Collected French Translations: Prose

by Ashbery, John

  Soon the expected storm erupted. A gust of wind drew Prince Norius to the window where his map had just been blown away upward, forcing him to raise his eyes—which a powerful flash of lightning suddenly blinded, wrenching a cry from him.

  The passersby, including Sableux, stopped, and the news soon spread.

  Now, Sableux, continuing on his way, recalled a certain day when, plugging his ears so as to be less bothered by Doumuse, who was practicing vocal exercises in the background, he was perusing a passage from Racelon by Pragé, that precursor whose books, despite meager first printings, have survived so many others—a passage concerning the purely nervous prolongation of certain sudden passing seizures of blindness and the possibility of curing the ill with a counterirritation by causing a sudden intense emotion in the patient.

  One month later, informed by the newspapers of numerous unsuccessful attempts at treatment, he contrived a meeting with Klédi, the prince’s chief confidant, and, thanks to the potentially useful passage from Pragé, obtained certain revelations from him.

  The prince had had by a French mistress an idolized twelve-year-old son, Harbert, a talented lycée student who had just been awarded Enrico Vivarès, a novel with a Mexican setting, as a prize for an honorable mention.

  Enrico Vivarès wants to enroll in the Farquita, that famous league that strives in vain to regulate Mexico.

  Set loose alone in a labyrinth, bravely confronting anxiety, he walks for a long time toward the unknown, directed at every crossing of the ways by an arrow.

  Finally he emerges on the stage of a crowded auditorium, where one of the leaders slaps him publicly, not without the utterance of a polite phrase which turns his gesture into the simple emblem of a momentous hierarchical elevation.

  Then he receives a noose of gold thread mounted on a pin which is fastened to his lapel—the league’s insignia, intended to remind the wearer continually of this diabolically draconian article: Of whosoever betrays one of our secrets an ironic funeral eulogy shall be printed whose delivery will announce his prompt and certain death by hanging.

  Hero of a thousand adventures, Enrico Vivarès henceforth serves the league with zeal, risking mortal danger while repressing brigands and contending with the opposing clans.

  One evening while on leave in Mexico City, he ends up, drawn by their then-considerable renown, at the home of the Gordias family (four brothers and their four sisters), who, at specified hours daily, surrounded by a paying crowd eager to learn, play while explaining it the “sertino,” a game of their invention which has recently been launched with success.

  The sertino requires many players—and eight decks, each of whose cards bears the picture of one of the eight planets, with its name printed beneath.

  Hence an infinity of combinations which, rendering it one of the most demanding of games, bestows a kind of royalty on the sertino.

  As Enrico enters, Carcetta, one of the players, is recounting to the public the subtle reasons for which she has just flung a Uranus-club on the table.

  Hearing the new arrival’s footsteps, she looks up and their glances cross, welding them together forever.

  During the engagement a secret confided by Enrico to Carcetta, and soon made indiscreet through flightiness, has grave repercussions.

  The postman delivers to Enrico a letter which he reads without flinching: his ironic funeral eulogy. Instead of awaiting his certain capture he gives himself up—and is hanged, attended by a priest.

  And a tailpiece under the words THE END shows a funereal angel with black wings carrying his soul away.

  There follow several pages under the naive title “Emergency Epilogue,” which, for sensitive readers, depict a pardoned Enrico whom Carcetta marries.

  * * *

  Now, Harbert doted on the adventures of Enrico Vivarès and several times had talked of running off by himself to Mexico to enroll in the Farquita.

  At the instigation of Sableux, Klédi had him write a farewell letter to his father, announcing, along with a tender request for pardon, the accomplishment of his project.

  Simulating terrible consternation, Klédi rushed to tell the prince that the boy had disappeared—and began to read him the letter …

  But at the first words Norius seized hold of it, and, in his panic not even noticing his sudden recovery, read it and turned ghastly pale.

  Then, immediately undeceived, he had but to taste the joys of the miraculously healed.

  Thanks to a generous recompense, Sableux and Doumuse lived for a while in the lap of luxury.

  Doumuse took advantage of it by trying to attract attention with flattering press notices and sumptuous stage costumes.

  At the time she was singing in a suburban theater the leading role in A Chatelaine during the Reign of Terror.

  The Marquise d’Ernange lives almost as a prisoner in her château near Nantes, where the tyrant Carrier reigns supreme.

  And she fancies she has found a way to embark for England.

  In 1788 the city of Nantes, for the celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the exploit of one of its sons, the navigator Discoul, who in 1388 was the first to cross the line, issued a commemorative local coin—a silver crown with a complete geographical map, a kind of flattened globe whose equator is purposefully made of gold.

  The revolutionary upheaval having prevented its being put into circulation, Carrier controls the supply—and transforms each crown—which in fact returns to him after being utilized—into an emblematic permit of embarkation.

  Extremely venal—and armed with the threat of execution by drowning—he delivers a life-saving crown only in exchange for a substantial sum.

  Lest his good humor appear suspicious, he requires each payer to provide a convincing written explanation of the reasons for his wish to depart, interspersing his tale with contemptibly flattering political formulas.

  The marquise has just sold her jewels when an occasion for direct negotiation handily presents itself.

  It is Christmas eve. The stage is divided in half, showing the chapel in the château where a small group is attending mass—and a salon made ready for the midnight feast. Suddenly a chorus of revolutionaries is heard in the wings—followed by a peek through a shutter chink accompanied by commentaries, and the breaking-in of a door. Carrier and his trustiest henchmen appear and, smashing everything on the altar to smithereens, demand an immediate palinode from the pious assembly.

  Once the storm has passed, the Marquise takes Carrier aside and bargains successfully; he will receive her the next day following his welding, a nap much practiced at the time, which welded morning to afternoon, and which we now call siesta.

  Arriving at the agreed-on hour with the money and the written text, the marquise receives one of the coveted crowns—and sets sail.

  * * *

  Now, the rich costumes and adulatory newspaper items had their effect, and Doumuse performed in a theater then much in vogue—where she was noticed by Lucien Brelmet, young scion of a wealthy family who in a few years had recently squandered a handsome fortune and a famous stamp collection.

  A single stamp—in truth a treasure in its own right—still remained in his possession: that of the Republic of Eisnark.

  In 1884 there had been much talk of the poet Ole, a native of the Swedish island of Eisnark, which, perched in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, has the form of a trapeze.

  Popular and ambitious, Ole had, one fine day, declared his natal island a republic and himself its president—and the Swedish rulers had smiled and looked the other way rather than send warships so far to so little purpose.

  Then a stamp was created—polychrome and of course cut in the shape of a trapeze—the very one of which Brelmet owned a specimen.

  One sees on the left Ole declaiming before a crowd under the gaze of his muse—the latter a creature of dreams immune to cold, her filmy attire (in the style of yesteryear) contrasting with the heavy winter coats of the others. To suggest the high latitude, the words
exhaled by Ole’s lips fall as snow before him. There follow, from left to right, depictions of Ole’s most famous poems: The Man in the Pink Cloak, whose hero is a sixteenth-century Venetian libertine; Where Love of Lucre Can Lead, a ringing cry of horror against a beggar woman, delighted that her child’s cough stimulates public generosity through commiseration; The Winner Rejoices, which hinges on the euphoria of a young hopscotch player whose victory is near and assured; The Morning Chain, wherein the dreams of a young girl fly away hand in hand as she gradually regains consciousness; The Gentle Warning, which analyzes the ecstasy of a future mother on feeling the first quivering in her loins; and The Last Flower, where the terrestrial globe is shown, after a thousand millennia, killed by the cold.

  Ole died prematurely, and the Eisnarkians, not knowing where to turn, became Swedes again on condition of a promise of general amnesty.

  The famous stamp, used for only a short time by a small group, became one of the rarest and costliest of its kind.

  Brelmet sold his specimen—and treated himself to the love of Doumuse.

  Now the jealous Sableux, who until now contented himself with beating the servilely wanton Doumuse, saw red when he discovered a patrician rival.

  Having heard tell of an approaching Friday the thirteenth, he decided to act on that day, which seemed to him doubly auspicious for the lethal work he envisioned.

  A feigned absence on the destined day drew the couple to his lodgings—which his key allowed him to enter and thereby to create two bullet-riddled cadavers.

  The whole story, revealed in court, reached Jacques through the medium of the press and Eveline; profoundly shaken, the lad was at once seized by a violent spasm of fear—with immediate pathological consequences—of the number thirteen and of Friday.

  Knowing that the uneducated are particularly defenseless against psychic sufferings with such absurd origins, Claude Migrel, faced with the greater of two evils, began to reproach his line of conduct when the Anti-Superstition League’s article came to culminate his conversion by making him wish that Jacques himself might be able to read and reread until sated.

  And the young laggard was finally given tutors.

  Third Document

  There exists in a small chapel at Lourdes a reliquary containing two manuscripts dictated by the unlettered Bernadette, each authenticated by a cross traced in her own hand, above the signatures of witnesses.

  At each pilgrimage a meticulously chosen maiden, deemed worthy of touching them thanks to her purity, reads them aloud to the crowd:

  “One day a lady with a haughty mien and strange discourse appeared to me.

  “It was the fairy Fussive; one of her peers had just died well past the age of three thousand years—and I was to replace her.

  “With a wave of her hand she caused a very blue river to appear, and a small boat ferried us away, so opulent that its sails had lace inserts, though the wind filled them nonetheless.

  “Once we had reached the realm of the fairies, I was given a bow and arrows so as to shoot at a map of the heavens—my godmother was to be a star chosen by fate.

  “My fourth arrow pierced the map—near the star Cérenée, whose name became mine.

  “Then I was ushered into a chamber where the old queen of the fairies, still very beautiful, was loudly scolding, indeed almost castigating, a young fairy entrusted with regilding the sun’s spots, who, without apology, had put off her task and was still carrying the intact scroll of gold leaf meant for this purpose.

  “Once this scene was over I was presented to the queen, who whisked me off to my apartments.

  “First we crossed the Chamber of Obsolete Magic Formulas, whose walls were papered with printed pages faded by time.

  “The next room was populated by those on whom the fairies had showered their gifts—statues purposely made of steel, an infinitely durable metal well-suited to emblematize their immortality!

  “To show me that she had deliberately raised her voice just now and had cause to fear the abuse of power, the queen passed on to me what she said was her favorite mental refrain—a text she read me while contemplating the pedestal of the statue of Cratus.

  “It was The Flimsy Red Colossus, a satire in which Cratus contrasts the ineffectuality of an imaginary Caesar with the omnipotence conferred by his purple robe, and wherein he takes aim at the reddish-purple fraud as he depicts the people suffering under the tyrant’s thrall.

  “The statue nearest that one showed an adolescent in a schoolboy’s uniform. And when I expressed surprise at seeing so much youth joined to so much glory:

  “‘—It’s Hector Prangel,’ the queen told me. ‘His father, Léon Prangel, having, as a humble militiaman, so amply demonstrated a heroism which has remained unsung, the fairies made amends for this injustice by consecrating his much-vaunted paternal love. Having suddenly become thanks to them an enlightened man of letters, Hector at the age of fifteen wrote a remarkable tragedy, King Oedipus V, whose hero is heir to an imaginary dynasty founded by Jocasta’s husband. In a kind of preamble, Oedipus V, confessing his reluctance to do so, speaks of his shady origins which render him ill-suited to rule—and swears to compensate for them with virtuous deeds. He keeps his word—and answers every question with a profound precept-couplet.’

  “Then the queen drew me into another chamber, whose walls were covered with bookshelves crammed with books.

  “‘—There are only fairy tales here,’ she said, ‘and here is the only known copy of Escieur’s Short History of the Fairies.’ And she showed me a volume honorifically placed in the center of the room on a stand half-surrounded by gold trelliswork adorned with foliage.

  “Not far from us an extremely ugly woman was holding a fresh pile of pink books4 under her arm and had just finished making a place on a shelf for the new additions. On the queen’s saying to her, ‘Come, Kristule,’ she quickly put her books away and drew near.

  “Fussive had spoken to me of Kristule, endowed with great influence through the friendship of the queen, glad that a striking ugliness served as a foil to the remains of her own beauty.

  “Soon I continued onward consigned to Kristule’s care by the queen—who turned back.

  “On leaving the library I found myself in a corridor, and then, having crossed the threshold of the first door on the right, in the Bedroom of Sweet Transference, reserved for the new fairies still intoxicated with their changed condition, and wherein—Kristule told me—an invisible curbing hand punished with a wound any step in the direction of exaggerated pride.

  “Left alone by Kristule, I had the vision—which made me recoil in terror—of my own silhouette, whose emaciated state evoked prolonged fasting.

  “I understood that, guilty of demonry, I had just been enlightened by heaven concerning the path to my redemption.

  “I waited until the middle of the night to make my escape—and found once more the skiff, in which, thanks to a favorable shift in the wind, I reached my point of departure.

  “And I gave myself over to severe purifying fasts.”

  While this dictation, apparently done at leisure, charms by its correctness, the other, entirely written in a cursive hand with multiple abbreviations, betokens haste—an exquisite Cradle Song for Jesus that sprang, one Christmas, from the lips of the suddenly inspired Bernadette.

  * * *

  Having finished reading her two texts, the maiden, raising a small gold trapdoor at the back of the chapel, reveals a bone and a branch studded with diamonds, the gifts of zealots.

  Then, pointing to the bone, she speaks of Ovide Torchu. Passing one day close to a group of conscripts seated at table in front of a tavern, Bernadette stopped short. One of them, Ovide Torchu, a journeyman of ill repute, had just sliced off the thumb of his right hand, shouting, “Down with the drill!”

  She picked up the thumb and the mutilated hand—which, thanks to her, instantly became whole and normal.

  At the same moment Ovide Torchu was transfigured. He became a good sold
ier and then an honest man—and after his death his thumb, through a clause in his will, was cut off anew to become a relic.

  Displaying the branch next, the girl proceeds to tell of Luc Neytral.

  Passing Luc Neytral, who was on his way to the mountains, on a local road one morning during a harsh winter, Bernadette cried out: “The frozen water will deceive you, cross only in front of the yew.”

  Toward noon, Luc Neytral was walking along a frozen river on a high plateau, when he spotted on the opposite bank an anfractuosity seemingly made to afford shelter for his meal—and, farther on, a yew.

  Impressed, he was careful to cross in front of the yew.

  Having reached the anfractuosity, out of curiosity he tossed a stone in the right direction, which disappeared after breaking the ice—very thin at that place due to a subterranean hot spring whose discovery the event occasioned.

  And having refreshed himself wrapt in thought, Luc Neytral piously plucked a branch of the yew.

  Fourth Document

  In February 1886 the Honduran minister to Paris, His Excellency Remo Corcitès, was recalled, owing to the intrigues of one of his rivals for the favors of a reigning belle—the Breton deputy Mérédic, who had in fact just rendered himself even more governmental through an altered nuance with a clever pretext.

  And under the headline The True Reason for a Transformation, a reactionary newspaper had portrayed a jealous Mérédic, shamelessly athirst for influence.

  Corcitès, a widower, had a son of thirteen, Guldo, consumed by nostalgia for his homeland, the sunny backdrop of his early childhood—a humble country which he had honorifically daubed with gold on a planisphere in his classroom.

  Since appointment to a prestigious domestic post, which accompanied the recall, stipulated “neither demotion nor further exile in prospect,” the homesick youngster’s joy was complete, and he read his father The Worst of Fates, which he had long adored in secret, wherein Angelo Essermos, a much revered poet from their country, Honduran to the core, bemoans in six-syllable verses the lot of the diplomat enrolled in foreign service.