For it is difficult to avoid the conviction that Thompson deliberately rejects simplicity, and even, at times, with an elaborate and conscious search after long and heavily colored words. There is in this book a translation of Victor Hugo's Ce qu'on entend sur la Montagne, a well known poem in the Feuilles d'Automne. In going carefully over Thompson's version and comparing it word for word with the original, we have found that where Victor Hugo—not a simple writer—is simple, Thompson embroiders upon him, and that where he is not simple, Thompson is always less so. For instance, in the very first couplet we have "let your tread aspirant rise" for monté; a few lines below,
One day at least, whereon my thought, enlicensed to
muse,
Had drooped its wing above the beached margent of
the ooze,
for
——un jour q'en rêve
Ma pensée abattit son vol sur une grève.
Further on,
The one was of the waters; a be-radiant hymnal
speech!
for
L'une venait des mers; chant de gloire; hymne heureux!
And finally,
And I made question of me, to what issues are we here,
Whither should tend the thwarting threads of all this
ravelled gear,