Chapter 14 Epigraph

[luvzi12]

I only just noticed this, but in my copy of Book The Thirteenth: The End in the 14th and final chapter, there is this epigraph at the end:

Mort vieux capitaine il est temps! levons l'ancre!
Ce pays nous ennuie, o Mort! Appareillons!
Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l'encre,
nos coeurs, que tu connais, sont remplis de rayons!

Which, roughly and horribly translated into English by BabelFish is:

Died old captain it is time! let us raise l' anchors!
This country annoys us, O Mort! Let us install!
If the sky and the sea are black like ink,
our hearts, which you know, are filled with rays!

Does anyone have any idea what this is supposed to mean??

[Dante]

Let me quote my own explanation from the Chapter Fourteen reread:

Sept 28, 2009 5:14:31 GMT -5 Dante said:

The copyright page is just a mock-up, lacking most of the information from a real copyright page. What’s important, however, is the excerpt of a French poem. If you do not already know, it may not surprise you to hear that it is by Charles Baudelaire, and is entitled Le Voyage – The Voyage. It is somewhat lengthy, so I shall only address the sole stanza excerpted here, which is the penultimate quatrain of the last stanza:
---
Ô Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l'ancre!
Ce pays nous ennuie, ô Mort! Appareillons!
Si le ciel et la mer sont noirs comme de l'encre,
Nos coeurs que tu connais sont remplis de rayons!
---
FleursDuMal.org lists a number of translations, but from those I’ve cobbled together my own (basically a slight variation on one or two), which I believe is probably easiest to understand in relation to aSoUE:
---
O Death, ancient captain, it is time! Weigh anchor!
This land wearies us, O Death! Let us go!
Though the sea and the sky are as black as ink,
Our hearts that you know are filled with rays of light!
---
In the most prosaic sense, I think “black as ink” is naturally supposed to remind us of the coal-black colour of Ink, the Incredibly Deadly Viper. But more significantly, this excerpt is… well, to put it into words wouldn’t help. I’ll leave it to an old quotation from Swinburne to shed light:
---
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be

That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
---

Edit: In retrospect, I'd reword my translation as follows:
---
Death, old captain, it is time! Weigh anchor!
This land wearies us, O Death! Let us go!
Though the sea and the sky are as black as ink,
These hearts that you know are filled with rays of light!
---
Flows a bit better. Sounds less awkward.

[luvzi12]

Thanks for the translation it makes a lot more sense now!