Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  Ashbery and Translation

  Asked by his interviewer Guy Bennett, “How would you define the relationship between your own writing and the work you translate?” Ashbery answers, “Sometimes I see curious resemblances.”27 Locating lines with clear influences and determining subtler forms of those resemblances in the vast body of Ashbery’s work will be a task to keep his readers occupied for many years.28 Ashbery himself gives few precise pointers; in interviews, in fact, he often denies having been influenced, then offers a clue or two a moment later. He muses on this response himself, in conversation with his friend the novelist and Oulipian Harry Mathews:

  JA: People always ask me what influence my years in France had on my work. Of course I’m incapable of answering, but I’ve often felt that there really wasn’t much influence, except that it’s very nice to live in a beautiful, cultured city with very good food—surely this played an important part in it. But I never felt that French poetry, with a few exceptions—Roussel, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, etc.…

  HM: Reverdy, no?

  JA: Reverdy, yes, of course—were very influential. In fact, I’m not sure how influential any of them were. I admire them; they are very great writers. But except for a few fortuitious resemblances to Reverdy or Roussel, they don’t seem to have influenced me directly.29

  The word “directly” is, clearly, the crux of the matter. For example, in response to a more direct question from Bennett—“Has your work as a translator influenced the way you write poetry?”—Ashbery replies, “Once in a while, but in ways I often don’t notice right away and am unable to pinpoint.” He does, however, reveal in this 2002 interview that, at that time, he considered his most successful translations to be de Chirico’s “Monsieur Dudron’s Adventure” and Roussel’s Documents to Serve as an Outline. Then he notes something about the Roussel work that sounds like an echo of one of his own poetic techniques: “The Roussel [translation] presented difficulties since he tried to express complicated things in as few words as possible, and pushed this method to extremes.”30 Ashbery’s own poems supply copious examples of this technique, from the early poem “America” in The Tennis Court Oath, with its gaps in narrative—

  a hand put up

  lips—a house

  A minute the music stops.31

  —to, years later, associative disjunctions like those in “Notes from the Air” from Hotel Lautréamont:

  A yak is a prehistoric cabbage: of that, at least, we may be sure.

  But tell us, sages of the solarium, why is that light

  still hidden back there, among house-plants and rubber sponges?32

  Roussel is, says Ashbery, “one of the writers I enjoy reading most.”33 His many years of translating, introducing, and publishing the works of Roussel were especially rewarding, although any influence was often subtle. Douglas Crase points out that the 1962 poem “Into the Dusk-Charged Air,” “with its Rousselian list of every river in the encyclopedia, was published in the same summer as his translation of the first chapter from Roussel’s Impressions of Africa.”34 Mark Ford asks him in 2003, “Do you think your Roussel research affected your own poetry? Were your experiments with words in this period a response to his procédé?” Ashbery replies,

  I don’t know. I’ve often thought about that, and thought that there must be some influence—otherwise, why was I so passionately interested in him? But I don’t see much evidence of it—except in the digressions of Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique, which in a much less visible way I use regularly.35

  Moreover, Roussel’s work touched chords in Ashbery that reflect his earliest encounters with studying the French language. Ford continues, referring to the artwork that accompanies Roussel’s cantos, “How about the relationship between the banality of the illustrations by Zo in that book, and the difficulties the cantos themselves present? I often feel your work spans exactly those sorts of polarities,” to which Ashbery answers, “Yes, I think that was what attracted me to Roussel even before I knew how to read him. These illustrations were exactly like the ones I had in a French reader when I was in high school, and the elaborate punctuation was like an exercise in a textbook.”36

  There are many other subtle examples of the French language’s influence on Ashbery’s work. In 1980, David Remnick asked Ashbery directly about the effects on his poetry from the process of translating: “You’ve translated from the French several authors like Breton and Roussel. Does translation affect your work in any way?”37 Ashbery at first, as usual, questions any such influence, but then goes on to recall his experiences with de Chirico’s Hebdomeros, “in which translation did work in an influential way”:

  I found that the very curious style of this work got into my own work and would keep recurring long after I had done this translation. It was 1964, I think. When I go back and reread that book, I am aware that there are echoes of it even today in my poetry but I was never aware of those echoes while I was writing my poem.

  Remnick pursues the question, saying, “Is it a particular tone or syntax in de Chirico?” Ashbery’s response offers hints about his own work: “It’s a slightly ironical, rhetorical tone. A very expansive tone. His sentences go on for pages in the novel and, in the course of them, very unexpected things will happen. Sudden shifts and inversions.” Shapiro recognizes a direct influence from de Chirico in Ashbery’s “The System,” “felt most acutely in the long sentences with their interminable hyphenations and parentheses, leading only to cul-de-sacs.”38 Ashbery may also reference here the familiar sense of surprise and irony in his work, where a poem may contain reversals, inversions, or paradoxes, as in “April Galleons”:

  Just being under them

  Sometimes makes you wonder how much you know

  And then you wake up and you know, but not

  How much.39

  An early paradox reads, “It had been raining but / It had not been raining” (Ashbery’s italics, from “A Boy,” in Some Trees).40 Similarly, he may finish a poem with an unexpected question, as in the lines “Why do I tell you these things? / You are not even here,” from “This Room” in Your Name Here.41

  One wonders at times whether these “curious resemblances” are simply what those with similar sensibilities naturally share, as they individually create lasting works of art and literature in a timeless, borderless dialogue with each other. Certainly, Ashbery has always had high expectations of the benefits a poet might gain by putting in the hard work of Englishing French texts. Reviewing Marianne Moore’s book Tell Me, Tell Me in 1966, Ashbery finds a “new, tough simplicity” in her work that “might be a result of the discipline imposed by her La Fontaine translations”: “Forced to avoid digressions and to keep syntax and verbal texture severely uncluttered, Miss Moore created a style whose tense, electric clarity is unlike anything in poetry except perhaps La Fontaine, and even this is debatable.”42 The miraculous result of this labor for Moore, and indeed for Ashbery, is another lovely oxymoron: Not only does translation transform a poet’s original work, but also the poet can offer us translations “closer to the originals than the originals themselves,”43 as the intuitive, interpretive alchemy of translation enhances and deepens our sense of a text, bringing out the best of its original. One such example of the poet’s instinct in action appears here in the translation of d’Aulnoy’s seventeenth-century fairy tale “The White Cat.” As Marina Warner notes, “John Ashbery’s only liberty with the text” has been, when choosing a name for a magical parrot, to substitute “Sinbad” for “Perroquet.” “As The Arabian Nights were soon to appear in Antoine Galland’s influential translation (1704–17), Sinbad seems an apt anticipation.”44 A poet’s liberties with a text should at best give it apt but fabulous wings.

  “I don’t think,” Mathews stated in 1993, “John’s intermittent career as translator has attracted the attention it deserves; it would, as they say, reward careful study, not just for the practice of translation itself but for the kind of literature translated, some of it unknown in Englis
h before.”45 We hope that attention to the canon circumscribed in his Collected French Translations will not only go a long way toward correcting that lacuna in Ashbery studies, but, on a much greater scale, will also help to balance what some observers have perceived as a parochialism in American letters. Such an attitude might be responsible for the statement of the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl, who reportedly once claimed, “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”46 No one who now reads these translations, which document a lifetime’s participation in French literature, could ever mistake how fully Ashbery’s American voice has resounded in that big dialogue. We hope that readers who visit and stay awhile here will enjoy these translations, finding many answers and asking fruitful new questions as they read Ashbery reading others.

  MARIE-CATHERINE D’AULNOY

  (1650–1705)

  THE WHITE CAT

  There was once a king who had three sons, stout and courageous lads; he feared that the desire to reign might seize hold of them before his death; there were even rumors that they were seeking to acquire vassals, so as to deprive him of his kingdom. The king felt his age, yet he was still sound of mind and body, and by no means inclined to surrender a position he filled with much dignity; therefore he concluded that the best way to live in peace was to tease them with promises which he would always be able to avoid fulfilling.

  He summoned them to his chamber, and after having spoken to them in a most kindly manner, he added: You will no doubt agree with me, dear children, that my advanced age no longer allows me to pursue affairs of state with the zeal of times gone by; I am afraid that my subjects may suffer because of this, and wish to place my crown on the head of one or another of you; but it is only right that, in view of such a prize, you seek various ways of pleasing me, even as I prepare my plans for retiring to go and live in the country. It seems to me that a little dog, one that is faithful, clever, and pretty, would keep me company very well; hence without choosing my eldest son, neither my youngest, I declare to you that whichever of you three brings me the most beautiful little dog will at once become my heir. The princes were surprised by their father’s inclination to have a little dog, but the two younger ones might turn it to their advantage, and accepted with pleasure the commission to go look for one; the eldest was too timid or too respectful to argue his rights. They took leave of the king; he gave them money and jewels, stipulating that they return without fail in a year, on the same day and at the same hour, to bring him their little dogs.

  Before setting out they traveled to a castle at only a league’s distance from the city. They brought their closest confidants with them, and, amid much feasting, each brother swore eternal loyalty to the other two, that they would proceed to act without jealousy or bitterness, and that the most fortunate would always share his fortune with the others; finally they went away, promising that on their return they would foregather in the same castle before going together to meet their father; they wanted no one to accompany them, and changed their names so as not to be recognized.

  Each journeyed by a different route: The two eldest had many adventures; but I am concerned only with those of the youngest. He was gracious, with a merry and witty temperament and a handsome mien; his body was nobly proportioned, his features regular, he had beautiful teeth, and much skill in all the activities that befit a prince. He sang agreeably; he plucked the lute and the theorbo with a delicate touch that people found charming. He knew how to paint; in a word, he was highly accomplished; and as for his valor, it verged on fearlessness.

  Hardly a day passed without his buying dogs, big ones, little ones, greyhounds, mastiffs, bloodhounds, hunting dogs, spaniels, barbets, lapdogs; no sooner had he found a handsome one than he found one handsomer still, and parted with the first so as to keep the other; for it would have been impossible for him to travel with thirty or forty thousand dogs, and he wanted neither gentlemen-in-waiting, nor menservants, nor pages in his retinue. He kept pushing forward, with no idea of where he was going; suddenly he was overtaken by darkness, thunder, and rain, in a forest whose paths he could no longer distinguish.

  He took the first road he came to, and after walking for a long time he spied a dim light, which convinced him that there must be a house nearby where he might take shelter until the morrow. Guided by the light, he arrived at the gate of a castle, the most magnificent one that could ever be imagined. The gate was made of gold, studded with carbuncles, whose pure and vivid glow illuminated the whole countryside. It was the one the prince had glimpsed from far away; the castle walls were of translucent porcelain in which various colors were mingled, and on which was depicted the history of all the fairies, from the creation of the world down to the present: The famous adventures of Peau d’ne, of Finessa, of the Orange Tree, of Graciosa, of the Sleeping Beauty, of the Great Green Worm, and of a hundred others, were not omitted. He was delighted to recognize the Goblin Prince, for the latter was his first cousin once removed. The rain and the stormy weather prevented him from tarrying further while getting drenched to the bone, besides which he could see nothing at all in places where the light of the carbuncles didn’t penetrate.

  He returned to the golden gate; he saw a deer’s hoof fastened to a chain made entirely of diamonds; he wondered at the negligence of those who lived in the castle; for, he said to himself, what is there to prevent thieves from coming to cut away the chain and rip out the carbuncles? They would be rich forever.

  He pulled on the deer’s hoof, and at once heard the tinkling of a bell, which must have been gold or silver judging from the tone; after a moment the door opened, but he saw naught but a dozen hands that floated in the air, each holding a torch. He was so astonished that he paused at the threshold, and then felt other hands pushing him from behind with some violence. He went forward in trepidation, and, as a precaution, placed his hand on the hilt of his sword; but on entering a vestibule all encrusted with porphyry and lapis, he heard two ravishing voices singing these words:

  Fear not these hands in the air,

  And in this dwelling place

  Fear naught but a lovely face

  If your heart would flee love’s snare.

  He could hardly believe that such a gracious invitation would bring him harm; and feeling himself pushed toward an enormous gate of coral, which opened as soon as he approached, he entered a salon paneled with mother-of-pearl, and then several chambers variously decorated, and so rich with paintings and precious stones, that he experienced a kind of enchantment. Thousands of lights attached to the walls, from the vaulted ceiling down to the floor, lit up parts of the other apartments, which were themselves filled with chandeliers, girandoles, and tiers of candles; in sum, the magnificence was such that he could scarcely believe his eyes, even as he looked at it.

  After he had passed through sixty chambers, the hands ceased to guide him; he saw a large easy chair, which moved all by itself close to the hearth. At the same moment the fire lit itself, and the hands, which seemed to him very beautiful, white, small, plump, and well proportioned, undressed him, for he was drenched as I have already said, and feared he might catch cold. He was given, without his seeing anybody, a shirt splendid enough to wear on one’s wedding day, and a dressing gown made of cloth-of-gold, embroidered with tiny emeralds which formed numbers. The disembodied hands brought him a table on which his toilet articles were laid out. Nothing could have been more elegant; they combed his hair with a deft and light touch which pleased him mightily. Then they clothed him anew, but not with his own clothes; much richer ones had been provided. He silently admired everything that was happening around him, and sometimes he succumbed to shudders of fear that he was not quite able to suppress.

  After he had been powdered, curled, perfumed, decked out, tidied up, and rendered more handsome than Adonis, the hands led him into a salon that was superbly gilded and furnished. All round the room one saw the
histories of the most famous Cats: Rodillardus1 hanged by his paws at the council of rats; Puss-in-Boots of the Marquis de Carabas; the scrivener Cat; the Cat who turned into a woman, witches turned into cats, the witches’ sabbath and all its ceremonies; in a word, nothing was more remarkable than these pictures.

  The table had been laid; there were two places, each set with a golden casket which held the knives, forks, and spoons; the buffet astonished him with its abundance of rock-crystal vases and a thousand rare gems. The prince was wondering for whom these two places were laid, when he saw cats taking their place in a small orchestra set up just for the occasion; one held up a score covered with the most extraordinary notes in the world; another a scroll of paper which he used to beat time; the others had small guitars. Suddenly each one began to miaow in a different key, and to scratch the guitar strings with their claws; it was the strangest music ever heard. The prince would have thought himself in hell, had he not found the palace too wonderful to admit of such an unlikely circumstance; but he stopped his ears and laughed uncontrollably as he watched the various posturings and grimaces of these newfangled musicians.

  He was reflecting on the queer things that had already happened to him in this castle, when he saw a tiny figure scarcely a cubit in height entering the room. This puppet was draped in a long veil of black crepe. Two cats attended her; they were dressed in mourning, wearing cloaks, with swords at their sides; a large cortege of cats followed; some carried rat traps filled with rats, others brought mice in cages.

  The prince was struck dumb with amazement; he knew not what to think. The black figurine approached, lifting its veil, and he perceived the most beautiful White Cat that ever was or ever will be. She appeared to be very young and very sad; she began to miaow so gently and sweetly that it went straight to his heart; she spoke to the prince: Welcome, O king’s son; my miaowing majesty is pleased with the sight of you. Madam Cat, said the prince, you are most generous to receive me with so much hospitality, but you seem to be no ordinary beastie; your gift of speech and the superb castle you own are evident proofs of this. King’s son, replied the White Cat, I pray you, pay me no more compliments; I am simple in speech and my manners, but my heart is kind. Come, she continued, let dinner be served, and let the musicians cease, for the prince doesn’t understand what they are saying. And are they saying something, Madam? he inquired. I am sure they are, she continued; we have poets here gifted with infinite powers of wit, and if you rest awhile among us, you will have cause to be convinced. I have only to listen to you to believe it, said the prince gallantly; but then, Madam, I consider you a rare Cat indeed.