The Penguin Book of French Poetry

by Various

  ∗

  There were we going, facing westward, to the roaring of the new waters. And there is yet more birth of wonders on the land of men. And all your painted creatures are not sufficient, Audubon! that I must not add to them some vanished species: the Passenger Pigeon, the Northern Curlew and the Greak Auk… There were we going, from swell to swell, over the Western degrees. And the night was fragrant with the black salts of the land, from the outskirts of the Cities towards the straw-fields, femmes de plein air. Et les femmes étaient grandes, au goÛt de seigles et d’agrumes et de froments moulés à l’image de leur corps.

  Et nous vous dérobions, ô filles, à sortie des salles, ce mouvement encore du soir dans vos chevelures libres – tout ce parfum d’essence et de sécheresse, votre aura, comme une fulguration d’ailleurs… Et vos jambes étaient longues et telles qu’elles nous surprennent en songe, sur les sables, dans l’allongement des feux du soir… La nuit qui chante aux lamineries des Villes n’étire pas chiffre plus pur pour les ferronneries d’un très haut style.

  amid the freckled flesh of open-air women. And the women were tall, with the taste of rye and citrus and of wheat formed in the image of their bodies. And we stole from you, O girls emerging from the halls, even that stir of evening in your unconfined hair – all that scent of attar and of dryness, your aura, like a flash of lightning from another place… And your legs were long and such that they surprise us in dreams, on the sands, in the lengthening of the fires of evening… The night singing in the rolling-mills of the Cities draws forth no purer cipher for the ironwork of an elevated style.

  Et qui donc a dormi cette nuit? Les grands rapides sont passés, courant aux fosses d’un autre âge avec leur provision de glace pour cinq jours. Ils s’en allaient contre le vent, bandés de métal blanc, comme des athlètes vieillissants. Et tant d’avions les prirent en chasse, sur leurs cris!…

  Les fleuves croissent dans leurs crues! Et la fusée des routes vers l’amont nous tienne hors de souffle!… Les Villes à sens unique tirent leur charge à bout de rues. Et c’est ruée encore de filles neuves à l’An neuf, portant, sous le nylon, l’amande fraîche de leur sexe.

  Et c’est messages sur tous fils, et c’est merveilles sur toutes ondes. Et c’est d’un même mouvement à tout ce mouvement lié, que mon poème encore dans le vent, de ville en ville et fleuve en fleuve, court aux plus vastes houles de la terre, épouses elles-mêmes et filles d’autres houles…

  And who then has slept this night? The great expresses have gone by, racing to the chasms of another age with their supply of ice for five days. They were running against the wind, strapped with white metal, like ageing athletes. And so many aeroplanes, upon their cries, gave chase!… Let the rivers swell in their flood! And may the roads that rocket upstream hold us breathless!… The one-way Cities haul their loads to the streets’ end. And once more there is a rush of new girls to the new Year, wearing, under the nylon, the fresh almond of their sex. And there are messages on every wire, marvels on every wave. And it is with an identical movement joined with all this movement that my poem in the wind, from city to city and river to river, roves still upon the most expansive surges of the earth, themselves the wives and daughters of other surges…

  Pierre-Jean Jouve

  (1887–1976)

  Jouve, like Perse, is a rather patrician figure, shunning popular appeal in favour of a highly demanding, intellectual and spiritual conception of the poet’s task, and for whom poetic language has a mystical and redemptive value. He is a strong influence on Bonnefoy and Emmanuel, and on David Gascoyne.

  His early work was influenced by Baudelaire and Mallarmé, and Symbolist in character. He was then associated for a time with Jules Romains’ ‘Unanimist’ school, with its cult of the crowd and the city and its emphasis on immediacy of sensation. Restlessness, though, was predominant in Jouve’s early creative life as he searched for his true orientation.

  In 1924–5, after a series of emotional and religious crises, he disowned all his work to that point, and embarked on a new creative enterprise which he would sustain with great consistency until his death.

  Strongly influenced by Freud yet detached from the Surrealist movement, Jouve explores man’s inner ambivalence with lucidity and honesty, in particular the battle between the erotic and self-destructive instincts. The difficulty of transcending man’s state of sin, guilt and despair preoccupies him intensely, yet the search for redemption is motivated by a genuine faith in ultimate victory in his battle with evil. In that quest within his unconscious, he draws inspiration from Blake, St John of the Cross, St Theresa of Avila and from Shakespeare, whose Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet Jouve has translated.

  In the feverish, incantatory verse of Les Noces, visions of harmony are glimpsed within a world of sin and disgust. An indissoluble link is created between flesh and spirit in which matter has a metaphysical value (note the importance of the physicality of Christ in ‘Vrai Corps’). In Sueur de Sang the Freudian labyrinth is entered fully and the surging imagery is often very unpleasant, yet Jouve’s conviction is that deliverance can come only through this dynamic and exorcizing experience of sin. The religious symbol of the Stag recurs, redeeming human monstrosity by its sacrificial death.

  Another mythical figure, the dead woman ‘Hélène’, dominates in Matière Céleste. In her, love is sanctified through physical loss, and it is in this absence that love becomes perfect and transcends the profanity of life. It opens up divinity to the poet, albeit by a negative and tortuous route.

  Later, Hélène will become a Jeanne d’Arc figurehead for the dead of France, in Jouve’s highly personal and spiritual response to the Occupation. The German invasion is seen as a physical and moral scourging of France in which Hitler is the earthly representative of Satan. It is not applauded, but viewed in terms of another battle for purification, a crusade which France must win. Jouve’s post-war works, in which he moves away from his tense, terse, repetitive style to a more Claudelian ‘verset’, express some disillusionment with the state of ‘liberated’. Europe, and he withdraws into a mystical dialogue with language itself, a Segalen-influenced contemplation of objects, and meditative preparation for death. In the 1960s his importance in modern poetry was confirmed by a number of major literary prizes.

  His volumes of poetry have been gathered as follows by Mercure de France:

  Poesie I-IV: Les Noces 1925–31, Sueur de Sang 1933–5, Matière Céleste 1936-7, Kyrie 1938;

  Poesie V, VI: La Vierge de Paris 1939–44, Hymne 1947;

  Poesie VII-IX: Diadème 1949, Ode 1950, Langue 1952;

  Poesie X, XI: Mélodrame 1956-8, Moires 1962-6.

  Vallée de larmes

  Trois lys jaunes

  Sont sortis de terre entre plusieurs fonds noirs

  D’averse abominable,

  Image

  De la satisfaction qu’éprouve Dieu.

  D’autres iris bleus vinrent un autre jour

  Et les chemins pareils aux serpents secs

  Les entourent, les empêchent de s’enfuir

  Car le matin n’est ni froid ni chaud ni clair ni ombre

  Il est utile,

  Et ce monde est bien l’endroit de la tentation.

  Vale of Tears

  Three yellow lilies have emerged from earth among several dark backgrounds of foul downpour, an image of the gratification felt by God. Other blue irises came on another day and the paths like dried-up snakes encircle them, prevent their flight for the morning is neither cold nor warm nor bright nor shadow It is expedient, and this world is truly the place of temptation.

  Vrai Corps

  Salut vrai corps de dieu. Salut Resplendissant

  Corps de la chair engagé par la tombe et qui naît

  Corps, ô Ruisselant de bontés et de chairs

  Salut corps tout de jour!

  Divinité aux très larges épaules

  Enfantine et marchante, salut toute beauté,

  Aux boucles, aux épines

  Ino
uï corps très dur de la miséricorde,

  Salut vrai corps de dieu éblouissant aux larmes

  Qui renaît, salut vrai corps de l’homme

  Enfanté du triple esprit par la charité.

  True Body

  Hail true divine body. Hail Resplendent body of flesh bound by the tomb and being born Body, O Flowing with goodness and with flesh Hail body all daylight! Most broad-shouldered childlike and striding deity, hail all beauty, with curls, with thorns most firm unprecedented body of mercy, hail true divine body dazzling to tears being reborn, hail true body of man begotten of the threefold spirit by charity.

  Témoin des lieux insensés de mon cœur

  Tu es né d’une vierge absolue et tu es né

  Parce que Dieu avait posé les mains sur sa poitrine,

  Et tu es né

  Homme de nerfs et de douleur et de semence

  Pour marcher sur la magnifique dalle de chagrin

  Et ton flanc mort fut percé pour la preuve

  Et jaillit sur l’obscur et extérieur nuage

  Du sang avec de l’eau.

  Sur le flanc la lèvre s’ouvre en méditant

  Lèvre de la plaie mâle, et c’est la lèvre aussi

  De la fille commune

  Dont les cheveux nous éblouissent de long amour;

  Elle baise les pieds

  Verdâtres, décomposés comme la rose

  Trop dévorée par la chaleur amoureuse du ciel d’en haut,

  Et sur elle jaillit, sur l’extérieur nuage

  Du sang avec de l’eau car tu étais né.

  Witness of the demented places of my heart you were born of an absolute virgin and you were born because God had laid his hands upon her breast, and you were born a man of nerves and pain and seed to walk upon the magnificent stone slab of grief and your dead flank was pierced for proof and gushed upon the dark and outer cloud with blood and water.

  On the flank the lip opens meditating The lip of the male wound, and it is the lip too of the common girl whose hair dazzles us with prolonged love; she kisses the greenish feet, decayed like the rose too much consumed by the loving heat of heaven on high, and upon her gushes, upon the outer cloud blood with water for you had been born.

  Lorsque couchés sur le lit tiède de la mort

  Tous les bijoux ôtés avec les oeuvres

  Tous les paysages décomposés

  Tous les ciels noirs et tous les livres brÛlés

  Enfin nous approcherons avec majesté de nous-même,

  Quand nous rejetterons les fleurs finales

  Et les étoiles seront expliquées parmi notre âme,

  Souris alors et donne un sourire de ton corps

  Permets que nous te goÛtions d’abord le jour de la mort

  Qui est un grand jour de calme d’épousés,

  Le monde heureux, les fils réconciliés.

  When lying on the tepid bed of death All jewels discarded along with works all landscapes decomposed All skies black and all books burned we approach ourselves at last with majesty, when we cast off the final flowers and the stars will be clucidated within our soul, smile then and from your body give a smile Grant that we may taste you first on the day of death which is a great day of wedded peace, the world content, the sons reconciled.

  L’Œil et la chevelure

  Placé dans la longueur et fermé comme un puits

  Sur le secret du moi, entre des moustaches

  Pour toute éternité; c’est une bouche ouverte Qui souffle un long drapeau de malheureux parfum

  C’est un regard voilé

  Qui prononce un vocabulaire ensanglanté.

  Eye and Hair

  Set lengthwise and closed like a well on the secret of the self, between hairy lips for all eternity; it is an open mouth breathing a long banner of doleful scent It is a veiled gaze that utters a vocabulary steeped in blood.

  Lamentations au cerf

  Sanglant comme la nuit, admirable en effroi, et sensible

  Sans bruit, tu meurs à notre approche.

  Apparais sur le douloureux et le douteux

  Si rapide impuissant de sperme et de sueur

  Qu’ait été le chasseur; si coupable son

  Ombre et si faible l’amour

  Qu’il avait! Apparais dans un corps

  Pelage vrai et

  Chaud, toi qui passes la mort.

  Oui toi dont les blessures

  Marquent les trous de notre vrai amour

  A force de nos coups, apparais et reviens

  Malgré l’amour, malgré que

  Crache la blessure.

  Lamentations to the Stag

  Bloody like the night, admirable in terror, and perceptible without sound, you die at our approach. Appear upon the ground of pain and doubt however swift impotent of sperm and sweat has been the hunter; however guilty his Shadow and however weak the love he had! Appear in a body a true and warm Pelt, you who are passing into death1. Yes you whose wounds Record the holes of our true love by the strength of our blows, appear and come again in spite of love, despite the Spitting of the wound.

  La Femme et la terre

  Quand elle était, ce cœur était plus fort que la lumière

  Son sang sous l’influence de la lune était plus ouvert

  Que le sang répandu, et sa nuit plus obscure et velue

  Que la nuit mais aussi scintillante et dure

  Un sexe plus qu’une âme un astre plus qu’un sexe

  Une église la chevelure la surmontait

  Et vous qui dormez! autre granit et vieilles roses

  Qui passez et disparaissez dans un bain pur

  Sans faiblesse comme sans distance

  Hautes hautes terres étranger azur

  Pesez sur elle qui n’est plus

  Dans le temps ni sein ni spasmes ni larmes

  Qui s’est retournée sous la terre

  Vers l’autre plus cendreux soleil.

  Woman and Earth

  When she was, this heart was stronger than light Her blood under the moon’s influence was more open than spilt blood, and her night more mysterious and downy than the night but just as hard and scintillating A sex more than a soul a star more than a sex A church the hair was its crown

  And you who sleep! other granite and old roses that pass and vanish in a pure pool without weakness as without distance High high lands foreign azure

  Weigh upon her who is no longer in time’s span breast nor spasms nor tears who has turned beneath the earth towards the other more ashen sun.

  Je suis succession furieuse…

  Je suis succession furieuse des promesses

  Le calme du tombeau la plastique des anges

  Le sourire des putains est mon sourire

  Je suis un envol migrateur des oiseaux

  Sur un quartier désolé noir de grande ville

  Un regard plein de hargne humide et de désir

  Des plantations désertes

  Dans les endroits abandonnés d’un corps

  Aussi une beauté parfaitement confuse

  Que la honte naturelle a développée

  Je suis encore une ombre étendue sur la mer

  Pareille à un drapeau un linge ou une main

  Je suis un désespoir aussi sec que la pierre

  C’est par le mal que je me sens spirituel.

  I am a frenzied sequence…

  I am a frenzied sequence of promises The calm of the tomb the physical form of the angels The smile of the whores is my smile I am a migratory soaring of the birds over a dark desolate city neighbourhood A gaze full of damp surliness and of desire from the deserted groves in the forsaken places of a body and thus a beauty perfectly uncertain unfolded by natural shame I am beyond that a shadow spread across the sea like a banner a linen cloth or a hand I am a despair as dry as stone It is through evil that I sense my spiritual being.

  Angles

  Le soleil illumine un Sinaï lugubre

  Et renaît sur l’étouffement des nations

  Aux boulevards sa
nglants il enlève les brumes,

  Que de têtes roulant aux feux du peloton!

  Car nous avons choisi le fort parti des anges

  Qui sortent de la profonde île d’ouragan

  Et volant de partout répandent sur les fanges

  Le poids d’acier mystique et les destructions.

  Et dans l’apocalypse l’habitant léger

  Devra servir les anges de punition

  Pour dormir avant l’aube il habitera nu

  Les quartiers d’incendie, pour être debandé

  Angles

  The sun shines on a mournful Sinai and is reborn over the suffocating of the nations On the blood-soaked rampart boulevards it clears the mists, so many heads rolling in the platoon fires!

  For we have chosen the strong side of the angels who are emerging from the deep hurricane isle and who flying from all quarters spread over the mire the weight of mystic steel and forces of destruction.

  And in the apocalypse the frivolous citizen will have to serve the angels of punishment To sleep before the dawn he will live naked in the districts of fire, to be discharged

  Des armées du démon

  Il enfoncera bien de son coeur à l’azur

  Le clou de charité

  Et il le maintiendra extrême noir et dur.