Is the translation of a poem from English to French like ‘Mission Impossible’?

When I studied the English language at university, several classes were devoted to translating texts from English to French and vice versa. They opened my eyes on the creative process involved in translation, to find the right balance between loyalty to the source text and quality of the target text. I couldn’t imagine translating poetry from English to French, to me it seemed like ‘Mission Impossible’: the length and rhythm of verse, the music and the essence of poems, all are so different from one language to another… However, as our teacher chose a poem in free verse in our final exam, I stood up to the challenge and even enjoyed translating it.

We also had to comment on an existing translation of an extract of a classic play by Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, translated in English. There is an old saying in French: “la critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile”: indeed, criticism seems an easy task compared with the actual work of translating 17^th-century French!

Here it is:

Illustration on top of this page: Nicolas Mignard, Molière dans le rôle de César pour La Mort de Pompée de Pierre Corneille, 1658. https://essentiels.bnf.fr/fr/image/945f4195-7e41-4509-966e-118915143607-nicolas-mignard-moliere-dans-role-cesar-pour-mort-pompee-pierre-corneille-1658