Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  Deep within him, he who speaks now has also discovered all the treachery of these dangerous regions wherein anyone so imprudent as to venture is engulfed without reprieve. There is no place firm enough to set up a lever strong enough to lift the people, given a certain fulcrum. Footsteps sink in deeper and deeper. A pneumatic force violently sucks the soles of feet down into the morass, and animals are lost in this movement of such perfidious sponginess, which requires such an exhausting effort. He whose spirit is sinking in even further, wears himself out trying to keep his balance on the rickety steps leading to the ultimate platform where later all will be able to gaze—he hopes—at the disconcerting flares of dawn. Nothing counts of the words that circulate from the stairway to the ceiling, from the casements to the tips of the stars, from the roots of trembling lakes to the webbed feet of birds who trace these enigmatic numbers in chalk on the sails.

  For, to speak plainly, that magnetized needle, highly sensitive to abrupt deviations in temperature, orients itself toward what is good only from a sense of duty and toward evil only for pleasure. Once violent alcohol has slid down the same slope a number of times, it’s more than likely it will be allowed to do so again for a long time to come. There’s no danger for him in those humorous posters that illustrate for us in such striking terms the extent of its ravages on our precious organism. Man, who loves his body as a blind person loves the light, will never consent to pause before another picture proclaiming the benefits of soothing herbal teas and of grenadine syrup. One would think that he’s afraid of being tempted. One would say that he fears disease, that he is terrified of the disastrous effects on its surroundings of a mucous membrane susceptible to infection from compounds of sugar. And the mind, in the same way, is seen to repulse with uncontrollable convulsions the most arduous advances of kindness.

  From the weight of the sadness that periodically invades our limbs and the world, we can measure all the advantage there would be for us to make public appearances and evolve in an even larger arena. But this is the hard kernel, the resistant part of universal thought—no doubt the tastiest in the Universe. All the unhappiness of the intelligence resides in its inability, beyond a certain degree of development, to enjoy the present moment. From this flow formidable displacements of general feelings and particular forces.

  From time to time a good and sympathetic man will begin to speak from the top of an improvised pulpit suddenly erected in the air by whirlwinds of dust; at once the heavy perfumes of morality suffocate us. If there is someone among those reading me who isn’t absolutely fascinated by the scrupulous narrative I am recounting him, let him put it aside and take up another. He’s free to do so. But let him make haste; soon there will be no time left. What the devil, we are often told, everything comes to an end. Why shouldn’t our period reach its own? Where we are going, with eyes shut, there is certainly no one who would joyfully consent to follow us.

  Never, never will I return to that crossroads, dangerous curve, somersault of destiny. Never will the pink houses in their glass jars of frost, between the afternoons of autumn and the evenings of spring, have finer opportunities to remain silent. The moon has risen, after all. It rests, like a mercury ball, in the hollow of the nocturnal hand that sets out the traps of sleep, and everything happens as though we would never die. The black glove of that hand, once it has wearied itself with equivocal mesmeric passes, finally turns all faces to the wall whose tapestry portrays sunken roads traveled by strange beasts. At the bottom of the roads are coarse sand, small stones, barely ripe fruits that abandoned children seek out for their tartness. What shapes could one assign to the carriages that descend the dried beds of torrents which the tapestry represents? There are no troops in the earthworks of the hill.

  Then along what road could one return to that white-hot crossroads where the lethal indecisions of travelers are simmering? It’s not the delicate leaves that tremble at the slightest suspicion, nor the foolhardy edifices, which, without a moment’s hesitation, fling themselves into the abyss, nor even less the flocks of metallic vehicles that fly away at the slightest sound, that could provide a precise indication on this subject. The petals of health float for a moment in the allées, from puddle to puddle, on the steps of the sun, between two shudders, before finally departing to swell the ranks of the victims of the epidemic that is ravaging the whole countryside and has already reached the insalubrious suburbs of the city.

  The gale that tonight besieges the windowpanes of the castle keep introduces elements of discord among the hostile classes of the city. Yes, but that lamp, through which travels all the wind from the straits, why does it render the marble in the factories transparent? When one knows only the members of nature, with joints of tempered steel, the lumber trains, the febrile fields, that immobility of desert highways under the pneumatic clock and the words of love in patois, one can easily prevent oneself from trembling at the approach of winter’s jets of flame. But if the gilded ferment of lust dissolves in bursts of laughter, too bad for the faces summed up in a few brief lines in the anthropometric albums of ancient families. The incontestable nobility of those sharp features will fade in the rural character of the site where trains packed with emigrants in distress have always been detained in wartime.

  And now, let us lead anger’s bunches of keys back to the fold. Where were we? It’s a question of not missing the hordes of butterflies that come at the end of each Saturday to pocket their moderate salary.

  When there is a secret message to be sent from heaven to Earth, the moon serves as a sealing wafer. Still, this is not a reason to betray our expectations endlessly. How long have we been patiently waiting, huddled in this ditch filled with water that forms the livid horizon of the plain? It’s cold in the branchings of light, on the three-dimensional quays drawn in prophetic lines. There are the prophets with their kepis, the republicans with their banners, the heads of political parties with their suitcases, the poets with their curled hair and their field glasses, the better to orient their ships—for they are also pilots, those negroes equipped with mauve wings who lead the dragonflies. Finally whether it’s songs that disembark or other merchandise, the stationmaster remains unmoved. Let’s go straight to the heart of the matter.

  The singular house must still be there, and if we don’t yet notice anything, it’s because the clouds prevent our doing so with their incessant movement—that inconvenient movement of rock crystal.

  It would certainly be more agreeable to lose completely the memory of those sad, long winter evenings spent hulling pearl necklaces in the silent family circle. But how to waste time when in times past we accumulated savings at the price of the harshest privations? How peaceful we would be if we were poorer, dangling feet in the water, bareheaded and hanging on, in the street, to the corner of a window or a door to warn those inside of the prodigious rigors of the temperature. How much happier we’d be, bent double, hands in our pockets.

  It’s snowing in the belly of the herds. Earth has changed its shirt. The trees are installing curtains that slide along their gray rods, from one end to the other of the posts. On days of eclipse, the moon has finally succeeded in recovering its monstrance, which is why all the storks on their pointed roofs are rejoicing. Now, the thermometers—phosphorescent skate fish on the wall4—who walk around all day in long lines, under the gray sky, on the sticky streets of the capital, and who are also called, no one knows why anymore, sandwich men, give us only a feeble idea of what science can still accomplish in improving on the animal species. And, as long as a pari-mutuel system capable of stimulating the ardor of those thoroughbred stallions hasn’t been organized, appreciable results will never be obtained. Thus man experiences no shame in recognizing his image in so sinister a mirror. On the contrary he feels an unutterable satisfaction in noting that the strange edifice which is passing and which no longer has any but the vaguest connection to the human form is not his counterpart.

  When the sky goes flat and black like a phonograph record; when s
ongs from the walls fan out on the plain like stray locks of the fog’s hair; when cries of passion follow the lightning of the rails and animals become excited in the brambles; when seeds of paper germinate in the furrows and the poltergeist inseminates the earth—if, by chance, further from the anxiety of hunger, the circle of vicious reasons closes again; if, by chance, the weather changes direction, one will be able to see terror with its big neck collapse on the lemon of tears.

  Nevertheless, with night guiding us, the lassitude of the seasons helped us cross the checkered valleys where the inhabitants of furnaces sprang briskly backward. In the pit of a mine where precious materials, colored earths, and sympathetic vegetables were once extracted, a knot of rivers was heating up in the sun. What zeal for correct behavior could be read in all eyes, along the secret trails of sworn conspiracies! From the significant noise which elevators make in the country, after curfew, we understood very clearly that we were approaching the frontier, that we were nearing our goal. Already a great luminous fan warned us of the alarming intensity of forced labor from hands delivered over to the biting of the light. But now all heads are lost in drafts and drowned in rumors of head colds. A dull opposition arises that will henceforth prevent all the threads of the so cleverly plotted intrigue from being woven in the corners of tunnels of greenery. Where will we go now to spend the lengthening hours, lying down dog-tired after such exhausting hunting parties? Along the wall, withered clothes are drying their weary limbs. The tools of mediocre work in the sensitive flanks of the Earth are leaning at the parapet. The squirrel of the treadmill of dreams has once again taken up his august task. Sleep will still be hemmed for a long time by a firm stitch between the canvas bags of silence and the night’s large purses of metallic beads. Beyond the underbrush and those folds in the ground where a foreigner gets lost, what are those two suspicious shadows advancing toward us? Neither the snow which never ceases to fall nor the appeal of intimate memories under the lukewarm glass of the lamps of home slows them down. They push onward, determined to conquer this very evening the distance that separates them from the goal of their expedition. Whoever tried to make the voice of reason heard at this moment would certainly not be listened to. And besides, no one is so imprudent as to be outdoors on such a night when the squall reigns supreme between the puddles and steaming spillways of the valley, when the steeples, cypresses, and aspens bow meekly to let it pass.

  Likewise, what could possibly disturb him who henceforth will live only under ashes and embers? He never, so to speak, goes out of the dense matrix of sleep, and a gulf separates him from all the flaming calamities. When the most powerful shards of passion are dormant in the most muffled cavities of one’s nature, shards of wood, shards of glass, bursts of laughter, and flashes of diamond, one can still hide one’s illness from him who, with the help of a mechanical reaper, peels the earth in spirals as one peels an orange. But when purple traces of pain appear on the skin like bubbles rising for a breath of fresh air from the fetid muddy depths, when the eyes, rolling back in the head, change color and sink like a stone; and when the furious howls of the bellows of fear split the walls, it becomes quite impossible to apply the brakes to the impetuous momentum of this sentence. In any case, numbers never lose any of their value, nor do the wrinkles which facilitate the observation of the grid of various parts of the human face. And of the significance accorded certain shapes of the hand, position of the fingers, of the wrist, of the forearm when it becomes a question of raising the intellectual level of the privileged classes to which illegitimate children growing up outside the zone of good breeding may not lay claim, we shall here excuse ourselves from taking note. They are walking, as we have already said. At the bottom of the sky, heavy knapsacks of precious objects that have crossed the line as contraband are accumulating. One sees lightning flashes that are shoeing the horizon at regular intervals. In the hollows of damp meadows, gashed by sharp-edged streams, there are haystacks enveloped in several layers of night, so that night is darker in those places. On the other hand, and even at the same hour, rows of Venetian lanterns are lit along the regular façades of well-appointed neighborhoods in the large cities. All those festoons of windows help to provide a festive air that reverberates in the obscure minds of the dwellers in those dreary thatched cottages that flicker here and there in the grass like modest fireflies. Hence one may imagine the surprise of the traveler settling at this moment into the dining car of the great European express train, who is regulating with the greatest assurance the complicated question of the rational electrification of the countryside, on glimpsing, at the center of the rays of kilometers hastening toward a highly imprecise ideal perimeter, a cluster of those magnificent lanterns. You will have certainly not forgotten what kind of lanterns we’re talking about. It’s he, advancing toward that cluster despite all the obstacles of night and foul weather, who notices the two shadows of whom mention was made a short while ago. Despite the vertiginous speed of the train that transports him, he succeeds, from the comfortable seat he is occupying thanks to having most scrupulously paid the purchase price, in distinguishing traces of physical fatigue and moral lassitude in the romantic faces of the two common vagrants. If the sight moves him, it must be admitted that he betrays no sign of this. Who in fact are those two men who slip like scissors through the night; what is that house, so tall and shimmering that one might mistake it for a jet of fire or light rising out of the nearby lake as from the basin of a fountain? It is quite obvious, and immediately so, that he has no intention of getting to the bottom of the matter. There is a sewer pipe of worn-out feelings that crosses the world from the ear to the sea. Beneath the frost, drops of water roll down to the needles of the parasol. On account of the weather the call number of a ship at the end of the harbor wags its semaphore, the impatient steamships strain at their cables. Between the steps of the lost passengers, springs gush forth through every drop of water one looks into, and all the colors slide between the fingers, the lashes, the flying images, the serious laundry of suppressed tears which have come to dry in the sun. That day there will be no more laughter for me and my fellow creatures.

  They have placed a medal on a hole in the dead man’s chest. Only a short while ago he was carrying his dream, carefully folded, in a sack on his back, and his soul ran on a few steps ahead of him. In the puddle in the distance, not far from the blond shoulders of the ditch, was a dying flower, drowned in blood.

  Around the continents which assume the place and shape of pears in maps of the world divided into two hemispheres, in the borders of salt marshes where aquatic gardeners endlessly rake the sea, birds and fish often choose the wrong mirage. The birds get lost underwater; the fish fly. One no longer knows who’s coming and who’s going. One no longer knows who’s living and who’s dying in that tropical sphere. Thus, the sun rises little by little while the marshaled troops of completed events are set in motion. In the clearings of forests, shutters were banging; from the sculpted pediment of the Ocean wings were taking flight. And here, on the plain where only a little while ago shadows were stirring at the edges of fields, where mysterious shudders abraded the earth, nothing remains. Emptiness stretches away like flaccid lava and overflows the taut line of the horizon. Everything was naked around the dark man who found himself all alone at the moment he ended his disappointing excursion in the other world.

  The house had disappeared. There remained nothing but the stars that had been seen dancing for a moment behind the windows. Then the stars too went away.

  What cruel and frightening mystery lay dormant under your roof, haunted house?

  What acid grief disaggregated your gold heart and your silver soul, O magnetized poet!

  Haunted House (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Black Square Editions and the Brooklyn Rail, 2007).

  ANTONIN ARTAUD

  (1896–1948)

  CORRESPONDENCE WITH JACQUES RIVIÈRE (1886–1925)

  May 1, 1923–March 22, 1924; with the poem “Cry”

  JACQUES RIVIÈRE
TO ANTONIN ARTAUD

  May 1, 1923

  Sir,

  I regret not being able to publish your poems in the Nouvelle Revue Française. But I took enough interest in them to wish to make the acquaintance of their author. If it were possible for you to pass by the review on a Friday, between four and six, I should be happy to see you.

  Please accept, sir, the assurance of my sympathetic feelings.

  Jacques Rivière

  ANTONIN ARTAUD TO JACQUES RIVIÈRE

  June 5, 1923

  Sir,

  Will you, if it isn’t too much trouble, allow me to come back to several remarks of our conversation this afternoon.

  It is because the question of the admissibility of these poems is a problem which concerns you as much as me. I am speaking, naturally, of their absolute admissibility, of their literary existence.

  I suffer from a frightful illness of the mind. My thought abandons me at every level. From the simple fact of thought to the external fact of its materialization into words. Words, forms of phrases, inner directions of the mind, simple reactions of the mind—I am in constant pursuit of my intellectual being. Thus when I can seize a form, imperfect though it is, I pin it down in the fear of losing the thought. I do not do myself justice, I know: I suffer from this, but I consent to it in the fear of not dying completely.

  All this which is said very badly is in danger of bringing a formidable ambiguity into your judgment of me.

  That is why out of respect for the central feeling which dictates these poems to me and for the images or strong figures of speech which I was able to find, I propose these poems for existence in spite of everything. I have felt and accepted these figures, these inopportune expressions for which you reproach me. Remember: I did not contest them. They stem from the profound uncertainty of my thought. Fortunate indeed when this uncertainty is not replaced by the absolute inexistence from which I suffer sometimes.