by Various
Au loin la mer que ton œil baigne
Ces images d’un jour aprés l’autre
Les vices les vertus tellement imparfaits
La transparence des passants dans les rues de hasard
Et les passantes exhalées par tes recherches obstinées
Tes idées fixes au cœur de plomb aux lèvres vierges
Les vices les vertus tellement imparfaits
La ressemblance des regards de permission avec les yeux que tu conquis
La confusion des corps des lassitudes des ardeurs
L’imitation des mots des attitudes des idées
Les vices les vertus tellement imparfaits
L’amour c’est l’homme inachevé.
Out of Sight bodywise1
All the trees all their branches all their leaves The grass at the base the rocks and the houses in a cluster In the distance the sea that is bathed in your eye These images of one day after the next The vices the virtues so imperfect The transparence of passing men in the streets of chance And the passing women exhaled by your stubborn questing Your obsessions with leaden heart and virgin lips The vices the virtues so imperfect The resemblance of consenting looks with the eyes that you conquered The confusion of the bodies the lassitudes the fervours The imitation of the words the attitudes the ideas The vices the virtues so imperfect
Love is man unfinished.
Tu te lèves…
Tu te lèves l’eau se dèplie
Tu te couches l’eau s’èpanouit
Tu es l’eau dètournée de ses abîmes
Tu es la terre qui prend racine
Et sur laquelle tout s’établit
Tu fais des bulles de silence dans le désert des bruits
Tu chantes des hymnes nocturnes sur les cordes de l’arc-en-ciel
Tu es partout tu abolis toutes les routes
Tu sacrifies le temps
A l’éternelle jeunesse de la flamme exacte
Qui voile la nature en la reproduisant
You rise up…
You rise up the water unfolds You lie down the water expands
You are the water diverted from its depths You are the earth taking root And on which everything is founded
You make bubbles of silence in the desert of sounds You sing nocturnal hymns on the strings of the rainbow You are everywhere you abolish all roads
You sacrifice time To the eternal youth of the exact flame Which veils nature in reproducing it
Femme tu mets au monde un corps toujours pareil Le iten
Tu es la ressemblance.
Woman you put into the world a body for ever the same Yours
You are resemblance
La victoire de Guernica
I
Beau monde des masures
De la mine et des champs
II
Visages bons au feu visages bons au froid
Aux refus à la nuit aux injures aux coups
The Victory of Guernica1
I
Beautiful world of hovels Of mining and of fields
II
Faces good for the fire faces good for the cold For denials for darkness for insults for blows
III
Visages bons à tout
Voici le vide qui vous fixe
Votre mort va servir d’exemple
IV
La mort cœur renversé
V
Ils vous ont fait payer le pain
Le ciel la terre l’eau le sommeil
Et la misère
De votre vie
VI
Ils disaient désirer la bonne intelligence
Ils rationnaient les forts jugeaient les fous
Faisaient l’aumône partageaient un sou en deux
Ils saluaient les cadavres
Ils s’accablaient de politesses
III
Faces good for everything Here is the void staring at you Your death will serve as an example
IV
Death a heart overturned
V
They have made you pay for bread for the sky For the earth for water for sleep And for the wretchedness Of your life
VI
They said they wanted to be on good terms They put the strong on short rations judged the madmen Gave alms divided a penny in two They bowed before corpses They overwhelmed each other with compliments
VII
Ils persévèrent ils exagèrent ils ne sont pas de notre monde
VIII
Les femmes les enfants ont le même trésor
De feuilles vertes de printemps et de lait pur
Et de durée
Dans leurs yeux purs
IX
Les femmes les enfants ont le même trésor
Dans les yeux
Les hommes le défendent comme ils peuvent
X
Les femmes les enfants ont les mêmes roses rouges
Dans les yeux
Chacun montre son sang
VII
They persist they go too far they are not of our world
VIII
Women and children have the same treasure of green leaves in springtime and pure milk And the passage of time In their pure eyes
IX
Women and children have the same treasure In their eyes Men defend it as best they can
X
Women and children have the same red roses In their eyes Each one reveals his blood
XI
La peur et le courage de vivre et de mourir
La mort si difficile et si facile
XII
Hommes pour qui ce trésor fut chanté
Hommes pour qui ce trésor fut gâché
XIII
Hommes réels pour qui le désespoir
Alimente le feu dévorant de l’espoir
Ouvrons ensemble le dernier bourgeon de l’avenir
XIV
Parias la mort la terre et la hideur
De nos ennemis ont la couleur
Monotone de notre nuit
Nous en aurons raison.
XI
The fear and the courage of living and dying Death so hard and so easy
XII
Men for whom this treasure was sung Men for whom this treasure was spoiled
XIII
Real men for whom despair Feeds the devouring fire of hope Let us open together the last bud of the future
XIV
Pariahs death earth and the hideousness Of our enemies have the monotonous Colour of our darkness We will overcome them
Faire vivre
Ils étaient quelques-uns qui vivaient dans la nuit
En rêvant du ciel caressant
Ils étaient quelques-uns qui aimaient la forêt
Et qui croyaient au bois brÛlant
L’odeur des fleurs les ravissait même de loin
La nudité de leurs désirs les recouvrait
Ils joignaient dans leur coeur le souffle mesuré
A ce rien d’ambition de la vie naturelle
Qui grandit dans l’été comme un été plus fort
Ils joignaient dans leur cœur l’espoir du temps qui vient
Et qui salue même de loin un autre temps
A des amours plus obstinées que le désert
Keeping life alive
They were a few who lived in the night Dreaming of the caressing sky They were a few who loved the forest And who believed in the burning wood The scent of flowers enchanted them even from afar The nakedness of their desires clothed them
They united in their hearts the rhythmic breath and that hint of ambition within natural life That grows in the summer like a stronger summer
They united in their hearts the hope for the time that is coming And which hails even from afar another time With loves more stubborn than the desert
Un tout petit peu de sommeil
Les rendait au soleil futur
Ils duraient ils savaient que vivre perpétue
Et leurs besoins obscurs engendraient la clarté.
∗
Ils n’étaient que quelques-uns
Ils furent foule soudain
Ceci est de tous les temps.
The briefest sleep Delivered them up to the future sun They endured they knew that to live is to perpetuate
∗
And their obscure needs engendered shining light.
They were only a few Suddenly they were a crowd
Thus it is in all times.
La Mort l’Amour la Vie
J’ai cru pouvoir briser la profondeur l’immensité
Par mon chagrin tout nu sans contact sans écho
Je me suis étendu dans ma prison aux portes vierges
Comme un mort raisonnable qui a su mourir
Un mort non couronné sinon de son néant
Je me suis étendu sur les vagues absurdes
Du poison absorbé par amour de la cendre
La solitude m’a semblé plus vive que le sang
Death Love Life
I thought I could shatter depth immensity Through my grief quite naked without contact without echo I lay down in my prison with the virgin doors Like a rational dead man who knew how to die A dead man unwreathed unless by his nothingness I lay down on the absurd waves Of the poison absorbed through love from the ashes Solitude seemed more alive to me than blood
Je voulais désunir la vie
Je voulais partager la mort avec la mort
Rendre mon cœur au vide et le vide à la vie
Tout effacer qu’il n’y ait rien ni vitre ni buée
Ni rien devant ni rien derrière rien entier
J’avais éliminé le glaçon des mains jointes
J’avais éliminé l’hivernale ossature
Du vœu de vivre qui s’annule
∗
Tu es venue le feu s’est alors ranimé
L’ombre a cédé le froid d’en bas s’est étoilé
Et la terre s’est recouverte
De ta chair claire et je me suis senti léger
Tu es venue la solitude était vaincue
J’avais un guide sur la terre je savais
Me diriger je me savais démesuré
J’avançais je gagnais de l’espace et du temps
I wanted to tear life asunder I wanted to share death with death To give back my heart to the void and the void to life To obliterate everything that there be nothing neither window-pane nor clouding breath Nor anything in front nor anything behind nothing entirely I had eliminated the ice-block of joined hands I had eliminated the wintry skeleton of the desire to live that nullifies itself
∗
You came the fire revived then The shadow surrendered the cold below was filled with stars And the earth clothed itself In your shining flesh and I felt light You came solitude was conquered I had a guide on the earth I knew My direction I knew I had no limits I moved forward I was gaining space and time
J’allais vers toi j’allais sans fin vers la lumiére
La vie avait un corps l’espoir tendait sa voile
Le sommeil ruisselait de rêves et la nuit
Promettait à l’aurore des regards confiants
Les rayons de tes bras entr’ouvraient le brouillard
Ta bouche était mouillée des premières rosées
Le repos ébloui remplaçait la fatigue
Et j’adorais l’amour comme à mes premiers jours.
∗
Les champs sont labourés les usines rayonnent
Et le blé fait son nid dans une houle énorme
La moisson la vendange ont des témoins sans nombre
Rien n’est simple ni singulier
La mer est dans les yeux du ciel ou de la nuit
La forêt donne aux arbres la sécurité
Et les murs des maisons ont une peau commune
Et les routes toujours se croisent
I was going towards you I was going endlessly towards the light Life had a body hope spread its sail Sleep streamed with dreams and the night Promised confident looks to dawn The sunbeams of your arms pushed open the fog Your mouth was moist with the first dews Dazzled repose replaced fatigue and I worshipped love as in my earliest days.
∗
The fields are ploughed the factories are radiant And the wheat makes its nest in a vast swelling tide The harvest the vintage have countless witnesses Nothing is plain or singular The sea is in the eyes of the sky or of the night The forest gives security to the trees And the walls of the houses have a common skin And the roads all cross each other
Les hommes sont faits pour s’entendre
Pour se comprendre pour s’aimer
Ont des enfants qui deviendront pères des hommes
Ont des enfants sans feu ni lieu
Qui réinventeront les hommes
Et la nature et leur patrie
Celle de tous les hommes
Celle de tous les temps.
Men are made to hear each other’s voice To understand each other love each other Have children who will father children Have children without fire or place Who will reinvent men And nature and their homeland That of all men That of all times.
Louis Aragon
(1897–1982)
Though recent evaluations have tended to downgrade Aragon as a poet and to shift attention to his prose works, his contribution to modern verse remains significant. He is recognized as an inspirational figure in the Resistance and as a fine love-poet, but his early Dadaist and Surrealist work, on the whole, and a good deal of his 1930s political poetry perhaps have only historical interest now.
A rebel against his bourgeois upbringing and its values, Aragon was always a mirror of his times. Filled with disgust at the First World War, he threw himself into the nihilistic and scandalous aspects of Dada. Working in the Medical Corps in 1917, he met Breton and Soupault, and two years later founded with them the periodical Littérature. He campaigned with them for the Surrealist ‘reconstruction of reality’, even if his own verse of the period, however aggressive and vulgar it may be, perhaps lacks both the force of his prose essays and an authentic origin in ‘automatism’ (Aragon wrote later that he had always been a conscious artist). Nevertheless, he played a central role in the birth of Surrealism, and shared in many of the group’s creative experiments.
The idea that love is a prime key to absolute experience was confirmed for him when in 1928 he met Elsa Triolet, a writer of Russian origin who would be his companion for the next forty years. She was the sister-in-law of Mayakovsky, and Aragon’s discussions with Elsa and the Russian poet at ‘La Coupole’ in Montparnasse accelerated and deepened his already growing commitment to Communism. His loving relationship with Elsa was to be incorporated both into his wartime nationalism and into his celebration of the couple as the cornerstone of an ideal Marxist society.
He broke with the Surrealists in 1931, and several trips to the Soviet Union reinforced his political beliefs and his enthusiasm for Socialist Realism in the arts. He became a controversial figure in France, receiving a suspended prison sentence in 1932 for ‘incitement to mutiny and provocation to murder’ in his political poem ‘Front Rouge’.
After service in the Medical Corps again in 1940, he escaped to southern France, where he co-ordinated intellectual groups within the Resistance, spread poems and pamphlets clandestinely, and became a strong voice for the spirit of freedom in French hearts and minds. Partly to confuse the censors, he incorporated elements of French history and legend into his poetry, blending the strongly rhyming and rhythmic style of traditional ballads and songs (forms that could easily be memorized and passed on) with the orthodox metres and moderately adventurous free verse he had used earlier. The outstanding ‘Les lilas et les roses’ perhaps combines many French elements in an ideal synthesis, exemplifying as well as pledging to perpetuate the spirit of a national culture, and celebrating its refusal to die in spite of the catastrophic military collapse of 1940. Language here is used as a weapon, as always with Aragon, but with a more integrated strength in the transmissi
on of emotion through image.
After the war, he attacked reactionary influences that prevented the emergence of a new Socialist society in France. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and promoted knowledge of Russian literature, a lifelong passion since his reading of Gorky in adolescence. Unprotesting over Russian intervention in Hungary, by 1966 he felt able to condemn Soviet imprisonment of dissident writers, and attacked the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. His poetry also continued to celebrate his love for Elsa until and beyond her death in 1970.
Major volumes: Feu de joie 1920, Le Mouvement perpétuel 1926, La Grande Gaîté 1929, Persécuté Persécuteur 1931, Hourra l’Oural 1934, Le Crève-Coeur 1941, Les Yeux d’Elsa 1942, Brocéliande 1943, Le Musée Grévin 1943, La Diane française 1945, Le Nouveau Crève-Coeur 1948, Les Yeux et la mémoire 1954, Le Roman inachevé 1956, Elsa 1959, Le Fou d’Elsa 1963.