The Penguin Book of French Poetry

by Various

  Clown

  One day. One day, soon perhaps. One day I will tear up the anchor that holds my ship far from the seas. With the kind of courage needed to be nothing and nothing but nothing, I will cast off what seemed indissolubly close to me. I will slice through it, I will overturn it, I will break it, I will send it tumbling. Disgorging all at once my wretched delicacy, my abject contrivances and fiddling logical sequences. Drained of the abscess of being someone, I will drink nutritious space anew. With blows of absurdity, with falls from grace (what is a fall from grace?), by explosion, by void, by a total dissipation-derision-purgation, I will expel from myself the form believed to be so strongly attached, composed, co-ordinated, appropriate to those around me and those like me, so worthy, so worthy, my fellow-men. Reduced to a humility befitting disaster, to a perfect levelling as after being intensely shit-scared. Brought down beyond all bounds to my real rank, to the lowly rank which some idea-ambition I can’t name had led me to desert. Annihilated in terms of arrogance, in terms of esteem. Lost in a distant place (or not even that), with no name, with no identity.

  Réduit à une humilité de catastrophe, à un nivellement parfait comme après une intense trouille.

  Ramené au-dessous de toute mesure à mon rang réel, au rang infime que je ne sais quelle idée-ambition m’avait fait déserter.

  Anéanti quant à la hauteur, quant à l’estime.

  Perdu en un endroit lointain (ou même pas), sans nom, sans identité.

  CLOWN, abattant dans la risée, dans le grotesque, dans l’esclaffement, le sens que contre toute lumière je m’étais fait de mon importance

  Je plongerai.

  Sans bourse dans l’infini-esprit sous-jacent ouvert à tous, ouvert moi-même à une nouvelle et incroyable rosée à force d’être nul

  et ras…

  et risible…

  CLOWN, smashing down in mockery, in grotesqueness, in howls of laughter, the sense of my own significance that I had given myself against all light. I will plunge. Penniless into the underlying spirit-infinity open to all, open myself to a new and incredible dew on the strength of being zero and a clean slate… and laughable…

  Dragon

  Un dragon est sorti de moi. Cent queues de flammes et de nerfs il sortit.

  Quel effort je fis pour le contraindre à s’élever, le fouettant par-dessus moi! Le bas était prison d’acier où j’étais enfermé. Mais je m’obstinai et soutins fureur et les tôles de l’implacable geôle finirent par se disjoindre petit à petit, forcées par l’impétueux mouvement giratoire.

  C’était parce que tout allait si mal, c’était en septembre (1938), c’était le mardi, c’était pour ça que j’étais obligé pour vivre de prendre cette forme si étrange. Ainsi donc je livrai bataille pour moi seul, quand l’Europe hésitait encore, et partis comme dragon, contre les forces mauvaises, contre les paralysies sans nombre qui montaient des événements, par-dessus la voix de l’océan des médiocres, dont la gigantesque importance se démasquait soudain à nouveau vertigineusement.

  Dragon

  A dragon has come out of me. A hundred tails of flames and sinews he came out.

  What an effort I made to compel him to rise up, lashing him up above me! The lower part was a prison of steel in which I was locked. But I persisted and sustained my frenzy and the steel plates of the implacable gaol in the end were severed little by little, forced apart by the breakneck gyratory movement.

  It was because it was all going so badly, it was in September (1938), it was a Tuesday, that was why I was obliged in order to live to take on such a strange form. And thus I joined battle for myself alone, when Europe was still hesitating, and set off as a dragon, against evil forces, against the numberless paralyses that rose from events, over the voice of the ocean of mediocrities, whose gigantic size was suddenly once more unmasked vertiginously.

  Après ma Mort

  Je fus transporté après ma mort, je fus transporté non dans un lieu confiné, mais dans l’immersité du vide éthérique. Loin de me laisser abattre par cette immense ouverture en tous sens à perte de vue, en ciel étoilé, je me rassemblai et rassemblai tout ce que j’avais été, et ce que j’avais été sur le point d’être, et enfin tout ce que au calendrier secret de moi-même, je m’étais proposé de devenir et serrant le tout, mes qualités aussi, enfin mes vices, dernier rempart, je m’en fis carapace.

  Sur ce noyau, animé de colère, mais d’une colère nette, que le sang n’appuyait plus, froide et intégrale, je me mis à faire le hérisson, dans une suprême défense, dans un dernier refus.

  After my Death

  I was transported after my death, I was transported not into a confined place, but into the immensity of the etheric void. Far from becoming disheartened by this vast openness in all directions beyond the range of sight, in a starry sky, I gathered myself and gathered all that I had been, and all that I had been about to be, and finally all that within my secret inner almanac I had envisaged becoming, and drawing it all tightly together, my qualities too, and in the end my vices, a last rampart, I made myself a carapace.

  On this nucleus, quickened by anger, but a clean anger no longer sustained by blood, cold and whole, I began to bristle like a hedgehog, in an ultimate defence, in a final refusal.

  Alors, le vide, les larves du vide qui déjà poussaient tentaculairement vers moi leurs poches molles, me menaçant de l’abjecte endosmose, les larves étonnées après quelques vaines tentatives contre la proie qui refusait de se rendre, reculèrent embarrassées, et se dérobèrent à ma vue, abandonnant à la vie celui qui la méritait tellement.

  Désormais libre de ce côté, j’usai de ma puissance du moment, de l’exaltation de la victoire inespérée, pour peser vers la Terre et repénétrai mon corps immobile, que les draps et la laine avaient heureusement empêché de se refroidir.

  Avec surprise, après ce mien effort dépassant celui des géants avec surprise et joie mêlée de déception je rentrai dans les horizons étroits et fermés où la vie humaine pour être ce qu’elle est, doit se passer.

  Then, the void, the larvae of the void which were already pushing tentacularly towards me their flabby sacs, threatening me with abject endosmosis, the astonished larvae after a few vain attempts against the prey that refused to yield, retired in confusion, and hid from my sight, abandoning to life the one who so deserved it.

  Free henceforward in that quarter, I used the power I had in that moment, the exaltation of unexpected victory, to project my weight towards the Earth and entered once more into my motionless body, which happily had been prevented from going cold by the sheets and wool.

  With astonishment, after this effort of mine surpassing that of giants with surprise and joy mixed with disappointment I returned within the narrow and closed horizons where human life in order to be what it is, must take place.

  Portrait des Meidosems (extraits)

  L’horloge qui bat les passions dans l’âme des Meidosems s’éveille. Son temps s’accélère. Le monde alentour se hâte, se précipite, allant vers un destin soudain marqué.

  Le couteau qui travaille par spasmes attaque, et le bâton qui baratte le fond s’agite violemment.

  ∗

  Ils prennent la forme de bulles pour rêver, ils prennent la forme de lianes pour s’émouvoir.

  Appuyée contre un mur, un mur du reste que personne ne reverra jamais, une forme faite d’une corde longue est là. Elle s’enlace.

  C’est tout. C’est une Meidosemme.

  Portrait of the Meidosems (extracts)

  The clock that beats time for the passions in the Meidosem soul awakens. Its tempo accelerates. The surrounding world quickens, rushes forward, heading towards a destiny suddenly accentuated.

  The knife that works in spasms attacks, and the rod that churns the depths shakes violently.

  ∗

  They adopt the form of bubbles for dreaming, they adopt the form of lianas for emotion.

  Leaning against a wall, a wall moreover that no one will ever see ag
ain, a figure made of a long rope is there. It entwines itself.

  That is all. That is a Meidosem woman.

  Et elle attend, légèrement affaissée, mais bien moins que n’importe quel cordage de sa dimension appuyé sur lui-même.

  Elle attend.

  Journées, années, venez maintenant. Elle attend.

  ∗

  Sur ses longues jambes fines et incurvées, grande, gracieuse Meidosemme.

  Rêve de courses victorieuses, âme à regrets et projets, âme pour tout dire.

  Et elle s’élance, éperdue, dans un espace qui la boit sans s’y intéresser.

  ∗

  Une gale d’étincelles démange un crâne douloureux. C’est un Meidosem. C’est une peine qui court. C’est une fuite qui roule. C’est l’estropié de l’air qui s’agite, éperdu. Ne va-t-on pas pouvoir l’aider?

  Non!

  And she waits, sagging slightly, but much less than any rope of her size supporting itself.

  She is waiting.

  Days, years, come now. She is waiting.

  On her long slender incurvated legs, tall, graceful Meidosem woman.

  Dream of victorious races, soul of yearnings and plans, soul to tell all.

  And she projects herself, distraught, into a space that drinks her in without interest.

  ∗

  A mange of sparks itches on a painful skull. It’s a Meidosem. He’s an affliction on legs. He’s an escape in motion. He’s the aerial cripple waving, distraught. Aren’t we going to be able to help him?

  No!

  Des coulées d’affection, d’infection, des coulées de l’arrière-ban des souffrances, caramel amer d’autrefois, stalagmites lentement formées, c’est avec ces coulées-lè qu’il marche, avec elles qu’il appréhende, membres spongieux venus de la tête, percés de mille petites coulées transversales, d’un sang extravasé, crevant les artérioles, mais ce n’est pas du sang, c’est le sang des souvenirs, du percement de l’âme, de la fragile chambre centrale, luttant dans l’étoupe, c’est l’eau rougie de la vaine mémoire, coulant sans dessein, mais non sans raison en ses boyaux petits qui partout fuient; infime et multiple crevaison.

  Un Meidosem éclate. Mille veinules de sa foi en lui éclatent. Il tombe et retombe en de nouvelles pénombres, en de nouveaux étangs.

  Qu’il est difficile de marcher ainsi…

  ∗

  Outflows of disease, of infection, outflows of the vassal army of pain, bitter caramel of times past, slowly formed stalagmites, it is with those outflows that he walks, with them and dreads them, spongy limbs coming from the head, pierced by a thousand little transverse flows, by an extravasated blood, bursting the arterioles, but it is not blood, it is the blood of memories, of the piercing of the soul, of the fragile central chamber, struggling in the oakum, it is the reddened water of vain memory, flowing without purpose, but not without reason in its little entrails that dart away everywhere; a minute and multiple puncturing.

  A Meidosem shatters. A thousand veinlets of his faith in himself explode. He falls and goes on falling into new penumbras, into new pools.

  It’s so difficult to walk like that…

  ∗

  Il se mue en cascades, en fissures, en feu. C’est être Meidosem que de se muer ainsi en moires changeantes.

  Pourquoi?

  Au moins, ce ne sont pas des plaies. Et va le Meidosem. Plutôt reflets et jeux du soleil et de l’ombre que souffrir, que méditer. Plutôt cascades.

  ∗

  Ici est la ville des murs. Mais les toits? Pas de toits. Mais les maisons? Pas de maisons. Ici est la ville des murs. Plans en mains, vous voyez constamment des Meidosems chercher à en sortir. Mais jamais il n’en sortent.

  ∗

  He transforms himself into waterfalls, into fissures, into fire. That is to be a Meidosem, to shed oneself thus into shifting watered silks.

  Why?

  At least they are not wounds. And so goes the Meidosem. Rather reflections and the play of sunlight and shadow than suffering, than meditating. Rather waterfalls.

  ∗

  This is the city of walls. But the roofs? No roofs. But the houses? No houses. This is the city of walls. Street map in hand, you constantly see Meidosems seeking to get out. But they never do get out.

  A cause des naissances (et les morts momifiés occupent une place toujours plus grande entre les murs) à cause des naissances, toujours plus de gens. Il faut construire de nouveaux murs entre les murs déjà existants.

  Il y a de longs entretiens meidosems dans les murs, sur Cela qui serait sans murs, sans limites, sans fin et même sans un commencement.

  ∗

  Des ailes sans têtes, sans oiseaux, des ailes pures de tout corps volent vers un ciel solaire, pas encore resplendissant, mais qui lutte fort pour le resplendissement, trouant son chemin dans l’empyrée comme un obus de future félicité.

  Silence. Envols.

  Ce que ces Meidosems ont tant désiré, enfin ils y sont arrivés. Les voilà.

  Because of births (and the mummified dead occupy increasing space between the walls) because of births, always more people. New walls must be built between the already existing walls.

  There are long Meidosem dialogues within the walls on What would be with no walls, with no limits, with no end and even with no beginning.

  ∗

  Wings without heads, without birds, wings pure of any body fly towards a solar sky, not yet resplendent but struggling hard for resplendence, piercing its way into the empyrean like a cannon-shell of future felicity.

  Silence. Wings taking flight.

  What these Meidosems have so long desired, at last they have reached it. There they are.

  Francis Ponge

  (1899–1988)

  In this prose poet, much absorbed by the problems and the uses of language, theorist and creative artist are fused into one. Despite the application of terms like ‘chosiste’ to his work, despite a certain similarity to the approach of the ‘nouveau romancier’ Alain Robbe-Grillet, and despite Ponge’s increasing identification with the intellectual stance of the group of writers for whom the magazine Tel Quel has been a vehicle, he has remained an unclassifiable individualist. In 1930–31 he flirted with Surrealism, in the 1940s he was a Communist Party member and briefly edited its newspaper, but his major lifelong commitment has been to language itself. Language for Ponge is a living, functional force for order and sanity in a chaotic world. It is also a problematic instrument of moral responsibility, having intrinsic distortions and uncertainties which must be addressed if it is to contribute to human health. Imperfection of expression is the enemy, and in this sense a fundamentally classical impulse towards lucidity and precision characterizes his descriptive and analytical texts.

  These influential texts break down genre distinctions, and they are highly self-referential. The creative process is its own justification, a kind of serious game with language, and the genesis and method of the work are frequently represented through metaphor within it, or clarified through a parallel notation: Ponge’s Proêmes (1948), for example, ‘expose the workings’ of his best known volume, Le Parti pris des choses (1942).

  Ponge enjoyed lecturing, often improvising to emphasize his view of language as interaction, as a significant act of construction involving the receiver. The reader’s role in constructing a Ponge text is vital; the personal consciousness of the author is largely suppressed. The French language is a living organism with a continuity stretching back to Malherbe, and within which the creative act takes place and is then modified or superseded. Language is a vast network of responses to experience and its relativity, a participatory force that delineates and amplifies our awareness of the physical world. It is thus in itself a solution to the existential or, more precisely, phenomenological anguish of Roquentin in Sartre’s La Nausée, and a celebration of human consciousness, which seizes contingency and enjoys it for its own sake.

  His minutely detailed contemplation of objects has the effect of making us se
e them as if for the first time, as if they were being created before our eyes yet without overwhelming us. The element of anthropomorphism is strong. Metaphors and paradoxes, analogies and antitheses abound in a rich texture, with cunning and erudite word-play that exploits and brings back into ‘play’ all the half-forgotten etymological potential of words. What an object is not helps us to identify what it is.

  Sound patterns and syntactic shape create a concrete ‘equivalence’ between the poem and its referent; this is not an imitative representation, but an equivalence to the life of the object, its dynamic effect on the senses. It has nothing in common with Apollinaire’s Calligrammes.

  In ‘Rhétorique’ (Proêmes) Ponge writes to a frustrated young poet, who suffers in the dominance other people’s words seem to exert over his efforts at expression: ‘Then it is that to teach the art of resisting words becomes useful, the art of saying only what we want to say, the art of doing them violence and subjugating them. In short, to found a rhetoric… is an act of public welfare… [It will save] those who can, strictly speaking, alter the face of things.’

  Later works: numerous publications, many of the best of which are collected in Le Grand Recueil I & II (1961) and Nouveau Recueil (1967). La Fabrique du pré (1971) is another important work.

  Les MÛres

  Aux buissons typographiques constitués par le poème sur une route qui ne mène hors des choses ni à l’esprit, certains fruits sont formés d’une agglomération de sphères qu’une goutte d’encre remplit.

  ∗

  Noirs, roses et kakis ensemble sur la grappe, ils offrent plutôt le spectacle d’une famille rogue à ses âges divers, qu’une tentation très vive à la cueillette.