When we have scrubbed these hands of inky stains,
When we have brushed these teeth that hold decaying
Words, like boats rotting on their anchor-chains,
Words of a song, a true or secret saying.
It’s late. Get up. The clarion in the street
Summons you. “This is real life. This is it.”
The table’s laid, and you are hungry: eat.
The horse is being bridled: fix the bit.
Think, though, of those who neither speak nor hear,
Having been murdered as the day dawned clear.
L’ÉPITAPHE
J’ai vécu dans ces temps et depuis mille années
Je suis mort. Je vivais, non déchu mais traqué.
Toute noblesse humaine étant emprisonnée
J’étais libre parmi les esclaves masqués.
J’ai vécu dans ces temps et pourtant j’étais libre.
Je regardais le fleuve et la terre et le ciel
Tourner autour de moi, garder leur équilibre
Et les saisons fournir leurs oiseaux et leur miel.
Vous qui vivez qu’avez-vous fait de ces fortunes?
Regrettez-vous les temps où je me débattais?
Avez-vous cultivé pour des moissons communes?
Avez-vous enrichi la ville où j’habitais?
Vivants, ne craignez rien de moi, car je suis mort.
Rien ne survit de mon esprit ni de mon corps.
THE EPITAPH
I’ve lived today, and since antiquity
Been dead. I lived intact, but I was prey.
Man’s nobler side was jailed and put away;
Among the slaves in face-masks, I was free.
I’ve lived today, and nonetheless been free.
I watched the river and the earth and sky
Turn round me, and they kept their harmony;
Honey and birds, a seasonal supply.
How did you use these gifts, you there alive?
Did you misuse the days I spent in toil?
Did you make common cause and till the soil
To harvest? Did you make my city thrive?
Don’t fear me, you who live: I’m dead and gone:
Not soul nor body, nothing lingers on.
BATHING WITH ANDROMEDA
A sequence from 1944.
In the classical myth, Andromeda is chained to a rock to be the prey of a sea-monster, but is rescued by Perseus. At the same time, this is about France and the invader.
Introductory Note by Marie-Claire Dumas
‘Bathing with Andromeda’ comprises nine poems, which were illustrated in colour by Felix Labisse. His images, classically drawn, their themes strangely erotic, make an effective counterpoint to the sensuality of the poems. These form a coherent set proceeding by scenes or episodes, a ‘morality’ whose characters all have an allegorical dimension. Labisse had worked on the images of Andromeda and the monster since the 1930’s. In the ancient myth, Andromeda’s parents deliver her to the monster threatening the city; Perseus, on the winged horse Pegasus, rescues the girl and marries her. Between the myth and Desnos’ version stands ‘Perseus and Andromeda, or the Happiest of the Three’, from the ‘Legendary Moralities’ of Jules Laforgue, where, as in ‘Beauty and the Beast’, an idyll is proposed between captor and prisoner. The myth, then, illustrated by Labisse and altered by Laforgue, is re-focused by Desnos on Andromeda and her fancies: a virgin on the edge of reality, dreaming of rape, intensely corporeal and projected on a void symbolic of the world. Hence the erotic violence of some scenes and ‘the rescue of Andromeda’, on her own: ‘Andromeda travels […] The monster has fled. It’s too much for high heaven.’ No raising-up of the heroine to be a constellation, in this version: she vanishes, giving way to ‘the handsome young man’s return’ – the day, that lights up the earth: ‘The day’s to be lived and the hour’s to be savoured’. In these nine poems, their lines rhyming regularly and mostly ordered in stanzas, Desnos evidently wanted to build a formal structure with symbolic import: time is announced by the return of verses of fifty-two lines, as many as weeks in the year; the banquet of twelve young persons - the twelve months; the nine poems – nine months of gestation. Andromeda and her three companions symbolise seasons, elements, the compass: she is summer, water, east; Hippolyte is autumn, earth, west; Sabina winter, north, fire; Rose spring, south, air. The whole poem runs from one dawn to the next, a complete day, the banquet in the middle under the noon sun: ‘It’s the noon […] Time to panic.’ Desnos has multiplied the formal and thematic links so that the poem celebrates the great global mechanism in which man exists, the complexity of the human spirit, shared by the imaginary and the real, and the pleasure of living, in full acceptance of this situation.
Finally the monster can also be the occupier, and the last carpe diem a salute to the coming day of victory over the oppressor.
LA BAIGNADE
Andromède, au matin, sur la plage, a donné
Rendez-vous à tous ceux qui veulent se baigner
Dans la mer fraîche éclose, enceinte de lumière.
L’étoile brille encor, qu’arrive, la première,
Rosemonde aux beaux seins qui, seule, se devêt
Et livre son corps nu, que roussit le duvet,
Aux dernières lueurs de la nuit, aux prémices
De l’aube qui se dresse au fond des précipices.
Sabine la rejoint, tige en fleur qui jaillit
D’un flot de linge, par le vent frais assailli.
Une neige d’écume éclabousse leurs cuisses
Et la première vague attache, par malice,
Une ceinture d’algue à ces corps qu’embellit
Le reflet d’une étoile et la langueur du lit.
Les astres dans le ciel grandissent et déclinent,
La neige sur les monts, à la fois, s’illumine
Des feux, naissants, du jour et, mourants, de la nuit.
Dans le sentier, bordé de genêt et de buis,
Hyppolite paraît qui, tandis qu’elle avance,
Se déshabille et jette, en figures de danse,
La robe et la chemise et le court pantalon.
Ils flottent, un instant, au-dessus des buissons,
Dans le vent, puis, soudain, s’accrochent et fleurissent,
Fleurs d’étoffe, bouquets qui, vers la donatrice,
Exhalent des parfums de chair dans ceux du sol.
Ainsi, durant le jour, tourne le tournesol
Vers l’astre dont il est le sujet et l’image.
Hyppolite, à son tour, dans la mer plonge et nage
Et l’on connaît, enfin, la présence du jour
À la blancheur du linge, aux chants des basses-cours,
À l’envol des oiseaux, à l’eclat des nuages,
Au divorce de l’eau, du ciel et du rivage.
Par quel chemin vint-elle? Andromède, soudain,
Est présente et se livre à la douceur du bain.
Elle nage. On peut suivre, encore, son sillage
Entre son corps doré et le bord de la plage.
Et ce sont des envols de bras, par-dessus l’eau,
Des battements de pieds et des éclairs de peau,
Des rires, des appels dans les éclaboussures,
Des cuisses se fermant et s’ouvrant, en mesure,
Ou, parfois, la baigneuse étendue, sur le dos,
Et se cambrant, plus souple et plus léger fardeau,
Un triangle mouillé, brillant et symétrique
À celui d’un oiseau qui vole sur la crique.
Une croupe à méplats s’illumine et surgit
Quand la baigneuse plonge et cherche, en leur logis,
L’étoile ou le galet, l’algue ou le coquillage.
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L’étoile? Mais le ciel est clair! Quelque mirage
Métamorphose en flamme un vol de goélands,
En saveur de baisers l’air et ses parfums lents.
Qu’un pied se marque, ici dans l’épaisseur du sable,
Le soleil séchera cette empreinte et sa fable.
THE BATHING
Morning: the beach. Andromeda’s invited
All those who wish to bathe in the fresh-spread sea,
Pregnant with light. A star’s still bright when, first,
Fair-breasted Rosamund arrives, strips off, alone,
Surrenders her bare body’s russet down
To the last glow of night and to the traces
Of dawn, resurgent in deep precipices.
Sabina’s next, a flowering stem that rises
From a froth of linen, assaulted by the breezes.
A snow of spray foams up around their thighs
And the first wave maliciously attaches
A belt of seaweed to these bodies, lovely
From starlight’s lustre and the languid bed.
The stars above grow bigger and sink lower;
The mountain snows illuminate two fires:
Fires of the day at birth, the night at death.
On the path, edged with broom and box, appears
Hippolytê, who, even as she comes,
Disrobes, and dances as she throws aside
Her gown, chemise, and little pantaloons.
A moment first they float above the shrubs;
Then suddenly they’re caught, and start to flower,
Bouquets of fabric-flowers that exhale,
To the donor, flesh-notes mixed with scent of earth.
Just so the sunflower turns towards the bright
Day-star, being both its subject and its image.
In turn Hippolytê dives in and swims.
At length the presence of the day is known
By the white linen and the farmyard songs,
The flight of birds, the brilliance of clouds,
The separateness of water, shore, and sky.
Which way did she come? Andromeda appears
Suddenly, yielding to the bath’s caress.
She swims. Her wake is traceable between
Her golden body and the beach’s rim.
Arm-strokes above the water, beating feet,
The flashing skin, the merry laughing cries,
Splish-splash, the thighs that close and open up
In rhythm, or at times, the bather stretched
Belly-up, a lighter, smoothly curving load,
Shining wet triangle, symmetrical
With those of birds that fly about the cove.
A rump catches the light, protruded when
A swimmer dives, pursuing in their lair
Starfish or seaweed, stone or cockleshell.
What star? The sky is bright. By some mirage,
A flight of gulls is magicked into flame,
And into kisses the slow-perfumed air.
Seeing a foot imprinted here in sand,
The sun shall dry the mark, the tale shall stand.
DÉCOUVERTE DU TRÉSOR
Est-il poitrine, où batte un cœur de chair et flamme,
Qu’une lame, ou la griffe, aille ouvrir et piller,
Est-il océan, lac ou fleuve que la rame,
Ou l’hélice, aille en flots, sans trace, éparpiller,
Est-il poitrine ou fleuve ou lac ou océan
Ou terre, aussi fendue à renfort de charrues,
Qui ne puissent livrer des moissons et, béants,
Le noyé, le poisson, l’épave disparue?
Mieux, le trésor caché, le bijou, l’or, la gemme,
Plutôt que le cadavre et le vide tombeau
Et, plutôt que l’épi, né du grain que l’on sème,
Le métal par la rouille échappant au corbeau.
Quel poignard fouillera votre ventre et vos seins,
Rosemonde, Sabine, Hyppolite, Andromède?
Quel chercheur d’or, quel outlaw, quel assassin
En vous dépossédant dira qui vous possède?
Qu’il illumine les ténèbres des cavernes,
Qu’il jaillisse du flanc d’une épave, à vau-l’eau,
Ou qu’une source apporte, aux lumières modernes,
L’éclat des vieux soleils serti dans un joyau,
Que le profil d’un roi, sans regard, sans odeur
S’y multiplie en vain contre la pourriture,
Ou que l’heure s’y lise, à des cadrans a fleurs,
Mais arrêtée au seuil d’une longue aventure,
Qu’importe, jaillissant des conques et des cornes,
Il recèlera plus de chair que de métaux,
Une chair odorante, aux corridors sans bornes
Vers une aube brillant comme un fil de couteau.
L’homme, au moment qu’il sent la saveur des cailloux
Dans sa bouche, habituée a la saveur des lèvres,
Arrête le voyage, au rythme de son pouls
Commencé dès les jours de jeunesse et de fièvres.
Il se sent désormais soudé à sa monture,
Centaure poursuivant un gibier reconnu
Insaisissable. Il le poursuit, dans ses pâtures,
Non plus par besoin, mais par désir, d’inconnu.
Ivresse! Le courant, le cortège, les jours
Le font participer au mouvement du monde.
Au-delà de la joie, au-delà du retour
La vie et le destin le portent sur leurs ondes.
Mais vous, où courez-vous, femmes en proie a l’âge,
Quelle image de vous guettez-vous aux miroirs
Chaque jour plus profonds, encombrés de naufrages,
Quel trésor cherchez-vous pour payer votre espoir?
Le carnaval s’approche avec ses cheveux blancs
Et le trésor, cherche à travers les années,
Ce sont des grelots creux et des masques branlants
Qui vous cachent le sol sur quoi vous êtes nées.
FINDING THE TREASURE
Is there a breast where beats a heart of flesh and of blazing
That knife or claw may open up and raid,
Is there an ocean, lake, or river, which the blade
Of oar or screw may spread on the waves beyond tracing,
Is there a breast or ocean, lake, river, or even
Earth itself, cloven by the main force of ploughs,
That cannot yield a crop, and belch from gaping jaws
The fish, the man who drowned, the disappeared orphan?
Better the hidden treasure, gem or gold or jewel,
Than the grave untenanted, better than the cadaver.
Better too, than the corn which is sown, is what for ever
Rusts to escape the jackdaws, namely metal.
What dagger shall ransack your belly and breasts, Hippolytê,
Sabina, Rosamund, even yours, Andromeda?
What gold-digger, what desperado, what murderer
Shall dispossess you, name your possessor-to-be?
If it illuminates the shadows in cavernous dens,
Or spurts from the flank of a lost child, floating away,
Or if clear streams to our modern lights convey,
Inset in a gem, the brightness of ancient suns,
If a royal profile that neither sees nor smells
Is replicated in vain against perdition,
Or if the time is told there on flowery dials,
Though stopped on the brink of a lengthy expedition,
What matter, for surging from every conch and horn
It shall be a receiver of flesh, more than of metals,
A fragrant flesh, through passages limitless
Wafting towards a glittering knife-sharp dawn!
A man, at the moment he senses in his mouth
The taste of stones, not the lips it’s his habit to taste,
Breaks off the journey that follows the beat in his wrist
That has pulsed ever since his feverish days of youth.
From now, as he rides, he feels as if welded on,
A centaur pursuing a quarry he understands
Can’t be caught. He chases it through its pasturelands,
Not needing now, but desiring, the object unknown.
Mad-drunkenness! The procession, the stream, the days
Cause him to share in the movement of all creation.
Out beyond joy, beyond the point of retracing,
Life and destiny bear him along on their waves.
But you women, where are you heading, a prey to age?
What images do you watch in your mirrors? For they
Are fraught with shipwreck, deeper every day.
Surrealist, Lover, Resistant Page 37
