They are among the finest English-language poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, endowed with rare insight and sensitivity. Now W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats and several others have taken on an unlikely new guise — as a continental European pop hit.

Their poems — along with those by two other Britons, Walter de la Mare and Christina Rossetti, and two Americans, Dorothy Parker and Emily Dickinson — are likely to enter the Top Ten in France and Germany next week.

After being set to music by Carla Bruni, the former fashion model, they could even make No 1, according to the Paris-based record company Naive.

The album, No Promises, has divided music critics between supporters hailing a new departure for Europop and detractors perplexed by haunting English verse half-sung and half-spoken in a sensual voice accompanied by folk guitars.

Bruni, 39, who was born in Italy and grew up in France, seems certain to enjoy another success two years after her first album, Quelqu’un m’a dit (Someone told me), which sold two million copies.

As No Promises was released this week, it attracted massive publicity and propelled her to the front cover of Les Inrockuptibles, the magazine that determines trends in the French music industry.

Although Bruni’s talents were open to debate, it was clear that she had tapped into a Gallic desire to lend an intellectual veneer to popular culture.On radio stations, for instance, her version of Those Dancing Days are Gone, Yeats’s poem about decay and loss, was vying for airtime with the rock idol Johnny Hallyday and the tennis player turned singer, Yannick Noah.

Bruni, whose wealthy family left Italy when she was 5, said that she had wanted to write the album herself and had begun reading English-language poetry for inspiration.

“Every three pages I came across a little gem. Spontaneously, I put them to music. It was not really a concept, more of an impulsive reaction to these poems which leapt off the page at me,” she said.

Her initial version of the record combined her own lyrics with those of Auden, Yeats, Dickinson, Parker, de la Mare and Rossetti.

“Then I realised there was a worrying contrast between the very dense writing of these poems and my lightness. My texts seemed really poor, the whole thing lost its homogeneity and so I just kept the poems.”

Although the writers have been set to music before — the composer Benjamin Britten collaborated with Auden, and the singer Joni Mitchell has drawn on Yeats’s verse, for example — Bruni’s work is a novelty.

“None of the poets are known in France outside a small circle of people passionate about English literature,” said a spokesman for her record company. “But now we are discovering them.”

The newspaper Le Parisien was enthralled. “A delicate and elegant album,” it said.

But Le Monde described No Promises, which is likely to be released in Britain this spring, as “supreme boredom”. It said Bruni had lost her way — a judgment apparently shared by her five-year-old son.

“When he hears my songs, he starts screaming, ‘It’s horrible, Mum’,” Bruni told Les Inrockuptibles. “He only likes Mozart.”

Poetry in music

Yeats: Those Dancing Days are Gone

Come, let me sing into your ear
Those dancing days are gone
All that silk and satin gear
Crouch upon a stone.
Wrapping that foul body up in as foul a rag
I carry the sun in a golden cup
The moon in a silver bag

Auden Lady Weeping at the Crossroads

Put your hand behind the wainscot,
You have done your part;
Find the penknife there and plunge it
Into your false heart

De la Mare: Autumn

Nought gold where your hair was;
Nought warm where your hand was;
But phantom, forlorn,
Beneath the thorn,
Your ghost where your face was

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