The Penguin Book of French Poetry
Page 57
the frothing city dense with proud calls and lights / boils over the stewpan of its eyelids / its tears flow away in streams of abject populations / over the sterile plain towards the sleek flesh and lava / of the umbrageous mountains the apocalyptic temptations
perdu dans la géographie d’un souvenir et d’une obscure rose
je rôde dans les rues étroites autour de toi
tandis que toi aussi tu rôdes dans d’autres rues plus grandes
autour de quelque chose
lost in the geography of a memory and of a mysterious rose / I prowl the narrow streets around you / while you too you prowl other greater streets / around something
Philippe Soupault
(1897– )
Soupault was a founder of Surrealism, his name permanently associated with that of Breton through their collaboration on Littérature and their co-authorship of Les Champs magnétiques. He left the group in 1927 in disapproval of their growing alliance with Marxist orthodoxy, and his subsequent literary career has ranged through novels, translation, criticism and essays. But he was an important figure in the movement’s early years, perpetuating within it the influence of Apollinaire. His response to the world of images, particularly the urban landscape, is motivated by emotion rather than a surrender to the unconscious, once he has moved on from the initial period of feverish experimentation.
Major poetic works: Aquarium 1917, Rose des vents 1920, Westwego 1922, Georgia 1926, Sang Joie Tempête and Etapes de l’Enfer 1934, Ode à Londres bombardée 1944, l’Arme secret 1946, Chansons du jour et de la nuit 1949, etc.
Dimanche
L’avion tisse les fils télégraphiques
et la source chante la même chanson
Au rendez-vous des cochers l’apéritif est orangé
mais les mécaniciens des locomotives ont les yeux blancs
la dame a perdu son sourire dans les bois
Sunday
The aeroplane weaves the telegraph wires / and the spring sings the same song At the cabmen’s local the aperitif is orange / but the engine-drivers have white eyes / the lady has lost her smile in the woods
La grande Mélancolie d’une avenue
à G. di Chirico
Au bout du monde
C’est la main
Hors concours
ou le gant
la tour
le train passe
c’est un nuage
DEMENAGEMENTS POUR TOUS PAYS
à l’entresol
cinq heures
le vent part
En voiture
The Great Melancholia of an Avenue
for G. di Chirico
To the end of the world This is the hand Without rival / or the glove / the tower / the train passes / this is a cloud / REMOVALS TO ALL COUNTRIES / on the mezzanine / five o’clock / the wind sets off In a car
Say it with Music
Les bracelets d’or et les drapeaux
les locomotives les bateaux
et le vent salubre et les nuages
je les abandonne simplement
mon cœur est trop petit
ou trop grand
et ma vie est courte
je ne sais quand viendra ma mort exactement
mais je vieillis
je descends les marches quotidiennes
en laissant une prière s’échapper de mes lèvres
A chaque étage est-ce un ami qui m’attend
est-ce un voleur
est-ce moi
je ne sais plus voir dans le ciel
qu’une seule étoile ou qu’un seul nuage
selon ma tristesse ou ma joie
je ne sais plus baisser la tête
est-elle trop lourde
Dans mes mains je ne sais pas non plus
si je tiens des bulles de savon ou des boulets de canon
Say it with Music
The golden bracelets and the flags / the locomotives the ships / and the bracing wind and the clouds / I abandon them simply / my heart is too small / or too big / and my life is brief / I do not know exactly when my death will come / but I am growing old / I go down the daily steps / letting a prayer steal from my lips On every floor is it a friend waiting for me / is it a thief / is it me / I can see nothing more in the sky / but a single star or a single cloud / according to my sadness or my joy / I can no longer bow my head / is it too heavy Nor do I know / if I am holding soap bubbles or cannon-balls in my hands / I am walking / I am growing old / but my red blood my precious red blood / courses through my veins/ driving before it the memories of the present / but my thirst is too great / I stop once more and I await / the light Paradise paradise paradise
je marche
je vieillis
mais mon sang rouge mon cher sang rouge
parcourt mes veines
en chassant devant lui les souvenirs du présent
mais ma soif est trop grande
je m’arrête encore et j’attends
la lumière
Paradis paradis paradis
Stumbling
Quel est ce grand pays
quelle est cette nuit
qu’il regarde en marchant
autour de lui
autour du monde
où il est né
Les pays sont des secondes
les secondes de l’espace
où il est né
Les doigts couverts d’étoiles
et chaussé de courage
il s’en va
Rien ne finit pour lui
Demain est une ville
plus belle plus rouge que les autres
où le départ est une arrivée
et le repos un tombeau
La ligne d’horizon
brille
comme un barreau d’acier
Stumbling
What is this great land / what is this night / at which he gazes as he walks / around him / around the world / where he was born Countries are seconds / the seconds of space / where he was born With his fingers clothed in stars / and his feet shod with courage / he goes on his way Nothing ends for him Tomorrow is a city / more lovely more red than the others / where departure is an arrival / and repose a tomb The line of the horizon / shines / like a steel bar / like a thread that must be cut / in order not to rest / ever Knives are made for cutting / guns for killing / eyes for looking / man for walking / and the earth is round / round / round / like the head / and like desire There are very pretty things / flowers / trees / lace / to say nothing of insects But we know all that / we have already seen it / and have had enough of it Over there we don’t know To hold a stick in the right hand / and nothing in the left hand / but a little fresh air / and sometimes a cigarette / in the heart
comme un fil qu’il faut couper
pour ne pas se reposer
jamais
Les couteaux sont faits pour trancher
les fusils pour tuer
les yeux pour regarder
l’homme pour marcher
et la terre est ronde
ronde
ronde
comme la tête
et comme le désir
Il y a de bien jolies choses
les fleurs
les arbres
les dentelles
sans parler des insectes
Mais tout cela on le connaît
on l’a déjà vu
et on en a assez
Là-bas on ne sait pas
Tenir dans sa main droite une canne
et rien dans sa main gauche
qu’un peu d’air frais
et quelquefois une cigarette
dans son cœur
le désir qui est une cloche
Et moi je suis là
j’écoute j’attends
un téléphone un encrier du papier
j’écoute j’attends j’obéis
Le soleil chaque jour tombe
dans le silence
je vieillis lentement sans le savoir
un
paysage me suffit
j’écoute et j’obéis
je dis un mot un bateau part
un chiffre un train s’éloigne
Cela n’a pas d’importance
puisqu’un train reviendra
demain
et que déjà le grand sémaphore
fait un signe
et m’annonce l’arrivée
d’un autre vapeur
j’entends la mer au bout d’un fil
et la voix d’un ami
à des kilomètres de distance
Mais Lui
je suis l’ami de l’air
et des grands fleuves blancs
/ desire which is a bell And me there I am / I listen I wait / a telephone an inkpot paper / I listen I wait I obey The sun falls each day / into silence / I am growing old slowly without knowing / a landscape is enough for me / I listen and I obey / I say a word a boat departs / a figure a train moves off That is of no importance / since a train will come back / tomorrow / and since already the great semaphore / signals / and announces to me the arrival / of another steamship / I hear the sea on the end of a wire / and the voice of a friend / kilometres away But Him / I am the friend of the air / and of the great white rivers
l’ami du sang
et de la terre
je les connais et je les touche
je peux les tenir dans mes mains
Il n’y a qu’à partir
un soir un matin
Il n’y a que le premier pas
qui soit un peu pénible
un peu lourd
Il n’y a que le ciel
que le vent
Il n’y a que mon cœur
et tout m’attend
Il va
une fleur à la boutonnière
et fait des signes de la main
Il dit au revoir au revoir
mais il ment
Il ne reviendra jamais
/ the friend of blood / and of the earth / I know them and I touch them / I can hold them in my hands It’s just a matter of leaving / one evening one morning Just a matter of the first step / that’s a little painful / a little heavy Just a matter of the sky / of the wind Just a matter of my heart / and all awaits me He goes on / with a flower in his buttonhole / and signals with his hand He says see you again see you again / but he is lying He will never come back
Paul Eluard (1895–1952)
A supremely lyrical and humanitarian poet, Paul Eluard (real name Grindel) did much to build the bridge between Surrealism and the general reading public. In his vision there is a communicative generosity and an absence of aggressive or élitist hermeticism; there is an unparadoxical harmony between the surreal and the real, and indeed a sense that the one is organically within the other; and there is a warm spontaneity and a joyful idealism that make him one of the finest love-poets of the twentieth century. Born in an industrial suburb of Paris, he also maintained contact with the cultural and political life of ordinary people, and a commitment to poetry as something to be shared by all, part of a drive towards a new social order founded on and animated by love. His purpose was to awaken the poet within every human being.
The first great love in his life was for Gala (Helena Dmitrievna Diakonova). He met her at a Swiss sanatorium after a serious illness in 1912, and married her in 1917. She shared the Surrealist experience with Eluard in the 1920s, but left him in 1929 to embark on a long, extraordinary and much-documented relationship with the painter Salvador Dali. Eluard found a new love, Nusch (Maria Benz), and with her his poetry became more concrete, less startling and dreamlike though still exhilarating, a celebration of the couple as the principle of a loving and creative society. She died in 1946, but after a period of extreme depression he was renewed by a third loving relationship in his final months, with Dominique Lemor.
He had been a member of the Surrealist movement almost from the start, finding in its exaltation of our dreams a perfect theatre for his original perceptions of a reality not abolished but whose laws of time and space have been suspended, a world orchestrated by love into a hallucinatory symphony of images, a universe where man can be a god through the power of his desire. This vision is later incorporated into his more explicit anti-Fascist commitment and Resistance activity (as a co-ordinator of intellectual opposition to occupation and collaboration), and the principle of love within the couple expands into a belief in fulfilment through interdependence of all men, in the defeat of solitude and meaninglessness through human solidarity.
Major volumes: Mourir de ne pas mourir 1924, Capitale de la douleur 1926, L’Amour, la Poésie 1929, La Vie immédiate 1932, Les Yeux fortiles 1936, Cours naturel 1938, Poésie et Vérité 1942, Au Rendez-vous allemand 1945, Poésie in-interrompue 1946, Le Dur Désir de durer 1946, Le Temps déborde 1947, Corps mémorable 1947, Le Phénix 1951.
L’Amoureuse
Elle est debout sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s’engloutit dans mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.
Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s’évaporer les soleils,
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire.
Woman in Love
She is standing on my eyelids and her hair is in mine, she has the shape of my hands, she has the colour of my eyes, she is absorbed into my shadow like a stone against the sky.
Her eyes are always open and she does not let me sleep. Her dreams in broad daylight make the suns evaporate, make me laugh, cry and laugh, and speak when I have nothing to say.
La courbe de tes yeux…
La courbe de tes yeux fait le tour de mon cœur
Un rond de danse et de douceur,
Auréole du temps, berceau nocturne et sÛr,
Et si je ne sais plus tout ce que j’ai vécu
C’est que tes yeux ne m’ont pas toujours vu.
Feuilles de jour et mousse de rosée,
Roseaux du vent, sourires parfumés,
Ailes couvrant le monde de lumière
Bateaux chargés du ciel et de la mer,
Chasseurs des bruits et sources des couleurs,
Parfums éclos d’une couvée d’aurores
Qui gît toujours sur la paille des astres,
Comme le jour dépend de l’innocence
Le monde entier dépend de tes yeux purs
Et tout mon sang coule dans leurs regards.
The Curve of your eyes…
The curve of your eyes moves in orbit round my heart A round of dance and gentleness, halo of time, safe nocturnal cradle, and if I know no longer all that I have lived it is because your eyes have not always seen me.
Leaves of day and froth of dew, reeds of the wind, scented smiles, wings spreading a mantle of light over the world, boats laden with the sky and the sea, hunters of sounds and springs of colours,
Perfumes hatched out from a brood of dawns that lies for ever on the straw of the stars, as daylight depends on innocence the whole world depends on your pure eyes and all my blood flows into their gaze.
La terre est bleue…
La terre est bleue comme une orange
Jamais une erreur les mots ne mentent pas
Ils ne vous donnent plus à chanter
Au tour des baisers de s’entendre
Les fous et les amours
Elle sa bouche d’alliance
Tous les secrets tous les sourires
Et quels vêtements d’indulgence
A la croire toute nue.
Les guêpes fleurissent vert
L’aube se passe autour du cou
Un collier de fenêtres
Des ailes couvrent les feuilles
Tu as toutes les joies solaires
Tout le soleil sur la terre
Sur les
chemins de ta beauté.
The Earth is blue…
The earth is blue like an orange Never a mistake words do not lie They no longer give you cause to sing It’s up to kisses now to hear each other Madmen and loves She her weddingring mouth All the secrets all the smiles And what garments of indulgence You would think her quite naked.
The wasps are flowering green The dawn puts on around its neck A necklace of windows Wings cover the leaves You have all the solar joys All the sunlight upon the earth On the roads of your beauty.
Le front aux vitres…
Le front aux vitres comme font les veilleurs de chagrin
Ciel dont j’ai dépassé la nuit
Plaines toutes petites dans mes mains ouvertes
Dans leur double horizon inerte indifférent
Le front aux vitres comme font les veilleurs de chagrin
Je te cherche par delà l’attente
Par delà moi-même
Et je ne sais plus tant je t’aime
Lequel de nous deux est absent.
With my brow against the window panes…
With my brow against the window panes like the night watchers of grief Sky whose darkness I have surpassed Plains very small in my open hands In their double horizon inert indifferent With my brow against the window panes like the night watchers of grief I seek you beyond expectation Beyond myself And I love you so much I know no longer Which of the two of us is absent.
A perte de vue dans le sens de mon corps
Tous les arbres toutes leurs branches toutes leurs feuilles
L’herbe à la base les rochers et les maisons en masse