapatations

Leland refuting Heine's claim that the uprising was spontaneous by citing the aforementioned man and his banner; "such figures are not common at funerals."

Heine taking an opportunity to compare the crowds gathered at hte morgue to the audience of the opera Robert le Diable, which he apparently hated

Frequent invocations of the French Revolution, from the (invented?) figure of the old man dressed "according to the latest fashion of 1793" going to the barricades accompanied by his fretful wife, to Heine's claiming once to have "admired Robespierre, Sanctum Justum and the great Mountain"

"I could never endure being guillotined every day—and nobody did endure it—"

The real thread of admiration for the insurgents, aka "the patriots, who to-day are called rebels"

The comparison to Cleontes and Pantaeus, who are not quite as famous as Orestes and Pylades but that's how they tend to stage the deaths of Enjolras and Grantaire in the musical

"...This was related to me in the Church of Saint-Méry, and I was obliged to lean against the image of Saint Sebastian to prevent my falling to the ground from deep inward emotion, and I wept like a child."

Heine, then 35 years old, helping home a young neighbor who had lost her lover at the barricade and fainted when called upon to identify him at the morgue. He doesn't usually behave so decently and this is a touching change

Heine reports, perhaps unreliably, that the insurgents wore "garlands of willow 'round their small hats," which strikes me as a brilliant excuse to draw Les Amis in flower crowns

A fantastic roast of Lafayette which I will report in full later

Some really chilling descriptions of the "return to order" in the aftermath of the uprising. The brokers at the Bourse cheering as the stocks rise again, shops reopening with broken windows, the quiet progress of arrests, the awkward military review by Louis Philippe, and the state of siege that persisted through June. Nothing, not even the descriptions of the insurgents' deaths, makes me feel worse