I've never seen the poem before, but it seems to be doing a lot of weird things to the French language. There are no punctuation marks, for example, which makes it hard to parse.
1. I would say "part". It's a play on the expression "un brin de", meaing "a little of". 2.I'd say less as well, but I'm not sure. 3. It could be either from context and lack of punctuation. 4. It's say c, but 5. ténèbres is always a noun. the adjective is ténébreux/ténébreuse.
Hard one! We have to keep in mind that it's modern poetry, it's basically the poet playing with words and sounds, in pun-like associations, and disrespecting syntax and punctuation.
1. Grain de ciel is probably based on the sonority of grain de sel, normally used in "mettre son grain de sel". Here you would expect bout or coin instead of grain (my little corner, patch, piece of sky (ciel), darkened -actually whitened- by the bad weather). In French, "un temps de chien" is bad weather, and the poet plays with two meanings of temps: time and weather.
2. Bien belle chose is not really more or less "beau", rather more though. It's mostly a way of insisting marking orality, speech. "A pretty thing indeed" would be a better translation than "a very pretty thing", which works too. "Yeah, yeah, that's a nice thing you got there, a nice thing indeed".
3. No such thing as a "spiraler" verb, so it's a noun.
4. & 5. Années ténèbres is again a pun, based on années-lumière (light-years). So it's space and time (from astronomy), here dark times
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Comments 4
1. I would say "part". It's a play on the expression "un brin de", meaing "a little of".
2.I'd say less as well, but I'm not sure.
3. It could be either from context and lack of punctuation.
4. It's say c, but
5. ténèbres is always a noun. the adjective is ténébreux/ténébreuse.
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1. Grain de ciel is probably based on the sonority of grain de sel, normally used in "mettre son grain de sel". Here you would expect bout or coin instead of grain (my little corner, patch, piece of sky (ciel), darkened -actually whitened- by the bad weather). In French, "un temps de chien" is bad weather, and the poet plays with two meanings of temps: time and weather.
2. Bien belle chose is not really more or less "beau", rather more though. It's mostly a way of insisting marking orality, speech. "A pretty thing indeed" would be a better translation than "a very pretty thing", which works too. "Yeah, yeah, that's a nice thing you got there, a nice thing indeed".
3. No such thing as a "spiraler" verb, so it's a noun.
4. & 5. Années ténèbres is again a pun, based on années-lumière (light-years). So it's space and time (from astronomy), here dark times ( ... )
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re: spilarer - I found it at wiktionary and didn't look further. In fact, no other source I can trust gives 'spirale' as a verb form.
That was very detailed, thank you for your time.
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