Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  As a matter of fact it was in Germany that he had first met him. Won over early by his ideas of domination he would go so far as to get up at eight in the morning (he who usually slept till noon) to follow him in long walks outside the city. In those vacant lots the wind brought an odor of burning rubbish and from time to time the notes of a bugle practicing in a distant barracks; it was incredibly sad! And then that mania of always wanting to walk near a treacherous bog, perpetually soaked by the rain, even by a rain of two months ago, in which the wheels of the cart transporting the drainage conduits regularly got mired; each time several of them would be caught and then, confronted with the spectacle of the shouting driver and the beasts of burden exhausting themselves in vain efforts, he would repeat each morning the same sorrowful phrase: “My spirit is like the wagon wheels”: Wie die Räder des Wagens. Finally, weary of not being able to make him change either his ideas or his humor, he decided to leave him; he had a box of chocolates from a well-known firm sent to his wife and that very evening he brought him to the station and pushed him into the first train leaving for Berlin, begging as he did so two gentlemen already seated in the compartment to keep an eye on him, as he had already shown signs of mental disturbance. He believed this to be the shortest cut to getting rid of him, but he was mistaken, for the painter lodged near the station in a modest apartment on the sixth floor; he lived there in two rooms that he had papered from floor to ceiling with the most bizarre and disconcerting drawings which made certain highly esteemed critics repeat for the thousandth time the famous refrain: It’s literature. At the close of a discussion whose subject was a recent vernissage, the same critics had in fact laid down the law that painting must be painting and not literature, but he seemed to attach very little importance to all that, either because he understood nothing of it, or because he understood it all too well and therefore pretended not to understand. And he would always come back to his favorite theme: Nicholas the cook, Nicholas the chef of a thousand and one expedients who, in leisure moments, would assume the role of governess and take the colonel’s children out walking near a large open terrain where, at certain times of year, the artillerymen engaged in rifle practice; sometimes too they would execute soldiers condemned to death. But it was rather the mountain that attracted him, the great dark mountain over there at the end of the plain, the great mountain swollen with mystery and adventure. He detested the plain with all his heart: “Perfidious plain,” he used to say sometimes as though speaking in a dream, “Bleak and perfidious plain, there is no salvation in thee. The hare cannot escape the lean hound launched on its trail; the madly fleeing horseman cannot escape his enemy who follows him closely on a courser at full gallop; the tender and trembling turtledove cannot flee the implacable yellow-eyed vulture who contemplates her sideways without turning his head; perfidious plain, I detest thee.”

  And all his nostalgia, all his love went toward the mountain. Paths twisting along the edge of the abyss; from below rose a cool, damp smell together with the roaring of torrents and cascades. Sometimes the noise of something that flees and hides in the bushes. When day is at an end, the shadow of the mountain brings a premature night and then around the table dressed in white the evening meal was cheerless indeed.

  When they talked of pregnancy and childbearing the mistress of the house always said in tones of resignation: “These are trials through which all we women have to pass.” “Except those,” interjected an aged boarder who until now had taken no part in the conversation, “except those who never become pregnant because of some physiological defect, or because they avoid pregnancy by artificial means.” It was fundamentally logical, but these last words uttered in a sepulchral voice amid a silence of the tomb always produced a certain embarrassment and cast a chill over the company, and later, along toward the midnight hours, the conversation, already scarcely brilliant, languished even more and finally died out completely like a fire that no one bothers to stoke.

  Hebdomeros: With Monsieur Dudron’s Adventure and Other Metaphysical Writing (Cambridge, Mass.: Exact Change, 1992). First published in Art and Literature 11 (Winter 1967).

  THE SURVIVOR OF NAVARINO

  Prudent shadows of society

  Cannot harm this first and belated …

  My first and belated felicity.

  —Giovanni Papini, Poesia

  Will you follow me as far as the Sargasso Sea? The Sargasso Sea! I am sure he meant it ironically, for one could scarcely give the name Sargasso Sea to that part of the harbor which the blocks of the breakwater protected from the winds of the open and nearby sea. It was the right side of the breakwater for someone with his back turned to the town; on the left the sea foamed at noon, in a most harmless way, actually, and thus between the calm and agitation of these two expanses of water which were like a symbol of human life, the breakwater stretched away, an artificial promontory built by the hand of man, as Professor Alfano used to say in rhetorical tones; he had been a refugee for many years, for although he was very strong in mathematics and played the cello with taste and sensitivity, he had always been ignored in the city of his birth. But he obstinately refused to believe it. The Sargasso Sea! This vision (he called it a vision but the inhabitants of the coast, poor devils wrinkled and baked by the sun, claimed on the contrary that it was not a vision but a reality), this vision tormented him for several days at the same hour: a few moments before noon, when the surface of the sea lost that shiny look of a burnished mirror which it had in the first light of dawn.

  There was one inhabitant in particular who persisted in contradicting him, an old fisherman, the oldest one of all: “Yes, sir,” he would repeat in a loud voice, “it is a reality; a metaphysical reality if you wish, but a reality. Dura lex sed lex.” This, however, was a true fact: This surgeon, already old but still with muscles of steel (and he proved it to you when he shook your hand), this surgeon was actually the only man in the region capable of standing up to the one-eyed buccaneer, a formidable corsair who was not to be trifled with; and this was obvious since he avoided all discussion with him; but sometimes, however, in order to put up a good front and satisfy his self-esteem a little, he would pointedly turn his back on the customers of that filthy tavern and gaze out at the angry sea through the only window, at which a pair of fly-specked curtains dangled forlornly. “A reality,” he would repeat automatically to himself, for in fact he was thinking of far other things, a reality, the sublime scene of the pelican! A scene such as Homer could never have imagined or described! This miraculous pelican, with its drunkard’s squint, generously rending its breast with great stabs of its beak on the slippery deck of that stranded vessel, and for whom, in fact, I wonder? “His children,” you will say, but the poor beggar didn’t have any, he had never had any.

  Yes, one can after all accept it, but then what of all those sublime and stupid resolutions of going back to the land, of folk art, of sincerity, of abnegation, of honesty, of probity, of simplicity, of bowing down before nature, of the cult of the beautiful, of health in art, of good work done in the morning after rising early, of the Mediterranean spirit, of victory over oneself? Twaddle and utopia? Utopian fancies of a hysterical monk dreaming of ideal platonic republics in which the clergy, authorized by the law, may couple regularly and hygienically each night with women as beautiful as statues? Pure utopias! And of all that, nothing now remains; nothing but a handful of ashes, not even smoking, and a few tiny scraps of white paper, negative reply to the supplanted lover, torn and thrown to the wind, distracted flight of tropical butterflies as the centenarian elephant passes by.

  And he took up once more the eternal refrain of a Jules Verne writing for children and predicting modern discoveries in his books. As though everyone didn’t know that experiments in submarine navigation had been made long before the appearance of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, and that in general the books of Jules Verne were not for children but their elders, for their elders and betters. And here again was that old error of thinking that
all those sublime navigators who sacrificed their lives to an ideal were possessed by the demon of travel like those Anglo-Saxons with cast-iron stomachs, pacing across the globe with an obstinacy worthy of a better cause. And he would affirm this. But he was surely not being entirely honest, for he knew that according to the latest discoveries already announced in the last number of the Monatliche Zeitschrift der Metaphysischen Weltanschauung, all that was required was the longitude of the floor and ceiling for the famous Cape Matapan to be there, in that disquieting corner of his room, littered with ruins bathed by the yellow wave of the Alpheus.

  In the next room the ghost of Pausanias was wandering, his traveler’s stick in hand, while the other ghost, that of the brother killed at the beginning of the war at the head of his machine-gun unit, remained sunken in the pink armchair like an English prime minister passing away at the age of ninety-two. Don’t talk to me of ruins strewn over the floor and divans drawn up before the permanent spectacle of Thermopylae! The doors ajar on the night of the corridor constitute a danger, you say! Perhaps, but from now on all that is nothing but the palest of memories. In any case, if the lock is missing from the door or you have lost the key, you need only push a heavy dresser against your door, having first taken the precaution of cramming the drawer with books and flatirons; you will see that the ghosts can no longer slip into your room in that sly manner and with that embarrassed look so characteristic of them, smiling at your questions as they gaze absentmindedly at you. Like the one who answered me in almost fraternal tones, in spite of the great difference in age that separated us: “But why do you suppose that we know any more about it than all of you?” Than all of you! A fine way of expressing oneself! And a few moments later he added in a low voice, although there was no one else but us in the room: “And besides, why do you think that there is something to know?”

  But if he claimed to believe that it was not himself, far from it, for if it had been but for him he would have renounced it long ago, accustomed as he was to seeing the inhabitants of the coast join battle with the mountaineers, who often limited themselves to defending their villages except during the periods of great emigrations from the north, for then, driven by the irresistible mass, they moved down toward the sea and the massacre became inevitable. But it was not their fault, they pushed because they were being pushed, that was all.

  So as to spare their passengers a painful if grandiose spectacle, the captains of the liners would weigh anchor and flee those regions of destruction and death. Once the cape had been passed the ships would sail along beside calm and smiling shores. From the top of great rocks yellowed by sulfureous emanations, cascades of boiling water plunged into the sea so that here and there the bottom of the cliffs disappeared amid vapors. Sometimes at night fires would blaze on the shore, and plaintive songs, disturbing chants would reach the decks of the ships where the passengers were enjoying a nap under the stars, after the evening meal. It was the young cohorts who had not yet entered the fray who were singing a despairing farewell to life.

  “Poor ephebes,” the women would say in tones of deep emotion, “at their age, to be already obliged to take leave of life!” But their husbands, whom these reflections irritated, tried to change the subject.

  A complete stranger to these events, trusting only his zebra, to whom he spoke as to a fellow man, as he indicated with a wide sweep of his hand that vast expanse of land whose monotony was broken only by a few outcroppings of the ground, covered by bushes on the side exposed to the sun, and which were situated toward the northwest, he said in his grave and modulated voice: “The plain requested, Colonel.”

  Too late, he answered nothing this time; his thoughts were far, far away; a memory among a thousand others rose slowly from the twilight of his past: He saw an orphanage built among eucalyptuses at the foot of the acropolis and the friend with the Michelangelesque face who took him by the shoulders and, looking into the whites of his eyes, said to him on that memorable afternoon in his distant childhood: “Someday you will be someone!”

  EPODE

  I have always loved thee, dark forest

  Of my life.

  Forest darker

  Than dark night

  At the dark pole …

  Vault of the sky, at the pole, one night …

  Night without veils

  But without stars

  Or northern lights …

  Vault of the sky, at the pole, that night.

  In my joy and my intoxication,

  In my fatigue and my humiliation,

  My wild hopes, my wise discretion,

  My great courage, my lassitude,

  My cowardice, my turpitude,

  My long return, my latitude,

  My muffled echoes, my promptitude,

  My transparent waking, my solitude,

  My good renown, my quintessence,

  My mad replies, my fine license,

  My futile calls, my heavy confidence,

  In all the voices

  Which sing in me

  The numberless,

  Tremendous agitations …

  I have always loved thee, dark forest

  Of my life.

  Hebdomeros: With Monsieur Dudron’s Adventure and Other Metaphysical Writing (Cambridge, Mass.: Exact Change, 1992). First published in Art and Literature 11 (Winter 1967).

  SELECTION ONE FROM HEBDOMEROS

  … And so began the visit to that strange building, situated in an austere yet distinguished and not gloomy street. Viewed from the street, the building suggested a German consulate in Melbourne. Large shops occupied the entire ground floor. Although it was neither Sunday nor a holiday, the shops were closed, conferring on this section of the street an aspect of melancholy boredom, a certain desolation, that special atmosphere characteristic of Anglo-Saxon cities on Sunday. A faint odor of dockyards floated in the air, the indefinable and highly evocative odor given off by goods warehouses near the wharves in seaports. The aspect of a German consulate in Melbourne was a purely personal impression on Hebdomeros’s part; when he mentioned it to his friends they smiled and found the comparison amusing, but they didn’t labor the point and immediately changed the subject, from which Hebdomeros concluded that they hadn’t really understood what he was saying. And he reflected on the difficulty one has making oneself understood when one begins to operate at a certain altitude or depth.

  “It’s strange,” Hebdomeros repeated to himself. “In my case, the idea that something had eluded my understanding would prevent me from sleeping, while most people can see, hear, or read things that are totally obscure to them without worrying in the least.” They began to mount the stairway, which was very wide and entirely made of varnished wood; there was a carpet in the center; at the foot of the stairway, the banister ended in a slender Doric column carved in oak which supported a polychrome statue, also in wood, depicting a Californian Negro holding above his head a gas lamp whose burner was sheathed in an asbestos sleeve. Hebdomeros felt he was climbing toward the office of a dentist or a doctor specializing in venereal diseases; he experienced a slight agitation and something like the beginning of a minor stomachache; he tried to surmount this trouble by reflecting that he was not alone, that two friends were with him, able-bodied, athletic fellows, carrying automatic pistols with spare loading clips in the revolver pocket of their trousers. Seeing that they were getting closer to the floor that had been mentioned to them as being the most rich in strange apparitions, they began climbing more slowly and on tiptoe; their gaze became more attentive. They moved apart somewhat while still keeping abreast, so as to be able to descend the stairway freely and as rapidly as possible in case some apparition of a particular kind forced them to do so. Hebdomeros thought at that moment of the dreams of his childhood; when he would climb anxiously and in a vague light wide stairways of varnished wood in the middle of which a thick carpet muffled the noise of his steps—(all the same his shoes, even outside his dreams, rarely squeaked, for he had them made to order by a sho
emaker named Perpignani, who was known throughout the town for the fine quality of his leathers; Hebdomeros’s father, on the other hand, had no talent for buying shoes; his made an atrocious noise as though he were crushing bags of hazelnuts at every step).

  Then it was the apparition of the bear, the disturbing and obstinate bear, who follows you in stairways and across corridors, with lowered head and the air of thinking of something else; the frantic flight across bedrooms with complicated egresses, the leap through the window into emptiness (suicide in a dream), and the gliding descent, like those condor men whom Leonardo would amuse himself by sketching among the catapults and the anatomical fragments. It was a dream that always foretold unpleasant occurrences, illnesses in particular.