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Happy Saturday! Hope you enjoy today’s offering, which is my translation of a poem by French Surrealist poet Phillipe Soupault. I made the translation long ago in a country far away—namely, the 1990s in San Francisco.
In other news: I’m off for a long performance day at the Council Farmer’s Market—last one of the year. I’ll be playing the equivalent of about three sets of old blues, & will also be backing up good friend & music partner Heather Uebelhoer while she fronts her own set of singer-songwriter covers; the Recording King tricone will have its performance debut during Heather’s set. Also: stop press! There’s a new post on Eberle’s blog, Platypuss in Boots! You can check it out right here.
Have a lovely Saturday!
Sporting Goods
Courageous as a postage stamp
he went his way
fingers gently tapping his palms
to count his steps
his heart red as a wild boar
was beating beating
like a pink and green butterfly
From time to time he'd plant a little satin flag
When he'd walked a long way
he sat down to take his rest and fell asleep
But since that day there've been lots of clouds in the sky
lots of birds in the trees
lots of salt in the sea
There are also lots of other things
Philippe Soupaulttranslation © 1990-2010 Jack Hayes
I started reading Sumerian poetry and proverbs in translation about a year ago, and also learning a little bit about the language. Never having come across this body of literature before, I was fascinated by a number of things – these writings go back to 5,000 B.C.E., which is almost unimaginably distant to me, but the proverbs seem vividly alive and human:
“This is the fate of the poor man: when he finds bread, he finds no salt. When he finds salt, he finds no bread. When he finds meat, he finds no condiments. When he finds condiments, he finds no meat. When he finds oil, he has no jar to put it in. When he finds a jar, he has no oil.”
Or, something simple and clever to say before lunch: “Bread is the boat, water the punt-pole.”
The holy woman Enheduana lived around 2300 B.C. and wrote about her evolving relationship with the goddess Inanna. Inanna is a fascinating representation of divinity – warrior, bride and courtesan, occasionally male as well as female, the double evening and morning star, in love with a shepherd, mother of the gods, the Lady of Infinite Manifestation; she gave humanity not only language, but knowledge of arts such as weaving. Her journey to the underworld is the first written version of this descent that would be told in many ways for millennia afterwards. Here’s my translation of one of Innana’s Hymns – the way that sacred marriage in this Hymn unites the sensory and the spiritual is beautiful, I think – even inspiring.
Sumerian Hymn to the Bridegroom
Bridegroom, my heart’s beloved
Your body is golden as uncombed honey
Lion, my heart’s beloved
Your body is golden as sweet honey is golden.
You have transfixed me,
My body trembling like a cup of water in my hands.
Bridegroom, I wish you to lead me to the bedchamber,
You have moved my heart, my body trembles,
Like a cup of water lifted in my hands.
Lion, I long for you to lead me to the dais bed.
Bridegroom, I will kiss you
My caresses are more golden than honey in the mouth,
In the bedchamber, hived with honey
I will know your beauty
Lion, I will kiss you
My kisses are more precious than honey.
Bridegroom, we have found the place of delight.
Tell my mother, she will reward you with fruit,
Tell my father, and receive gifts at his hands.
Your spirit—I know where to befriend your spirit.
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn.
Your heart—I know how to delight your heart,
Lion, stay until dawn touches our house.
You, because you love me,
Give me your kisses. Caress me,
Prince of Love, in the sacred place of delight.
As Shu-sin delights Enlil’s soul,
Let your caresses dwell in me,
Let our meeting be in the place of delight,
Lay your hand on that honeyed place,
Cup your hand over it, caressingly,
Caress it as a silken shift fragrantly
Caresses the skin.
Translation by Eberle Umbach
© 2010
Image is "Inanna," Terracotta relief, Sumer c. 2000 BCE
By request, I’ve included the text of the French original, which comes from Péret’s 1928 collection Le Grand Jeu, sometimes translated as The Great Game, tho I prefer The Big Game myself. I translated Le Grand Jeu in its entirety, as well as & several others works by Péret, during the 1990s while living in San Francisco.
Speaking of translating: I mean to get back to the Apollinaire blog, I really do. I’m kind of stuck on a poem that I hadn’t translated in the past, le Voyageur, but I hope to get back to it soon. I’m also beginning to feel my lack of poetic input over the past month or so as an uncomfortable thing, & am hoping to get back into that mindset very soon.
In the meantime, hope you enjoy the poem, & your Saturday, too!
No Artichokes Without Tomatoes
My tomatoes are riper than your shoes
and your artichokes look like my daughter
In the marketplace
were a tomato and an artichoke
and they both danced around a navel
that turned on its root
Dance tomato and you too artichoke
Your wedding-day will be clear as a carp’s gaze
The shoes that contemplate us
shed tears about it that are over-ripe pears
and if they sing they’ll raise a ruckus like coffins
bursting and stirring up corpses
The corpse slaps his hands like a pebble against a window
and says
No way you’ll get my tomato for that price
Benjamin Péret
translation © Jack Hayes 1990-2010
Sans Tomates Pas D’Artichauts
Mes tomates sont plus mûres que tes sabots
et tes artichauts ressemblent à ma fille
Sur la place du marché
il y avait une tomate et un artichaut
et tous deux dansaient autour d’un navet
qui tournait sur sa racine
Dansez tomate danses artichaut
le jour de vos noces sera clair comme le regard des carpes
Les sabots qui nous contemplent
en pleurent des larmes de poires blettes
et s’ils chantent ils font un bruit de cercueil
qui éclate et fait surgir un cadavre
Le cadavre bat des mains comme un caillou dans une vitre
et dit
Non tu n’auras pas ma tomate à ce prix-là
Benjamin PéretNote on the Pic: I don't tend to "illustrate" poems too much, but I couldn't resist re-posting this photo Eberle took of some of her homegrown tomatoes back in the summer of 08!
As proof that, given enough time, everything comes back around on Robert Frost’s Banjo, I’m posting one of my translations. Long time readers will remember the Translation Tuesday series—while I won’t be going back to a weekly series, I will be posting one or two each month.
Today’s translation—one I did in the 1990s—is from the poem “Aventures d'un orteil” by surrealist Benjamin Péret, from his 1928 collection Le Grand Jeu (The Big Game—sometimes translated as The Great Game). I translated this entire work during the 90s, so I very much immersed myself in Péret’s work.
Speaking of my days translating 20th century French poems, I just wanted to remind folks about my Alcools blog. There are new posts to Alcools each Monday morning (U.S. Mountain Time!), each being one of my translations from Apollinaire’s 1913 masterpiece of the same title. The poems appear in the same order as in the book itself.
In the meantime, hope you enjoy this fun poem by Péret!
Adventures Of A Toe
Get out of the urn
the hortensia said to his accomplice
And you likewise Hortense answered the mandolin
which wasn't a mandolin except under the cover of sunlight
or of a dime fallen at night into a ravine
The dime pricks up like a queen
and says to the rocks with trembling lips
The big crime will take place tomorrow
but there's no crime without a hat
there's no crime without sparks
there's no crime without potash
there's no crime without sheep
And the big crime won't take place
because the earth is empty
Eyes break it off with their specs
and the ministers suppress the hearses
that encumber the Milky Way
Benjamin Péret
translation by Jack Hayes, © 1990-2010
It’s Translation Tuesday again, & today we have a very short poem by Dadaist-Surrealist Tristan Tzara. As is my policy when posting short translations, I’ve also included the French Original.
“Voie”—which means “way” in the sense of “show me the way”—comes from Tzara’s 1928 collection, Indicateur des chemins de coeur (“Signposts on the Heart’s Roads” would be one way of translating this.) It's a truly gem-like miniature, & as such shouldn't be overlaid with explication.
I should mention that this will be the last Translation Tuesday for awhile; I know it's been a popular series with some faithful readers, but I'd like to move in a different direction (& remembering all things are subject to change.) B.N.'s poems will continue to appear on alternate Tuesdays, but beginning next month, there will be a new series to complement her work—details expected this Friday!
Now, on to the poem, & hope you enjoy it!
Way
what is this road that keeps us apart
across which my thought’s hand reaches
a flower’s inscribed on each fingertip
and the end of the road is a flower walking with you
Tristan Tzara
translation by John Hayes © 1990-2010
Voie
quel est ce chemin qui nous sépare
à travers lequel tends la main de ma pensée
une fleur est écrite au bout de chaque doigt
et le bout du chemin est une fleur qui marche avec toi
Tristan Tzara
Pic at top:
Portrait of Tristan Tzara 1927: Lajos Tihanyi
Translation Tuesday is upon us again, & this time around I’m posting a translation I made of a poem by Paul Éluard, an extremely gifted & important poet who played a large role both in the development of the Surrealist movement & later in the French Resistance—which included writing his famous poem “Liberté.” I didn’t translate much of Éluard’s work—I found him difficult to translate, actually. However, I happened upon his poem “Cinq Hai-Kais” in some anthology—I forget which—& was intrigued by the thought of French Surrealist haiku. Since there seems to be quite a bit of interest these days in Haiku—for instance Kat Mortensen’s Kigo of the Kat & Dave King’s current series on his Pics & Poems blog—I thought some of you might find it interesting as well. Here’s my version—since it’s a relatively short post, I’ve added the original French below.
Hope you enjoy the poem, & be sure to tune in next Tuesday for another of B.N.’s poems!
Five Haiku
The wind
Hesitant
Rolls a cigarette out of air.
The mute girl speaks
This is art’s imperfection
This dark language.
The automobile’s really launched
Four martyr’s heads
Roll under the wheels.
Ah! a thousand flames, a fire, the light,
A shadow!
The sun’s following me.
A feather lends a hat
An air of lightness
The chimney’s smoking.
Paul Éluard
translation by John Hayes, © 1990-2010
Cinq Hai-Kais
Le vent
Hésitant
Roule une cigarette d’air.
La muette parle
C’est l’imperfection d’art
Ce langage obscur.
L’automobile est vraiment lancée
Quatre têtes de martyrs
Roulent sous les roues.
Ah! mille flammes, un feu, la lumière,
Une ombre!
Le soleil me suit.
Une plume donne au chapeau
Un air de légèreté
La cheminée fume.
Paul Éluard
Happy Tuesday, folks! This is the final translation for December, so it ends our month of Apollinaire. I haven’t decided what (if any) theme Translation Tuesday will have in January, but do be sure to check in next week for one of B.N.’s fantastic poems.
“Hunting Horns” (“Cors de chasse”) was first published in 1912, tho lines 6-7 (& by extension, line 8) date to an earlier time, when Apollinaire was still working out his failed love affair with Annie, a process that also produced such wonderful poems as “Annie,” “L’Émigrant de Landor Road,” & “La Chanson du Mal-Aimé”—in fact lines 6-7 of this poem appear in a manuscript form of the latter work. This poem specifically is thought to be less about Annie, however, & more about the end of his relationship with Marie Laurencin. It strikes me, however, that this needn’t be an either/or situation, & that the two incidents could readily coalesce in the poetic imagination.
Thomas de Quincey is, of course, the author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater; as I understand it, de Quincey became infatuated during a single encounter with a streetwalker named Annie, but could never find her again. Apollinaire sees de Quincey as drinking opium to her memory—a complex image, since opium is both the stuff of dreams & oblivion.
The notion of “Let’s pass on pass on since it all passes on” (“Passons passons puisque tout passe”) comes up with some regularity in Apollinaire’s verse, most notably perhaps in “Le Pont Mirabeau.” But in a sort of parallel to de Quincey, who is engaged in an activity that potentially heightens fantasy but also blots it out, Apollinaire isn’t content merely to “pass on”—“I will turn back often” (“Je me retournerai souvent.”)
This is a lovely poem—& I should mention that in a sense this post is a two-for-one, since the image at the top of the page is one of Apollinaire’s concrete poems from his Calligrammes. It reads: “Mon Cœur pareil à une flamme renversée” or, in English, “My Heart like an inverted flame.” This is carved on Apollinaire’s grave in Paris’ Père-Lachaise Cemetery.
Hunting Horns
Our story is noble and tragic
As the mask of a tyrant
No perilous magic drama
Not a single indifferent detail
Renders our love pathetic
And Thomas de Quincey drinking
Opium sweet chaste poison
To his poor Anne went dreaming
Let’s pass on pass on since it all passes on
I will turn back often
Memories are hunting horns
Whose sound dies out along the wind
Guillaume Apollinaire
translation by John Hayes, © 1990-2009
We’re having a real holiday here, as proved by the timing of blog posts! I expect to be back on a normal schedule tomorrow, with the final installment of Dad’s Photos.
This month the Weekly Poem series has featured works in translation; we’ve had some great poets: Vallejo, Bachmann & Saba. I’ve been thinking about this week’s selection for awhile, & have been considering poems by two great Russian poets, Anna Akhmatova & Marina Tsevetayeva; the problem was, I just couldn’t settle on a poem by either. This morning as I was looking thru their works, still trying to make a choice, poems by another poet with whom I was unfamiliar, Bella Akhmadulina. As it turns out, I should be familiar with Akhmadulina, & I’ll take steps to correct this in the very near future.
Bella Akhmadulina was born in 1937, & has been called the greatest living Russian language poet by Joseph Brodsky. Early in her career, her poems were suppressed because, like Akhmatova’s, they were considered too personal & intimate. Since the 1980s, however, she has received recognition, including a term as laureate.
Hope you enjoy this wonderful poem—& do seek Akhmadulina out online, where there are a number of translations, or in your local bookseller.
Winter
Winter, to me your gestures are
cold and careful: yes, in
winter there is something
gentle as medicine,
or why else would sickness
put out trusting hands
into that season, from its own
torture and darkness?
Weave your magic then
my love, let the kiss
of one curl of ice
brush over my forehead.
Soon I shall trust any
deception, and look without fear
into the eyes of dogs, as I
press close to the trees:
And forgive, playfully, with a
run, turn and jump; and
after a bout of forgiveness
forgive again,
become like a winter’s day:
empty and oval, though
in comparison to such
presence, always small.
I shall turn to nothing, and
so call over the wall,
not some shadow of myself, but light
I shall not block at all.
Bella Akhmadulina
Translated by Elaine Feinstein
This summer when I was playing at the local farmer’s market, the nephew of the florist shop’s owner (who hosted the market) liked to let loose a red balloon at the end of each day, & as I was packing up my gear I liked to take a minute to watch it rise up in the sky over Council—each time, I was reminded of this lovely poem by Umberto Saba.
Poet/translator John Frederick Nims produced a well-known version of this in blank verse, but as I was preparing for this post, I found the following version online. With apologies to the renowned Mr Nims, I really like the more simple & free lines in this version & so I’m offering it instead.
Umberto Saba is the nom de plume of Umberto Poli, who lived from 1883-1957. His poetry wasn’t received well until relatively late in his life: he didn’t begin winning critical acclaim until after World War II. Since Umberto Saba was Jewish, he had to spend much of the late 1930s thru the mid 1940s in hiding because of the “racial laws” in Fascist Italy. Saba also struggled with severe depression throughout his life.
This is such a wonderfully transparant lyric poem that it needs no further comment. Hope you enjoy it, & have a beautiful Saturday!
A Winter Noon
Who in the moment of my happiness
(God forgive my using a word so grand,
so terrible) reduced my brief delight
nearly to tears? No doubt you'll say: "A certain
beautiful creature who was walking by
and smiled at you." But no: a child's balloon,
a blue, meandering balloon against
the azure of the air, my native sky
never so clear and cold as it was then,
at high noon on a dazzling winter day.
That sky with here and there a wisp of cloud,
and upper windows flaming in the sun,
and faint smoke from a chimney, maybe two,
and over everything, every divine
thing, that globe that had escaped a boy's
incautious fingers (surely he was out there
broadcasting through the crowded square his grief,
his immense grief) between the great facade
of the Stock Exchange and the café where I,
behind a window, watched with shining eyes
the rise and fall of what he once possessed.
Umberto Saba
translated by Geoffrey Brock
It’s Translation Tuesday again, & as promised, we have another translation from Apollinaire—his poem “La Tzigane,” again from the 1913 Alcools collection.
Apollinaire was a master at so many types of lyric poetry—he could construct elaborate & complex long poems, occasional poems, very short gnomic works & odes filled with lyrical lines & obscure references. He also excelled at ballad-like works, tho I myself found these the most difficult to translate. It’s hard to carry a singing tone across from one language to another. Of course, rendering the poem in rhyme would solve part of that—it would have that lyrical sound somewhat intact—tho the sounds of Apollinaire’s rhymes often strike me as subtle on the ear, & therefore heavy rhyming sounds, or rhymes that seemed even slightly forced would, in my opinion, be even less true to the original than unrhymed lines—which I always used in my translations, whether the originals rhymed or not.
The tale told in “La Tzigane” is straightforward—the lovers go to the gypst woman fortune-teller to receive assurance about their love—but her message is unclear. The last line of the first stanza is enigmatic: “De ce puits sortit l’Espérance.” Did Hope rise up from the wells or did it leave them? Also wells (“puits”) seems to be introduced as a pun on the previous line: “Nous lui dîmes adieu et puis”—“et puis” is “and then,” but in combination with the concluding line of the stanza there’s a secondary meaning such as: “We bid her fare-thee-well and then/Hope departed from that then” (with “then” in the final line being a noun.) The words “puis” & “puits” are homonyms.
These word puzzles are a source of fascination, tho when one is in the midst of translating a poem they can make your head hurt! Hope you enjoy this one, without headache—& tune in next Tuesday for another of B.N.’s poems.
The Gypsy Woman
The gypsy knew in advance
Our lives are crossed by nights
We bade her fare-thee-well and then
Hope welled up
Clumsy as a tame bear Love
Danced upright whenever we wished
And the bluebird’s feathers molted
And the mendicants lost their Ave
We all know well enough we’re damned
But hope of love along the way
Makes us ponder hand in hand
What the gypsy had foretold
Guillaume Apollinaire
translated by John Hayes, © 1990-2009
Pic is Hommage à Apollinaire by Marc Chagall
After posting Vallejo’s “Piedra Negra Sobre Piedra Blanca” (“Black Stone Lying on a White Stone”) last Saturday, I decided the theme for December’s will be poetry in translation. Of course, this excludes my translations from the French, so you can expect 20th century poems from other languages.
Today’s poem is by German poet Ingeborg Bachmann, another true great of the last century. I posted her poem “Fog Land” here last year, & I’m happy to post another—her poem “Die gestundete Zeit,” translated by Peter Filkins (whose translation is the one I used) as “Borrowed Time” & by Michael Hamburger as “The Respite.”
Bachmann is a poet who can pare a landscape pared down to very basic elements & then embue it with meaning & emotion. Both this poem & “Fog Land” (“Nebelland” in the original German) create a sort of fairy tale/folk song landscape that is rendered harrowing & harsh.
I’d encourage readers to check out more of Bachmann’s work; she really was a masterful lyric poet—it would be worth knowing German just to be able to translate her work. In the meantime, hope you enjoy this one.
Borrowed Time
Harder days are coming.
The loan of borrowed time
will be due on the horizon.
Soon you must lace up your boots
and chase the hounds back to the marsh farms.
For the entrails of fish
have grown cold in the wind.
Dimly burns the light of lupines.
Your gaze makes out in fog:
the loan of borrowed time
will be due on the horizon.
There your loved one sinks in sand:
it rises up to her windblown hair,
it cuts her short,
it commands her to be silent,
it discovers she’s mortal
and willing to leave you
after every embrace.
Don’t look around.
Lace up your boots.
Chase back the hounds.
Throw the fish into the sea.
Put out the lupines!
Harder days are coming.
Ingeborg Bachmann
translation by Peter Filkins
Today’s poem is stark. As I was driving to Cascade on Friday I drove by Payette Lake; it was 6 degrees Fahrenheit, & the lake, not yet frozen, was shimmering with a cold fog. In the midst of the shallows were some of the coldest white stones I have ever seen, & this great poem by César Vallejo came into my head.
When I say great poem, I’m using the adjective quite literally—to my mind, Vallejo was one of the very greatest 20th century poets. Born in Peru, but later emigrating to France because of persecution for his leftist politics, Vallejo came as close in poetry as anyone to speaking what can’t be spoken, & to giving a voice to the dispossessed—as he was himself.
It has been a difficult week, one in which mortality & the transitory & bearing witness & a sense of existential injustice all have come to my mind. This has resulted not only from some of the recent events I’ve written about, but also how those events have echoed with others.
So now I’m a bit tired—it was not only an emotionally eventful week, but also one in which I travelled a lot, as well as participating (with Eberle & others) in an almost 6 hour rehearsal for the Christmas show we’ll be playing next weekend. There won't be a post on Robert Frost’s Banjo tomorrow, but fear not: I’ll be back on Monday, & hope to have a seasonal musical surprise! There will be another of the San Francisco poems on The Days of Wine & Roses tomorrow, however. It’s a long poem called "Sam Peckinpaugh’s Mexican Xmas."
& speaking of The Days of Wine & Roses, good blog friend Sandra Leigh of the very wonderful Amazing Voyages of the Turtle sent a nice bouquet to that blog as well as several others. I’ve always loved Sandra’s writing, & while I know a lot of readers here know her blog, if you’re one who doesn’t, please check it out!
Hope to see some of you at The Days of Wine & Roses tomorrow. Have a lovely weekend, & please enjoy this amazing poem.
Black Stone Lying on a White Stone
I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember,
I will die in Paris—and I don’t step aside—
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.
It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.
César Vallejo is dead. Everyone beat him,
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also
with a rope. These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads…
César Vallejo
translated by Robert Bly & John Knoepfle
It’s not only Translation Tuesday, but it’s also a new month! There are five Tuesdays in December, so I’ll be posting translations on December 1st, 15th & 29th; we’ll have B.N.’s poems on the 8th & the 22nd. The three translations all will be poems by Guillaume Apollinaire.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect that I’ve posted more poems by Apollinaire on Robert Frost’s Banjo than those by any other poet. His poetry has resonated with me for many years—I remember how electrified I was by Beckett’s translation of “Zone,” & after reading this, I sought out Apollinaire in both French & English translation. During my spate of translating French poetry I devoted a lot of time to his 1913 collection Alcools & translated the better part of it.
The picture at the top of the post is Henri Rousseau’s “La muse inspirant le poète” (“The muse inspiring the poet”); it shows Apollinaire & the painter Marie Laurencin—Laurencin & Apollinaire were lovers, & this poem is dedicated to her. However, there’s apparently some question as to whether this poem was actually composed before they met!
The final line does present a rather obscure reference: the French word that I’ve translated “thrice majestic” is “Trismégiste,” & is the epithet attached to a form of the Greek god Hermes (actually a deity that combined aspects of Hermes with the Egyptian god Thoth). A number of writings dating from before the Christian era are attributed to “Thrice Majestic Hermes” (as he was often styled in English translations), & these writings later became important texts for alchemists & magicians in the Middle Ages & Renaissance. You can read more about Hermes Trismegistus on Wikipedia here.
Hope you enjoy the poem!
Twilight
à Mademoiselle Marie Laurencin
Brushed by the dead’s shades
On the grass where day grows weary
Columbine strips naked
And observes herself in the pond
A twilight charlatan
Boasts of tricks he’s about to do
The colorless sky is spangled
With stars as pale as milk
On stage the pasty harlequin
Begins by greeting the spectators
Magicians from Bohemia
Several fairies and some sorcerers
And then unhooking a star
He holds it in outstretched arms
While a hanged man claps
The cymbals with his feet
A blind man sings a baby lullaby
A doe goes past with her fawns
And the dwarf sadly watches
While harlequin grows thrice majestic
Guillaume Apollinaire
translation by John Hayes, © 1990-2009
It’s Tuesday morning here in beautiful downtown Indian Valley, & this week it’s Translation Tuesday. The selection is by Blaise Cendrars, from his 1919 Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques (Nineteen Elastic Poems), which I translated while living in Baghdad by the Bay in the 90s.
The poem is “Crépitiments,” & the title is just one of the interesting words & phrases the intrepid translator is going to encounter here. The translation is literal, but the clue to its meaning comes in the first line: the “cracklings” or “sputterings” are radio static, tho of course, radio static is carrying some metaphorical weight throughout. We also come across the odd word “arcencielesques” as an adjective modifying “dissonances” in the first line (“dissonances”—same in French & English!) I’ve seen this translated as “rainbowed,” & a tad more literally it could be “rainbowesque,” but I liked the sound of “rainbowish,” especially as it gives a thread of internal short “i” sounds thru the opening stanza.”
The final line of the first stanza contains the very untranslatable “On,” which can mean anything from “one” (e.g., “as one knows”—that “one”) to “they” to simply indicating a construction that usually is passive in English. “On se dit” is the sign you see in northern Vermont, for instance: “On se dit français ici”—“French is spoken here.” The other moment I’d point to is “Well done”—the English pun is also present in the French phrase “bien fait.”
Finally, Bodin was a 16th century French jurist who was known for his cruel persecution for those accused of witchcraft.
Enjoy the poem, & have a fine Tuesday!
Cracklings
The rainbowish dissonances of the Tower during its wireless
transmission
Noon
Midnight
Shit is spoken in every corner of the universe
Sparks
Chrome yellow
We're in touch
The ocean liners approach from every coast
Back off
Every watch is synchronized
And the clocks strike
Paris-Midi announces that a German professor was eaten by
cannibals in the Congo
Well done
This evening L'Intransigeant published some verses for postcards
It's stupid when all the astrologers burglarize stars
We don't see them again
I interrogate the sky
The Weather Bureau predicts bad weather
There is no futurism
There is no simultaneity
Bodin has burned all the witches
There's nothing
There are no more horoscopes and we have to work
I'm uptight
The Spirit
I'm going to take a trip
And I'm sending this stripped poem to my friend R ...
Blaise Cendrars
translated by John Hayes, © 1990-2009
Long-time readers of Robert Frost’s Banjo know I love Apollinaire’s poetry, & today’s offering for Translation Tuesday is one of his shorter poems from the 1913 collection Alcools.
This poem has always fascinated me because of its compression & deep feeling; because it’s short, I’ve also included the French original. A couple of points: the French word “anges” of course means “angels,” but it can also mean “angelfish.” I don’t know any way of delivering both terms simultaneously in English. The pi-mus fish is a mythical creature that swims coupled, only having one eye apiece.
Hope you enjoy this.
The Door
The hotel door smiles terribly
What has this done to me mother
Being the clerk for whom alone nothing exists
Pi-mus fish moving coupled through deep sad water
Fresh angels disembarked at Marseilles yesterday morning
I hear a distant song dying and dying again
Humble as I am who am worth nothing
Child I've given you what I had labor
Guillaume Apollinaire
translation by John Hayes © 1990-2009
La Porte
La porte de l'hôtel sourit terriblement
Qu'est-ce que cela peut me faire ô ma maman
D'être cet employé pour qui seul rien n'existe
Pi-mus couples allant dans la profonde eau triste
Anges frais débarqués à Marseille hier matin
J'entends mourir et remourir un chant lointain
Humble comme je suis qui ne suis rien qui vaille
Enfant je t'ai donné ce que j'avais travaille
Guillaume Apollinaire
The picture shows Marie Laurencin’s painting Apollinaire et ses amis - 1909
It’s the last Tuesday in October, so we’re bringing André Breton month to a close on Translation Tuesday. Also, don’t forget to tune in this afternoon (if you’re on this particular continent) for the next poem by our good pal & Poetic Mystery Guest, B.N. Starting next month, Translation Tuesday will alternate with B.N.’s poems, so translations will appear on the 3rd & the 17th, & B.N.’s poems will appear on the 10th & 24th.
“The Forest in the Axe” (“La Forêt dans la hache”) comes from Breton’s 1932 collection, La Revolver à cheveux blancs (The White-haired Revolver), as did “The Verb To Be” & “Murderous Rescue.” Re-reading my translation for the first time in a good long while, this examination of physical & spiritual death kept bringing me back to the Eluard’s line that’s quoted in the film Alphaville: “mourir de ne pas mourir” (“dying of not dying). There’s more than a little of this in the present poem.
Thanks everybody for being so enthusiastic about the Breton translations, & hope you enjoy this one.
The Forest In The Axe
Someone just died but I’m still living although I no longer have a soul. I have nothing but a transparent body inside of which transparent doves throw themselves on a transparent dagger held by a transparent hand. I see effort in all its beauty, real effort that nothing can calculate, just before the last star makes its appearance. The body I live in like a hut and on lease detests the soul I had that’s floating in the distance. It’s time to be done with that famous duality for which I’ve taken so much blame. The time’s past when lightless and ringless eyes drew turbulence from the pools of color. There’s no more red or blue. The unanimous red-blue fades away in turn like a robin redbreast in the hedges of neglect. Someone just died— neither you nor me nor them exactly but all of us, save me who survives in many respects: I’m still cold, for instance. Enough of that. Bring fire! Fire! Or better yet some rocks so I can break them, or better yet some birds so I can follow them, or better yet some corsets so I can lace them tight around dead women’s waists, and this will resuscitate them and they’ll love me with their tiring hair, their dishevelled glances. Bring fire, so we don’t die for a glazed fig, bring fire so the Italian straw hat isn’t just a performance. Hello, lawn! Hello, rain! It’s me, the unreal breath of this garden. The black crown placed on my head is a cry of migratory crows because until now there were only those buried alive, not many for that matter, and now I’m the first of the aired-out dead. But I have a body not to be undone, to force the reptiles to admire me. Bloody hands, mistletoe eyes, mouth of dead leaves and glass (the dead leaves stir under the glass, they aren’t as red as one might think, when indifference lays bare its voracious methods), hands to pluck you, minuscule thyme of my dreams, rosemary of my extreme pallor. I don’t have a shadow anymore. Ah, my shadow, my dear shadow. I have to write a long letter to the shadow I’ve lost. I’ll start with My dear shadow. Shadow, my dearest. You see. There’s no more sun. There’s only one tropic out of two. There’s no more than one man out of a thousand. There’s only one woman out of the absence of thought that characterizes in pure black this damned epoch. That woman holds a bouquet of everlastings in the shape of my blood.
André Breton
translation John Hayes © 1990-2009
It’s Translation Tuesday once again on Robert Frost’s Banjo & time for more André Breton. Today’s poem (“Ligne brisée”) is a relatively early piece from Breton’s 1923 collection Clair De Terre (“Earthlight”). As is fitting given the poem’s title, the poem is essentially fragmentary, tho the lines beginning “We” do tend to create some sort of cohesion, at least in the sense of a return.
Hope you enjoy it!
Broken Line
for Raymond Roussel
We dry bread and water of the sky’s prisons
We love’s cobblestones all interrupted signals
Who personify the graces of this poem
Nothing explains us beyond death
At that hour when night slips on its polished ankle boots to go out
We take time as it comes
Like a wall adjoining those of our prisons
Spiders bring the boats into anchorage
There’s only touch there’s nothing to see
Later you learn who we are
Our labors are still well protected
But it’s dawn on the last shore the weather grows worse
Soon we’ll carry our burdensome luxury elsewhere
We’ll carry the plague’s luxury elsewhere
We a bit of hoarfrost on human firewood
And that’s all
The brandy dresses wounds in a cellar through an air-vent
through which is seen a road lined with big empty patiences
Don’t ask where you are
We dry bread and water of the sky’s prisons
The card game in the starlight
We scarcely lift an edge of the veil
The mender of crockey works on a ladder
He seems young despite the concession
We wear yellow in mourning for him
The treaty hasn’t yet been signed
The sisters of charity provoke
Flights on the horizon
Do we perhaps palliate good and evil at the same time
It’s thus that the will of dreams is carried out
People who are able
Our rigors are lost in the regret of what crumbles
We are the leading men of the most terrible seduction
The crook of junkman Morning on blossoming rags
Casts us to the fury of treasures that are long in the tooth
Add nothing to the shame of your own pardon
It’s enough to take up arms for a bottomless end
Your eyes with ridiculous tears that relieve us
The belly of words is golden this evening and nothing’s
in vain any more
André Breton
translation by John Hayes, © 1990-2009
As promised, more André Breton on Translation Tuesday. Today’s offering is a prose poem, “Le Verbe être,” &, like last week’s offering, comes from Breton’s 1932 La Revolver à cheveux blancs (The White-haired Revolver). There’s one particularly pesky line in this one: “Il fait un temps du temps.” The phrase “Il fait un temps” typically is used to describe weather, since the French noun “le temps” refers both to “time” & “weather.” My solution—in order to keep some semblance of this gloriously untranslatable pun, was “The weather’s time”—hoping to have some echo of “the weather’s fine” in that. I’ve also seen this translated as “It is time weather.”
I’ve long been fascinated with the prose poem form, something I’ve worked in myself, & this is a beautiful example of the form. Hope you enjoy it.
& if you can, please check in later today for an exciting new poetic feature right here on Robert Frost's Banjo!
The Verb To Be
I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair doesn't have wings, it isn’t necessarily found at a cleared table on a terrace, in the evening, by the seashore. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of minor facts like seeds that desert one furrow for another at nightfall. It’s not the moss on a stone and it’s not the drinking glass. It’s a boat pelted by snow, if you will, like birds that are falling and their blood lacks the least thickness. I know despair in its broad outlines. A very small shape delineated by jewels of hair. It’s despair. A pearl necklace for which no one can find the clasp and whose existence doesn’t hang by even a thread, that’s despair. We don’t speak about the rest. We haven’t finished despairing if we begin. Myself I despair of the lampshade about four o’clock, I despair of the fan about midnight, I despair of the condemned man’s last cigarette. I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair has no heart, the hand always stays out-of-breath in despair, in despair whose death mirrors can never tell us. I live off this despair that charms me. I love this bluefly that flies through the sky at the hour when stars are singing. I know in its broad outlines despair with its long slender fissures, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I get up each day like everybody and I stretch my arms against flowered wallpaper, I don’t remember anything and it’s always with despair that I discover night’s beautiful uprooted trees. The air in the bedroom is fair as drumsticks. The weather’s time. I know despair in its broad outlines. It’s like the wind in the curtains that gives me a helping hand. Can anyone imagine such despair! Fire! Ah they are still going to come... Help! Those here that are falling down stairs... And the newspaper advertisements, and the electric signs along the canal. Get going, sandpile, you old sandpile! In its broad outlines, despair has no importance. It is menial labor of trees that are going to make a forest yet, menial labor of stars that are going to make one fewer day yet, it is menial labor of fewer days that are yet going to make my life.
André Breton
translation John Hayes, © 1990-2009
Happy Tuesday everybody! I’ve decided for no apparently good reason to make October André Breton month on Translation Tuesday. As regular readers know, I’ve posted a handful of Breton poems in the past & have written about this rather remarkable man in my introductions to those posts. If you’re not familiar with Breton, I’ll say I think of him as the “godfather of surrealism,” both in the positive & negative connotations of that term—he wrote Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, co-authored a book of automatic writing— Les Champs Magnétiques—with Phillipe Soupault, & was certainly a charismatic figure in the Surrealist movement. Breton also wrote some really remarkable poetry.
“Murderous Rescue” (in French “Le Grand Secours meurtrier”) comes from Breton’s 1932 collection, La Revolver à cheveux blancs (The White-haired Revolver), & is an examination of one of Breton’s great heroes, the 19th century Comte de Lautrémont (the pen-name of Isidore Lucien Ducasse), who wrote the proto-surrealist Maldoror, as well as some poetry. It seems certain that Breton’s poem is an examination of the surreal process as embodied in Lautréamont's writing. The photo up top isn’t Breton, by the way—it’s the only known photo of Ducasse.
Hope you enjoy this one!
Murderous Rescue
Lautréamont's statue
With its pedastal of quinine tablets
In the open country
The author of the Poems is lying flat on his face
And near him a dubious gila monster keeps vigil
His left ear laid to the ground is a glass box
Filled with a lightning bolt the artist hasn't forgotten to depict
above him
The sky-blue balloon in the shape of a Turk's head
The swan of Montevideo whose wings are outspread and always
ready to flap
When it's a question of luring the other swans from the horizon
Opens upon the false universe two eyes each a different color
The one iron sulfate on the lashes' creeping vines the other
diamond-studded mud
He sees the great funnelled hexagon in which the machines will
shrink soon
The ones man's determined to cover with bandages
With his radium candle he rekindles the human crucible
The sex of feathers the oil paper brain
He presides over doubly nocturnal ceremonies whose point once
allowing for fire is to transpose the hearts of men and birds
I have access near him as a convulsionary
The ravishing women who usher me into the rose-upholstered
railroad car
Where a hammock they've taken pains to make from their hairs is
reserved for me
For all eternity
Enjoin me before departure not to catch cold while reading the daily
It appears that the statue near which my nerve ending's witchgrass
Reaches its destination is tuned each night like a piano
André Breton
translation John Hayes, © 1990-2009
Translation Tuesday returns! Today’s offering is a poem by Swiss-born writer Blaise Cendrars (born Frédéric Louis Sauser). Cendrars was born in 1887, & began writing poetry in the early 20th century while apprenticed to a Swiss watchmaker in St Petersburg; he later studied medicine, but after traveling to Paris & New York, he became convinced that poetry was his calling, & wrote such significant long modernist poems as Les Pâques à New York & La Prose du Transsibérien et la petite Jehanne de France. He also befriended a number of avant-garde artists & writers, including Chagall, Modigliani (note the portrait at the top of the post—one of the very few images of Cendrars in which a cigarette isn’t perched on his lower lip), & perhaps most significantly, Apollinaire. Apollinaire & Cendrars became good friends, & in addition to mutual respect, it’s usually thought there was considerable poetic influence between the two.
Like Apollinaire, Cendrars served in the French Army in World War I—also like Apollinaire, he was seriously wounded. In Cendrars’ case, he lost his right arm—one of his war memoirs was titled La Main Coupée ("The Severed Hand"). Cendrars continued to write, tho he turned away from poetry in the 1920s, & became involved in the burgeoning film industries. He was listed as a “Jewish writer of ‘French expression’” by the Gestapo in World War II, but he survived the war, & died in 1961 after his health failed following a stroke.
Cendrars is another poet I like very well—he can be prismatic, & his lines have great energy. The poem “Contrastes” comes from his 1919 volume Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques (19 Elastic Poems). I translated the entire sequence in the 90s, & I’m sure more will appear here.
Hope you enjoy this one.
Contrasts
The windows of my poetry are wide open on the boulevards and in their display cases
Glitter
Gemstones of light
Listen to the limousines’ violins and the Linotypes xylophones
The scrub painter rubs his hands on the sky’s towel
Everything’s stained with color
And the hats of the women who pass by are comets in the evening’s conflagration
Unity
There’s no more unity
All the clocks now point to midnight after having been set back ten minutes
There’s no more time.
There’s no more money.
In the Assembly
They’re watering down the raw materials’ marvelous elements
At the bar
The blue-collar workmen are drinking red wine
Every Saturday game hen
They’re playing
They’re betting
From time to time a gangster passes by in a car
Or a child plays with l’Arc de Triomphe…
I advise Mr Big to put his protégés up at the Eiffel Tower.
Today
Change of ownership
The Holy Spirit on sale in the smallest shops
I read with rapture swarms of calico
Of poppies
It’s only the pumice-stones of the Sorbonne which have never bloomed
The Samaritan sign plows through the Seine
And over by Saint-Séverin
I hear
The streetcars’ relentless bells
It’s raining electric light bulbs
Mountrouge East Station Metro North South waterbuses world
All’s halo
Depth
Rue de Buci they’re hawking L’Intransigeant and Paris-Sport
The sky’s airdrome is now, ablaze, a Cimabue painting
When in the foreground
Men are
Long
Black
Sad
And are smoking, factory chimneys
Blaise Cendrars
translation: John Hayes, © 1990-2009
