Le don du sourire

This poem below has some special significance for me. In 1997, I moved to France for a year and ended up in Montbrison, a charming little provincial town in the Loire department not too far from Saint Etienne. During my time there, I spent a few months with a lovely family called the Oliviers. I remember them taking me to the Richard de Bas Paper Mill over in the small hamlet of Ambert one day (it must have been around February 1998). This historic little museum still produces paper by hand using artisanal methods which have scarcely changed since the 14th century.

At the end of the tour, I ended up in the museum shop where I could purchase gifts and souvenirs, among which were examples of printed texts, be it prose or poetry, on speciality paper that had been hand crafted with flowers pressed into the actual pulp. Blaise Olivier kindly offered to buy me something as a momento of my visit, so I picked an item of poetry which I thought was rather prepossessing at the time.

WHen I returned back to the UK, I would eventually frame this delightful work. I took it to be an example of classical French poetry. It was only relatively recently that I realised its provenance was actually American and that it was a translation of a poem by Franck Irving Fletcher, an Englishman from Yorkshire who had moved to America in 1902 in response to a job advertisement. The job position had long since been filled by the time he got there, but that didn't seem to matter as he eventually found a career in advertising and eventually passed away in New York at the ripe old age of 82. The original poem was featured in the book 'How to win Friends and influence People' by Dale Carnegie and can be found right at the bottom. The French translation can be seen below.

LE DON DU SOURIRE

Il ne coûte rien

et produit beaucoup.

Il enrichit celui qui le reçoit

ans appauvrir celui qui le donne.

Il ne dure qu'un instant

mais son souvenir

est parfois immortel.

n sourire, c’est du repos

pour l’être fatigué, du courage

pour l'âme abattue, de la 

consolation pour le

coeur endeuillé.

C'est un véritable antidote

que la nature tient en réserve

pour toutes les peines.

Et si l'on refuse

le sourire que vous méritez,

soyez généreux, donnez le vôtre.

Nul, en effet, n'a autant besoin

d’un sourire que celui qui ne sait

pas en donner aux autres.

On August 17th 2020, I decided to record myself reciting this little poem in my best French accent. You can see the result in the following video. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

THE VALUE OF A SMILE

A smile costs nothing, but creates much.

A smile enriches those who receive without impoverishing those who give.

A smile happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.

 

None are so rich they can get along without a smile, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits.

A smile creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.

 A smile is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and nature’s best antidote for trouble.

 

Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen; for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody ‘til it is given away.

For nobody needs a smile so much as those who have none left to give.

Franck Irving Fletcher (1881 - 1963)