* * *
The young Englishman Robert Cross has a twin sister, Mabel. Often they entertain the obscure poet Oakburn, who, though feeble and of ripe age, loves Mabel. At each occasion, his place is set with an evocatively labeled bottle of his tonic, the celebrated Vin du Horse Guard. Oakburn rhymes an amorous dialogue between an old oak and a tiny flower avid for loving protection. He purposely sends it to Mabel, writing PROLOGUE, a word pregnant with things to come, below the title. The clarity of the illusion causes Robert and Mabel to burst out laughing, and they agree to ridicule the grotesque suitor publicly. Before a large roomful of guests who find it wildly funny, Robert, without the least suspicion of danger, swears to Oakburn that he will give him his twin sister on the day when—mad supposition—each line of his verse will fetch the price of a hectare of land. Oakburn knows the vain and extremely rich Draham who, among his other possessions, owns immense farmlands which the invasion of a microbe has rendered forever useless. He addresses him a poem padded with praises, in which he requests the dreamed-of price—which he obtains thanks to the noxious microbe and to intoxicating prospects of publication in a major newspaper. Badgered forthwith, Robert steals away at the sight of his sister in tears. Armed with his witnessed oath, Oakburn subpoenas Robert, who, resorting to a play on words, claims that he had promised Oakburn nothing more than his pair of opera glasses.15 In view of his age and appearance, the judge decides against Oakburn, who, furious, calls him sotto voce a hireling.
* * *
Versed in the knowledge of arms, the haughty king Badir III of the Ukraine, who, ostentatious, never issues forth without an escort of twelve pages, has founded a strong army to subdue the neighboring peoples and establish an empire. Afflicted with a mortal malady, he survives thanks to a miracle which roots deep within him the faith in his destiny of conqueror. Spurred on by frustrated hopes, the neighboring kings, possible future vassals, deliberate—and decide to profit from the fact that he needs pastimes during his remission by sending him a reader, the noble and beautiful anti-Ukrainian Nellague, a person adulated among all others who cannot fail to bewitch him. They take legal cognizance of an oath given them by Nellague—flattered by their choice—to murder the menacing megalomaniac at the first propitious moment. Dazzled, the illustrious invalid hires her on the spot—but, handsome himself and cloaked in prestige, he makes her heart beat faster. One evening her reading puts him to sleep—and she, always in possession of a concealed dagger, feels the unclenching of an inner struggle between her love and her oath, which the vaunted rectitude of her ancestors reinforces. Finally, faithful to her vow, she kills him—and immediately gives herself up.
* * *
The tenor Gléoc, pained by the ugliness from which he suffers, succeeds admirably thanks to a magnificent high B, which he loses during a chill caught by him and his wife—who dies of it, not without his craftily giving out that he is quitting the boards from sorrow and that his B remains at his disposal. The torment caused by his hideousness, augmented by the desire for fallen obstacles with regard to possible good fortune, incites him to consult the sorcerer Brouce, whom marvelous procedures of all kinds have rendered illustrious. Brouce sells him at a high price a necklace from which depends a platinum lozenge that cannot fail to bestow on his two eyes the property of flooring any woman. Henceforth Gléoc, an irresistible seducer, has only to eliminate—without fearing that she will suffer consequences from it—whichever of his ardent admirers wearies him.
* * *
The patter songs of Furdet had the desired adjuvant effect. The besieged held out—and the enemy, one fine day, withdrew empty-handed.
These versions of Ashbery’s Note and Introduction, as well as the text of Documents to Serve as an Outline, are from How I Wrote Certain of My Books and Other Writings by Raymond Roussel, ed. Trevor Winkfield (Cambridge, Mass.: Exact Change, 1995).
“Note by John Ashbery” first appeared in Atlas Anthology 7 (1991), as Ashbery’s “Introduction” to his translation of Roussel’s Documents pour servir de canevas. Ashbery wrote this “Note” in English; we reprint it here to accompany his translation of Documents to Serve as an Outline. This version of “Note” was also reprinted as “Introduction to Raymond Roussel’s Documents to Serve as an Outline,” in Ashbery’s Selected Prose (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004; Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet Press, 2004).
“Introduction to ‘In Havana’ by John Ashbery” first appeared in French, in L’Arc 19 (Summer 1962), as a preface to “Un inédit de Raymond Roussel,” the first publication in French of Roussel’s “À la Havane.” It was translated from Ashbery’s English into French for L’Arc by Michel Thurlotte. Ashbery then translated it back into English, as “Introduction to Raymond Roussel’s ‘In Havana,’” to accompany the first appearance of his translation of “À la Havane” in Atlas Anthology 4 (1987). The Introduction was also reprinted in Ashbery’s Selected Prose (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004; Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet Press, 2004). The translation of “In Havana” was also reprinted in Atlas Anthology 7 (1991), as part of Ashbery’s first complete translation of Documents to Serve as an Outline.
GIORGIO DE CHIRICO
(1888–1978)
ON SILENCE
Before man appeared on Earth the god Silence reigned everywhere, invisible and present. Black, flabby things, a species of fish-cliff, emerged slowly like submarines on maneuvers, then dragged themselves painfully onto the beach like disabled veterans deprived of their motorized wheelchairs. Vast epochs of silence on Earth, everything was steaming! Columns of steam arose from the seething pools, from between the tragic cliffs and the center of the forests. Nature, nature without noise! Uninhabited, silent shores; in the distance, on the milky and disturbingly calm seas, a red sun, disk of drama, solitary disk, sank slowly into the vapor on the horizon. From time to time a monstrous animal, a kind of small island with the neck of a swan and the head of a parrot, left the water to go inland, into the mysterious forest and the depths of the humid valleys. The shores were littered with strange shells: stars, tendrils, broken spirals; some of them moved a little, advancing by sudden starts, then would collapse as though exhausted by the effort and remain motionless again.
Evenings of battle on the edge of the ocean! O evening of Quiberon! In sublime poses of lassitude and sleep the warriors are stretched out now in their final rest, while, beyond the black cliffs with their gothic apostles’ profiles, a moon of boreal pallor is rising in the great silence; softly its rays light up the faces of the dead and waken a veiled reflection in the metal of their arms.
Silence also reigns before battles; during the vigils of the chiefs, of the generals from whose authority there is no appeal, who, in their tents placed well apart from enemy action, ponder their strategic plans until dawn and try to remember what their predecessors did in the same situation. Silence is necessary, even indispensable to their meditation, for on this silence depends the quality of their strategic thoughts and consequently the fate of those warriors who are sleeping now, their arms within easy reach, and who, tomorrow, when the clarion will have sounded the alarm, when the scattered squadrons on the plain will suddenly swoop down more promptly than the eaglet, could know the intoxication of victory or the gall of defeat; they might experience triumph, the sublime joy of entering conquered cities as victors, of traversing empty streets between a double hedge of houses with solemn balconies and hermetically sealed shutters, whose occupants, not knowing how to show their resentment at hearing the rhythmic step of enemy phalanxes echoing under their windows, have found nothing better to do than shut themselves up in their bedrooms, their parlors, and their dining rooms, blinds lowered and doors shut: to sulk, in a word! But these same warriors could, alas, experience defeat, the shame of being dragged as prisoners through an enemy country, of passing through a howling and booing mob under a hail of rotten eggs and wads of dirty paper thrown by ferocious and grimacing urchins. This is why, in front of the tents of chieftains and general
s on the eve of battles, it is essential that next to the indispensable sentry stands the younger brother of sleep: Silence.
God created the world in silence; afterward, when he had unleashed the elements and the animals onto the spheres which turn (or don’t turn) in space, noise began. All creation is accomplished in silence; afterward its occult forces cause noise, or rather noises, to spring up throughout the vast world. First, in their chambers above the porticos, the philosophers meditate. Their double-glazed windows, while allowing them to enjoy the view of the hills, the harbors, the vast and beautiful squares ornamented with well-sculpted statues placed on low pedestals, prevent outside noises from entering and troubling their work of metaphysicizing thinkers. In the room no noise disturbs their meditation; occasionally little noises which strictly speaking aren’t noises at all can be heard: the scratching of a mouse who, encouraged by the silence and the immobility of the sleeping dog, makes long forays across the library as though through a fantastic landscape of sheer cliffs and precipitous rocks, or else like a pilgrim, a traveler at the feet of the Sphinx, he halts beneath the plaster casts, the Belisariuses, the Socrateses, the Hippocrateses, the Minervas, and the Alexander the Greats, who, helmeted or bareheaded, bald or hirsute, gaze into space, tranquil, indifferent. Sometimes too, but barely perceptible and as though heard in a dream, the singing of the servant girl arrives at the philosopher’s ear, as she washes the dishes or prepares the evening meal (the most propitious hours for meditation are those of afternoon); some of these songs are of a poignant sadness, for they tell of the sorrow which sometimes permeates the lives of weak and humble people:
The leave, my captain,*
You must grant my leave,
When I left her she was sick
.…
Bearer who bears the coffin,
Halt for a moment.
I who never kissed her living,
Now that she is dead,
I want to place my lips
On her forehead.
And the tick-tock of the clock on the mantel; glass globe on which Time is leaning, a tall withered old man with a flowing beard, thoughtful and sad between his scythe and his clepsydra. —But all this isn’t really noise, and to the ear of the philosopher absorbed in his profound thoughts and lofty metaphysical speculations it penetrates like a hum, and, due allowance being made, like that harmonious vibration which, according to Pythagoras, the planets and the suns make as they evolve in space.
In this atmosphere from which all true, actual noise is carefully banished the thoughts of the philosophers ripen; they pass onto paper and then form volumes of printed writing. And thus they travel abroad through the world; they cross oceans, infiltrate all the races, become the bedside book of the rich man who suffers and the poor man who hates, and then revolts and revolutions arise as the storm arises in the sultry sky of a summer afternoon. Gangs of fierce and resolute men led by a kind of Colossus with the beard of an ancient god grab timbers from construction sites and thrust them like catapults against the doors of the grand hotels, the luxurious palaces, the sumptuous residences where millionaires have amassed their riches and the most precious works of art, for they never believed in the danger and always listened to the reassuring speeches, read the soothing articles which began with the eternal refrain: Our people have too much sense, etc., etc.
* * *
Thus one could say that all true creation must be initiated in silence.
There is nothing more disturbing than people who talk while one is looking at a monument, a beautiful spectacle of nature, a statue, an objet d’art, or who loudly express their opinions in the theater or during the projection of a film. As for painting, one must contemplate it in silence; today, unfortunately, that breed of art lover, of connoisseur, who spends a long time in front of a picture, standing or seated, gazing at it without speaking and even, if the dimensions of the painting permit, taking it in hand so as to examine it minutely as one examines a jewel, a piece of cloth, or a bit of precious wood, etc., no longer exists.
People today start to speak the moment they are confronted by a picture, without focusing their gaze at the center of the canvas, without exploring it as they look, but pushing their line of vision toward the corners of the picture and even beyond; they are more concerned with acting smart and appearing intelligent, whether through exaggerated admiration in the presence of the eternals—It’s magnificent! It’s incredible! It’s amazing—etc., or else with feigning skepticism, than with understanding and appreciating the true worth of the painting that is before them. In such cases we prefer the atmosphere of schools, of those severe classrooms with whitewashed walls where young people bend over their books and copybooks, thinking and studying in solemn silence, while all around them, in beautifully colored pictures fastened to the partitions, the aspects of the Earth, of plants and animals and human history, unfurl in silence; there are geography maps, sometimes gray, sometimes pink, but always blue where lakes open out and vast seas stretch away; there are polar bears splashing amid ice floes, and ostriches, yes, the unfortunate ostriches fleeing desperately before the Arab horseman hugging the flank of his steed spurred to a quadruple gallop; and then again History: Caesar, surrounded by his legions in the conquered valley; Pericles dying of the plague, amid his tearful family and friends; and then soldiers in uniforms whose shape and color changes from age to age; and monarchs, pot-bellied ministers, their chests a mosaic of ribbons and decorations, who gaze into each other’s eyes and clasp hands in a historic gesture.
May God protect you from evil silence, my beloved friends! For there is also evil silence; a silence which engenders no work of the mind and no creation. The silence of the desert where death and desolation reign, where any seed that is sown will rot or become fossilized instead of bearing fruit, where the aridity slowly consumes everything by fire and the caravans pass noiselessly, for no man … for no man desires to sing, no ass has the strength to bray.
May God protect you as well, dear friends, from those heavy and painful silences that fall with unimaginable implacability and fatality, smack in the middle of a social event or a soirée when a tactless, uninformed, or malicious person lets fall one of those phrases which suddenly render all mouths speechless and in a split second transform a party of lighthearted folk, come together to enjoy each other’s company and have a good time, into a gathering of preoccupied and taciturn individuals; that happens, for instance, when, in a salon frequented by puritanical persons, a blunderer incapable of sizing up the situation in the place where he happens to be, begins to speak of the problems of prostitution and homosexuality, or explains with a plethora of details the methods used in certain cases by obstetricians and midwives. You must also guard against those silences in nature when all the thousand things that make all sorts of noises in the fields, in the forests, in the valleys, and on the seacoasts suddenly fall silent, for they vaguely sense that somewhere over there, beyond the distant horizons, in the depths of the sky, behind the tall mountains, tempests and hurricanes are slowly forming, to burst forth with the roar of thunder and livid lightning flashes. We all know these moments, so highly exciting and dramatic. In villas hidden in the depths of parks the servants have left the windows open because it has been hot, relentlessly hot since the early morning hours; but suddenly the gusts of wind form terrible drafts; the magazines and illustrated journals left out on the metal chairs and wicker armchairs in the garden go swooping upward as high as the rooftops, while windowpanes are shattered and objects are overturned in the bedrooms; and then the storm erupts; the lightning plays mysterious and macabre tricks; cooks, master chefs, lie stretched out on the tiles of the kitchen floor, stripped of all their clothing, holding in their right hand a spit that has skewered the half-roasted body of a chicken […]
* * *
The gentlemen-poets shut up in their rooms for days on end seated at their worktable smoking a pipe and covering their white pages of official foolscap with platonic sonnets look up to contempl
ate the spectacle, for they love that; they love nature’s violence; they love seeing the trees of the garden convulsed under the tempest like the souls of the damned under the blows of eternal chastisement; they love to hear thunder, artillery salvos that awaken all the echoes at the four corners of the horizon; but often, as they watch the cataclysm cozily ensconced in their armchair, in the center of their room where their pipe has formed a fog which the smoker finds sweet and agreeable but which can be cut with a knife, as they witness the ravages of the storm snugly sheltered from the rain and the wind and are beginning to feel the perverse and unwholesome joy of the spectator watching the perilous trapeze act of a group of acrobats from a safe bench and who fears no vertigo and no fall, or of the sports enthusiast who, sheltered from the blows in his ringside seat, watches the two heavyweights in the ring flailing each other with all the force of their muscular arms, delivering tremendous uppercuts to the tip of the chin and straight rights to the stomach, a violent gust of wind blows open the window and an irresistible tornado scatters sheets of paper everywhere, thus introducing confusion and disorder into the midst of their work; then they forget everything and start chasing the white sheets of paper, catching them in flight with the charming gestures and movements of rhythmic dancing girls and chaste maidens pursuing playful butterflies through a lovely spring meadow strewn with flowers.
Beware, friends, of the silence that precedes such events.
Hebdomeros: With Monsieur Dudron’s Adventure and Other Metaphysical Writing (Cambridge, Mass.: Exact Change, 1992). First published in Big Sky 9 (August 1975).
Collected French Translations: Prose Page 16
