Anthology of French Poetry in Three Volumes (IX - XXI) Volume 1

Dear reader, you hold in your hands a coffer full of reflections. For inside are the heavy nuggets of precious gold of François Villon's “Testaments,” far more precious than the pennies he robbed with his band; the filigree of Ronsard and du Bellet, the brightest stars of the ‘Pleiades’ shine; the tears of Louise Labé, turned by parting into pearls, sparkle; the rubies of blood shed in Agrippa d'Aubigny's “Tragedies” blaze; sometimes for a moment you will be dazzled by the false - like the manners of the age - glitter of a salon epigram; golden flakes will shine through, the only consolation for whole decades when the river of French fine verbiage was only carrying sand; but here are also the great pearl of the moon, drawn from the blue lagoons of romanticism, and all the “necklaces of wind and stars” of Baudelaire, and the ivory of the Parnassians, and the flowery dreams of our surrealist modernity. Here is a little of all the treasures of rich French poetry which I have been collecting and hoarding like a miser for half a century. To give them to you generously at the moment when the lid closed and I realized that the key to this casket was in your hands alone.

Kiril Kadiiski 

From the anthology “From Villon to Vian”

The first volume of the anthology contains poems from the troubadours to Arthur Rimbaud and the Symbolists.