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AI Translation  ·  Case Study

Les Tragiques — Agrippa d’Aubigné
Early Modern French (1616)  ·  Commonplace AI Translation

D’Aubigné’s great epic of the French Wars of Religion — one of the masterworks of Huguenot literature — compared passage-by-passage between the original Early Modern French and Commonplace’s AI translation.

French text from the posthumous first edition (1616) as reproduced in the Charles Read scholarly edition (Paris: Librairie des Bibliophiles, 1872). Lamentations of a persecuted church, rendered in seven books of alexandrine verse.

Théodore-Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552–1630), Huguenot soldier-poet and secretary to Henry IV, composed Les Tragiques over decades of the French Wars of Religion. Though circulated in manuscript from the 1580s, it was not published until 1616, when d’Aubigné was in exile and believed he was dying. The work stands alongside Du Bartas’s La Semaine as the supreme achievement of French Reformed poetry.

In seven books — Misères, Princes, La Chambre Dorée, Les Feux, Les Fers, Vengeances, Jugement — d’Aubigné moves from the misery of afflicted France, through the judgment on persecutors, to the apocalyptic vindication of the martyrs. No complete English translation existed before the 20th century. The Commonplace AI translation works from the 1872 Charles Read edition.

Book I  ·  Misères

“Je veux peindre la France”

The most famous passage in the poem — France as a mother torn between two feuding children (Catholic and Protestant)

D’Aubigné opens Book I with the image of France as an afflicted mother whose two children (Esau/Cain and Jacob/Abel) fight over her nourishment. Rendering the alexandrine couplets in prose requires trading verse form for sense clarity — the AI prioritizes theological and historical precision over meter.
Early Modern French — Ed. Charles Read, 1872

Je veux peindre la France une mère affligée, Qui est entre ses bras de deux enfants chargée. Le plus fort, orgueilleux, empoigne les deux bouts Des tetins nourriciers; puis, à force de coups D’ongles, de poings, de pieds, il brise le partage Dont nature donnoit à son besson l’usage : Ce voleur acharné, cet Esau malheureux, Faict degast du doux laict qui doibt nourrir les deux, Si que, pour arracher à son frère la vie, Il mesprise la sienne et n’en a plus d’envie ;

Lors son Jacob, pressé d’avoir jeusné meshuy, Ayant domté longtemps en son cœur son ennuy, A la fin se défend, et sa juste colère Rend à l’autre un combat dont le champ est la mère.

Commonplace AI — from 1872 Charles Read French

I wish to paint France as an afflicted mother, who is burdened in her arms with two children. The stronger one, arrogant, seizes both ends of the nourishing breasts; then, by force of blows of nails, fists, and feet, he breaks the share which nature had given to his twin: this relentless thief, this unhappy Esau, wastes the sweet milk that ought to nourish both, so that, to snatch away his brother’s life, he despises his own and desires it no longer.

Then his Jacob, pressed by having fasted until now, having for a long time subdued his grief in his heart, at last defends himself, and his just anger renders to the other a combat of which the field is their mother.

Translation note — verse to prose: D’Aubigné writes in alexandrine couplets (12-syllable rhyming pairs), and the violence of the imagery is amplified by the tight verse form. The AI translation renders the couplets as prose, preserving all images — the nursing mother, the twins Esau and Jacob, the combat on the mother’s body — while sacrificing the meter. The word besson (Old French for “twin”) is correctly identified and rendered; degast (waste, ravage) is translated as “wastes,” catching both the economic and destructive sense.
Préface  ·  L’Autheur à son Livre

The Author to His Book

D’Aubigné’s valediction — sending his work into the world as he prepares to die in exile

Early Modern French — Ed. Charles Read, 1872

Va, livre, tu es trop beau pour avoir esté engendré dans le tombeau d’où mon exile te délivre. Je veux seul périr pour nous deux : commence, mon enfant, à vivre quand ton père est sur le point de mourir. Toutefois je vivray par toy, mon fils, comme toy par moy.

Il faut donc, comme la nourrice et fille du Romain chenu, que tu nourrisses et chérisses ton père en l’exil et en la prison.

Ne te cache point par hardiesse ; entre parmy les Roys quand tu seras en povre estat. Que la pauvreté de ton habit ne te face point de honte ny de peur ; qu’elle ne diminue ny desrobe ta valeur ou ton courage.

Commonplace AI — from 1872 Charles Read French

Go, Book, you are all too beautiful to have been born in the tomb from which my exile delivers you. I alone wish to perish for both of us: begin, my child, to live when your father is about to die. Yet I shall live through you, my son, just as you live through me.

Then it is necessary, like the nurse and daughter of the gray-haired Roman, that you nurse and cherish your father in exile and in prison.

Do not hide yourself out of boldness; enter among Kings when in poor condition. Do not let the poverty of your garment cause you shame or fear; let it neither diminish nor steal away your competence or your courage.

Translation note — tombeau and exile: The word tombeau (tomb) carries a double sense: the manuscript was hidden away and nearly destroyed, but also d’Aubigné himself was politically “dead” in exile. The AI correctly preserves both senses. The allusion to the Roman daughter who nursed her imprisoned father (Valerius Maximus’s Cimon and Pero) is recognized and rendered naturally without a footnote.
French wordFrench textAI translationNote
besson besson twin Archaic Old French; AI identifies correctly.
degast faict degast wastes Captures the destructive ravaging sense.
meshuy pressé d’avoir jeusné meshuy pressed by having fasted until now Meshuy = “today/now” (archaic); correctly rendered.
tombeau tombeau d’où mon exile te délivre the tomb from which my exile delivers you Preserves the paradox: exile as a kind of liberation from burial.

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