Charles Cros “Inscription” French Poem animation
February 102010
Heres a virtual movie of Charles Cros reading a poem”Inscription” first published in the colection of poems Le Collier de griffes “The Necklace of Claws” (posthumously, 1908) Cros was not only a talented poet,but a brilliant invento.He is perhaps most famous as the man who almost, but not quite, invented the phonograph. No one before M. Charles Cros had thought of reproducing sound by making an apparatus capable of registering and reproducing sounds which had been engraved with a diagraphm. The inventor gave the name of Paleophone (voix du passé) to his invention. On April 30, 1877 he submitted a sealed envelope containing a letter to the Academy of Sciences in Paris explaining his proposed method. The letter was read in public on the 3rd December following. In his letter, after having shown that his method consisted of obtaining an oscillation of a membrane and using the tracing to reproduce the same oscillation, having regard for its duration and intensity Cros added that the cylindrical form of the receiving apparatus seemed to him to be the most practical, as it allowed for the graphic inscription of the vibrations by means of a very fine wormed screw. An article on the Paleophone was published in “la semaine du Clergé” on October 10, 1877, written by l’Abbé Leblanc. Cros proposed metal for both engraving tool attached to the diagraphm and receiving material for durability.
Before Cros had a chance to follow up on this idea or attempt to construct a working model, Thomas Alva Edison introduced his first working phonograph in the USA. Edison used a cylinder covered in tinfoil for his first phonograph, patenting this method for reproducing sound on January 15, 1878. Edison and Cros apparently did not know of each other’s work in advance.
Cros was convinced that pinpoints of light observed on Mars and Venus, probably high clouds illuminated by the sun, were the lights of large cities on those planets. He spent years petitioning for the French government to build a giant mirror that could be used to communicate with the martians and selenites by burning giant lines on the deserts of those planets. He was never convinced that the martians were not a proven fact, nor that the mirror he wanted was technically impossible to build.
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2009
Inscription
Mon âme est comme un ciel sans bornes ;
Elle a des immensités mornes
Et d’innombrables soleils clairs ;
Aussi, malgré le mal, ma vie
De tant de diamants ravie
Se mire au ruisseau de mes vers.
Je dirai donc en ces paroles
Mes visions qu’on croyait folles,
Ma réponse aux mondes lointains
Qui nous adressaient leurs messages,
Éclairs incompris de nos sages
Et qui, lassés, se sont éteints.
Dans ma recherche coutumière
Tous les secrets de la lumière,
Tous les mystères du cerveau,
J’ai tout fouillé, j’ai su tout dire,
Faire pleurer et faire rire
Et montrer le monde nouveau.
J’ai voulu que les tons, la grâce,
Tout ce que reflète une glace,
L’ivresse d’un bal d’opéra,
Les soirs de rubis, l’ombre verte
Se fixent sur la plaque inerte.
Je l’ai voulu, cela sera.
Comme les traits dans les camées
J’ai voulu que les voix aimées
Soient un bien, qu’on garde à jamais,
Et puissent répéter le rêve
Musical de l’heure trop brève ;
Le temps veut fuir, je le soumets.
Et les hommes, sans ironie,
Diront que j’avais du génie
Et, dans les siècles apaisés,
Les femmes diront que mes lèvres,
Malgré les luttes et les fièvres,
Savaient les suprêmes baisers.
Registration ………crude translation via google
My soul is like a boundless sky;
It has vast expanses of dull
And countless suns clear;
Also, despite the trouble, my life
So many happy diamonds
Sees itself in the stream of my verses.
I will say these words in
My vision was thought foolish
My answer to distant worlds
Who we addressed their messages,
Lightning misunderstood by our sages
And who, tired, became extinct.
In my usual search
All the secrets of light
All the mysteries of the brain,
I searched all I managed to say everything,
To cry and laugh
And show the world again.
I liked the tone, grace,
All that reflects a mirror,
The intoxication of a dance opera
The evening of rubies, the green shade
Attach to the plate inert.
I wanted it will.
As the features in the cameos
I wanted the voices loved
Let a good, they keep forever
And can repeat the dream
Musical time too short;
Time will fly, I submit.
And men, without irony,
I will say that engineering
And in the centuries subsided,
The women say that my lips
Despite the struggles and fevers,
Knew the supreme kisses.
Duration : 0:1:25
[youtube cYMZDjh46rU]
February 10th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
pls include an …
pls include an english transcription jim.
February 10th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Très joli poème!
Très joli poème!