A Blaze in a Desert

by Victor Serge

  Suicide of Dr. C., p. 94

  “C.” is probably Dr. Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, a psychiatrist who, depressed and fearful of going blind after a cataract operation, shot himself on 17 November 1934. (JR)

  How Clérambault figures in Serge’s life is unclear. Clérambault does play a part in the controversy surrounding André Breton’s attack on the psychiatric profession in Nadja (1928). In 1930, Breton’s Second Manifesto of Surrealism begins with an excerpt of the proceedings of a professional meeting where Clérambault and others respond to Breton with a critique of Surrealism. Clérambault was also an early mentor to Jacques Lacan, whose involvement with Surrealism included publishing in Minotaure in the 1930s. At least something of this history would have been known to Serge. Interestingly, Clérambault, like Serge, compares Surrealism to Gongorism.

  Given its date of composition, the poem more properly belongs in Resistance. In “Mort d’Otto et Alice Rühle,” 24 juin 1943, Carnets, 345, Serge remembers Alice Rühle reading “a poem of mine, ‘Suicide of Dr. C.,’ written in Orenburg in 1934, that I had forgotten and then suddenly recreated in one hour in Mexico City while walking in the rain in 1941.”

  Curiously, Serge described a similar suicide scene in Memoirs in 1942–1943, where he imagines the suicide of his friend and comrade Adolf Abramovich Joffe (1883–1927), who kills himself in despair at the turn the Russian Revolution had taken under Stalin:

  Brief meditation: wife, child, city; the huge eternal universe; and myself about to go … Now to do quickly and well what has been irrevocably decided: press the automatic comfortably against the temple, there will be a shock and no pain at all. Shock, then nothing. (267)

  a devastated shade: A reference to Serge’s wife, Liuba Russakova. (JR)

  Marseille, p. 96

  Published by Roger Caillois in Lettres françaises/Cahiers trimestriels de littérature française, édités par les soins de la revue SUR avec la collaboration des écrivains français résidant en France et à l’étranger, no. 4 (Buenos Aires, 1 April 1942): 15–16. The influential literary journal Sur was published by Victoria Ocampo. (JR)

  As France fell to the invading German army in 1940, Serge fled from Paris to Marseille, where he found refuge with Varian Fry’s Emergency Rescue Committee. (JR)

  Planet without visas: Perhaps an echo of the title of a chapter in Trotsky’s My Life (1930).

  Moscou Vienne Berlin: Serge updates a fifteenth-century song that is known to every French child, “Le Carillon de Vendôme” (The Chimes of Vendôme). Its refrain—“Orléans, Beaugency, / Notre-Dame de Cléry, / Vendôme, Vendôme!”—commemorates places in the Loire region that at a certain point in the Hundred Years’ War remained to the future Charles VII, who was under dire threat from the invading English and the Burgundians. Moscow, Vienna, Berlin, and Barcelona were important in Serge’s life as sites of revolt, revolution, and triumphant counterrevolution (Stalin, Dollfuss, Hitler, Franco). At the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the Parc Montsouris saw extensive fighting during the Paris Commune (1871), which was savagely suppressed by French government forces; Paris fell to the Germans in 1940. Serge would have been aware of the relevance of the modern history of towns mentioned in “Le Carillon de Vendôme”: Orléans was occupied by the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War and then by the Germans in the Second World War. Cléry-Saint-André, home to the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Cléry, suffered at the hands of the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War. The mention of Vendôme foreshadows the destruction centuries later of the Vendôme column by revolutionaries of the Paris Commune, as well as the German bombing of the town of Vendôme in 1940. See, with a grain of salt, the Wikipédia articles “Le Carillon de Vendôme,” “Parc Montsouris,” “Orléans,” “Beaugency,” “Cléry-Saint-André,” “Basilique Notre-Dame de Cléry-Saint-André,” and “Vendôme” at http://fr.wikipedia.org.

  The rats are leaving …, p. 98

  Published in Lettres françaises, no. 4 (Buenos Aires, 1 April 1942): 17–18; reprinted in Le Journal des Poètes, no. 1 (Brussels, 1958): 10. (JR)

  Out at Sea, p. 100

  For L.: Laurette Séjourné, Serge’s companion, remained in France when Serge and Vlady escaped on a ship out of Marseille. She joined them in Mexico a year later, bringing with her Serge’s five-year-old daughter Jeannine (Richard Greeman, private communication).

  The Cuban artist: Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) had a Chinese father and a Cuban mother. Like Serge, Lam was a refugee in Marseille. On 25 March 1941, Lam left France on the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle along with, among others, Serge and Vlady, André Breton, and Claude Lévi-Strauss. (JR) Lam had “fought in the Spanish Civil War … Through Picasso he was introduced” to Breton and the Surrealist group in Paris (Lowery Stokes Sims, Wifredo Lam and the International Avant-Garde, 1923–1982 [Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002], 3).

  In the brisk air of departure: In “Marseille,” 24 mars 1941, Carnets, 56–57, Serge addresses Séjourné as he writes of his and Vlady’s departure from Marseille; at the end of the entry he slightly misquotes from “26 August 28,” written many years before:

  Left around 1:30, for a long while we watch Marseille growing ever more distant, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, the transporter bridge, our memories. Soft golden evening, thinking of your solitude, I suppress a rout. “We must be strong / we must be hard / I will go on / but really, that’s hard …”

  the Brûleur de Loups: A café-brasserie on the Quai des Belges at the Old Port of Marseille. Among its habitués were Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, Benjamin Péret, Remedios Varo, Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Lam, Jean Malaquais, and Vlady. See “‘Au Brûleur de Loups’, André Breton, Anna Seghers, Jean Malaquais” at http://www.galerie-alain-paire.com. Figueres … Castelldefels … the International Brigades: Organized by the Comintern during the Spanish Civil War, the International Brigades fought against Franco in defense of the Spanish Republic but also against the anarchists and the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, of which Serge was a supporter. (In Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell chronicles his own experiences in the POUM militia.) In “Espagne,” 25 mars 1941, Carnets, 57–58, Serge describes Figueres and Castelldefels from the sea:

  Seven o’clock in the morning, weak sunlight, we are leaving behind the cloudy, snow-covered Pyrenees. Green plain of Figueres, how many dead under that grass. Figueres of the defeat, a gentle, calm landscape, green hills. Small Catalan towns at the water’s edge. The coast drifts by like a dream, real and unreal. High verdant hills, castles on the hilltops.—A great, square castle made of red brick, flanked by a gray outer wall lying upon the slope, Castelldefels. A former POUM militiaman, who is just bones and nerves, with the hard face of a sick miner (concentration camps in Germany, then Spanish battle fronts, prisons, camps again in Spain and France), explains that this was the prison and torture site of the International Brigades. It’s probably one of Franco’s prisons now.

  Caribbean Sea, p. 103

  Published in Lettres françaises, no. 4 (Buenos Aires, 1 April 1942): 18–19. (JR)

  voracious sea, dangerous sea: In “Les vagues – Mer redoutable,” 16 juin 1941, Carnets, 101, Serge describes at length the spectacle of Caribbean waves striking the shore with the sound of a “distant cannonade,” concluding:

  This assault never stops … I’ve already seen many waves, why am I so struck by the powerful rage of these, by their nasty hissing, by their continuous destructive surge? Because here I feel the destructive surge, this hot sea of the Caribs is not a gentle Mediterranean, it is something else, something dangerously unstable. Fearsome sea.

  Our Children, p. 105

  Published in Le Journal des Poètes, no. 1 (Brussels, 1958): 10. (JR)

  Death of Jacques Mesnil, p. 106

  Jacques Mesnil (1872–1940) was the author of studies on Masaccio and Botticelli and a fast friend of Serge’s. He and his wife Clara Koettlitz were former students of Élisée Reclus (1830–1905), the anarchist geographer and a veteran of the Paris Commune. “Toward the age of
fifty, Clara lost her reason; Jacques died alone in 1940,” fleeing the Nazis during the fall of France (Memoirs, 166–167).

  the Pré-Saint-Gervais: Serge lived in this Paris neighborhood from mid-May 1937 to mid-June 1940. (JR)

  Altagracia, p. 109

  Altagracia: The name evokes the Virgen de la Altagracia, spiritual protector of the Dominican Republic (Christopher Winks, private communication).

  In a long, untitled entry dated fin juillet 1941, Carnets, 104–105, Serge describes the scene, characters, and events that find a different expression in the poem:

  Little cemetery crowded with cement crosses out my window … Last night, awakened by the storm, saw this cemetery all spread out, very beautiful, as if at an oblique angle with all its crosses bent beneath the unending bolts of lightning—of a dazzling, immobile whiteness—and the living spears of relentless rain. On an upright gray cross I can read: Porfirio Kepi …

  Three Chinese, with children, often come to visit a new grave …

  Several days in a row, a poor woman returned … Thirty maybe, already wrinkled, very thin, the body of a slender young girl … Dressed all in black, with a little hat and her stockings pulled up, she looks like an insect. Under the hard brilliant sun she arrives with a little black purse, a black umbrella. She brings flowers, a candle, tidies up the gravestone, removes the dead flowers, picks up a scrap of paper and takes it away, sits down for moment on a burning white gravestone, folds her hands, waits … She was alone in all this whiteness of crosses, under this awful sun, I saw her talking to the cross, with discouraged gestures: No, really, I can’t believe it, how is that possible? … She saw me, I was embarrassed.

  Mexico: Idyll, p. 111

  Published in Contemporains/revue de critique et de littérature, no. 4 (Paris, April 1951): 501–502. (JR)

  Marcel Martinet (1887–1944), a close friend of Serge’s, was a poet, playwright, novelist, and critic, as well as an antifascist and anti-Stalin activist. Martinet had, like his friend Mesnil, a rare force of character and moral and ideological rigor. (JR) See Paizis, Marcel Martinet.

  Mexico: Morning Litany, p. 113

  Published in Spanish as “Letanía de la mañana,” Oscar Vera, trans., in Revue Babel/Revista de Arte y Critica III, no. 33 (Santiago de Chile/ Buenos Aires/Mexico City, May–June 1946): 104–105. (JR) Flammenwerfer: Flamethrowers.

  A las dos y a las tres: In “Virgen de Guadalupe,” 11–12 décembre 1943, Carnets, 415–420, Serge recounts a visit to the Basilica de Santa María de Guadalupe with Laurette Séjourné. In the crowd at a festival they watch a group of pilgrims singing over and over again a litany like the fragment in the poem: “a la una y a las dos / a las tres y a las cuatro / a las cinco y a las seis / dieron gracias por el alma …” (at one o’clock and two / at three o’clock and four / at five o’clock and six / they gave thanks for the soul …).

  Mexico: Churches, p. 115

  In 1943 and 1944, Serge made pilgrimages to the newly formed Paricutín volcano near San Juan Parangaricutiro. During the first visit, in August 1943, Serge witnessed the Indios engaged in an otherworldly rite:

  High, broad nave of the church, very poor. A group of the faithful is performing its devotions there. They are standing up, opposite the choir. The church is filled with a gently rhythmical, furtive sound. From deep inside, the unshod faithful slowly retreat toward the exit as they perform a sort of dance in place. The silhouettes of men in sarapes and of women carrying their kids wrapped in a shawl on their chests hop straight up, take a quick half-step forward, a small step back … It’s a long, magical dance in the Christian church. An old woman comes in and advances toward the altar, on her knees … These people are sunbrowned, thin, and impoverished, with tense faces, with solemn, deep-set eyes. They dance slowly past us, not deigning to see us …

  An Indio is sweeping the ash-covered parvis. The immense slanting cloud of Paricutín covers half the noon sky. (“Dr Atl,” [22 août 1943], Carnets, 392–393)

  the Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius: A venerable Russian Orthodox monastery in the town of Sergiyev Posad, not far from Moscow.

  Outbreaks, p. 118

  Père Ubu: The usurping regicide protagonist of Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi (King Ubu).

  We have long thought …, p. 122

  A version of the lines “the habit of still believing / more in the earth than in the grave” serves as an epigraph to part III of Serge’s last novel, Unforgiving Years, Richard Greeman, trans. (New York: New York Review Books, 2008).

  Note, p. 123

  A version of the last stanza serves as an epigraph to part I of Unforgiving Years.

  It takes …, p. 124

  A version of the last stanza serves as an epigraph to part IV of Unforgiving Years.

  After that splendid Notre Dame …, p. 125

  Published in Le Journal des Poètes, no. 1 (Brussels, 1958): 10. Also in Resistance, as “Sensation.” (JR)

  It’s salt water that quenches …, p. 126

  Published in Contemporains, no. 4 (Paris, April 1951): 499–500. (JR) A version of the lines “All the cities I have known, all the unknown cities / drift, cracked ice floes, toward the most barren dawns” serves as an epigraph to part II of Unforgiving Years.

  III. Mains/Hands

  Published in a special issue of Témoins, no. 21 (Zurich, February 1959): 31–33; published in Spanish as “Manos” in Presencia/Revista ecuatoriana de cultura, nos. 7–8 (Quito, August–September 1950). Thanks to Vlady, the poem was published in a bilingual, fine-press edition, with a Spanish translation by the poet Verónica Volkow: Mains/Manos: Un Poema de Victor Serge (Mexico: Carta al Lector y El Taller Martín Pescador, 1978); the edition includes an engraving from Vlady’s sketch of his father’s hands. (JR) That sketch is reproduced on the cover of this translation.

  Serge’s last poem, written the day before his death in November 1947, has parallels with Rimbaud’s “Les mains de Jeanne-Marie,” as Renée Morel suggests in a private communication. As translated by Paul Schmidt, Rimbaud’s poem, with its Communard heroine, begins: “Jeanne-Marie has powerful hands, / Dark hands summertime has tanned, / Hands pale as a dead man’s hands” (“The Hands of Jeanne-Marie,” in Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works [New York: Harper & Row, 1976], 57). In his edition of Rimbaud’s poems, Jean-Luc Steinmetz links “Jeanne-Marie” to Rimbaud’s reading of Théophile Gautier’s “Études de mains” (Hand Studies) (Poésies [Paris: Flammarion, 2004], 256). The first part of Gautier’s poem interrogates the sculpture of a beautiful woman’s hand; the second part describes the severed hand of the criminal dandy Lacenaire after his execution. Serge was likely familiar with Rimbaud’s poem and possibly with Gautier’s.

  See Richard Greeman, “Afterword: The Odyssey of a Revolutionary Poet” in this book for Vlady’s note on his father’s last hours.

  Afterword: The Odyssey of a Revolutionary Poet

  Richard Greeman

  Victor Serge was born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich in 1890 in Brussels, where his parents, impoverished Russian anti-czarist intellectuals in exile, had settled in their perennial “quest of their daily bread and of good libraries.” Serge was homeschooled by his impecunious father, Leon Kibalchich, whose overwhelming passion for science left him unsuited for things practical, and by his mother Vera Poderevskaya, a former teacher who taught him to read through “cheap editions of Shakespeare and Chekov.”1 Young Serge was thus spared the dispiriting boredom of institutional schooling while learning how to think for himself, love poetry, and pursue science out of passionate curiosity.

  Serge’s nuclear family broke up when he was fifteen; his mother, suffering from tuberculosis, returned to Russia. Serge chose to live alone in Brussels, where he had bonded with a band of other youths: underpaid teenage apprentices, all passionate readers, thirsting for absolutes, and “closer than brothers.” Together, Serge and his companions began their political education as activists in the Socialist Young Guards of the Belgian Workers’ Party. But they soon lost patience with t
urn-of-the-century reformism and formed their own militant anarchist group, which published a paper, Le Révolté (The Rebel), in which Serge signed his articles “Le Rétif” (The Maverick). Poetry held a special place in the early twentieth-century revolutionary movements in which Serge evolved. As he later recalled:

  Poetry was a substitute for prayer for us, so greatly did it uplift us and answer our constant need for exaltation. Verhaeren, the European poet nearest to Walt Whitman (whom we did not yet know), flashed us a gleam of keen, anguished, fertile thought on the modern town, its railway stations, its trade in women, its swirling crowds, and his cries of violence were like ours: “Open or break your fists against the door!” Fists were broken, and why not? Better that than stagnation. Jehan Rictus lamented the suffering of the penniless intellectual dragging out his nights on the benches of foreign boulevards, and no rhymes were richer than his: songe-mensonge (dream-lie), espoir-désespoir (hope-despair). In springtime “the smell of crap and lilacs …”2