by Various
Vue la disproportion des pépins à la pulpe les oiseaux les apprécient peu, si peu de chose au fond leur reste quand du bec à l’anus ils en sont traversés.
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Mais le poète au cours de sa promenade professionnelle, en prend de la graine à raison: “Ainsi donc, se dit-il, réussissent en grand nombre les efforts patients d’une fleur
Blackberries
On the typographic bushes formed by the poem along a road that leads neither beyond things nor to the spirit, certain fruits are composed of a cluster of spheres filled with a drop of ink.
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Black, pink and khaki together in the bunch, they present the spectacle of an arrogant1 family in its various ages, rather than a keen temptation to go gathering.
Given the disproportion of pips to flesh they have little value for the birds, so little remains essentially for them when the journey has been made from beak to anus.
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But the poet in the course of his professional constitutional, rightly takes a leaf from their book: ‘So it is then, he tells himself, that in great numbers the patient efforts of a most très fragile quoique par un rébarbatif enchevêtrement de ronces défendue. Sans beaucoup d’autres qualités, – mÛres, parfaitement elles sont mÛres – comme aussi ce poème est fait.”
fragile flower succeed although shielded by a rebarbative tangle of brambles. Lacking many other qualities, – ripe, perfectly are they ripe – as this poem too is made.’
L’Orange
Comme dans l’éponge il y a dans l’orange une aspiration à reprendre contenance après avoir subi l’épreuve de l’expression. Mais où l’éponge réussit toujours, l’orange jamais: car ses cellules ont éclaté, ses tissus se sont déchirés. Tandis que l’écorce seule se rétablit mollement dans sa forme grâce à son élasticité, un liquide d’ambre s’est répandu, accompagné de rafraîchissement, de parfum suaves, certes, – mais souvent aussi de la conscience amère d’une expulsion prématurée de pépins.
The Orange
As in the sponge there is in the orange an aspiration to regain face after undergoing the ordeal of expression. But where the sponge always succeeds, the orange never: for its cells have burst, its tissues have torn apart. Whereas the peel alone flabbily regains its shape thanks to its elasticity, an amber liquid has spread, accompanied certainly by sweet coolness and scent – but often too by the bitter awareness of a premature expulsion of pips.
Faut-il prendre parti entre ces deux manières de mal supporter l’oppression? – L’éponge n’est que muscle et se remplit de vent, d’eau propre ou d’eau sale selon: cette gymnastique est ignoble. L’orange a meilleur goÛt, mais elle est trop passive, – et ce sacrifice odorant… c’est faire à l’oppresseur trop bon compte vraiment.
Mais ce n’est pas assez avoir dit de l’orange que d’avoir rappelé sa façon particulière de parfumer l’air et de réjouir son bourreau. Il faut mettre l’accent sur la coloration glorieuse du liquide qui en résulte, et qui, mieux que le jus de citron, oblige le larynx à s’ouvrir largement pour la prononciation du mot comme pour l’ingestion du liquide, sans aucune moue appréhensive de l’avant-bouche dont il ne fait pas se hérisser les papilles.
Must there be a preference between these two ways of failing to withstand oppression? – The sponge is merely muscle and is filled with wind, with clean water or dirty water as the case may be: this gymnastic manoeuvre is tawdry. The orange has better taste, but it is too passive, – and that scented sacrifice… truly it plays too much into the oppressor’s hands.
But it is not to have said enough of the orange to have recalled its particular way of scenting the air and of delighting its torturer. The glorious colouring of the resulting liquid must be stressed, which, more than lemon juice, compels the larynx to open wide for the articulation of the word as for the ingestion of the liquid, with no apprehensive pout at the front of the mouth where it does not ruffle the papillae.
Et l’on demeure au reste sans paroles pour avouer l’admiration que mérite l’enveloppe du tendre, fragile et rose ballon ovale dans cet épais tampon-buvard humide dont l’épiderme extrêmement mince mais très pigmenté, acerbement sapide, est juste assez rugueux pour accrocher dignement la lumière sur la parfaite forme du fruit.
Mais à la fin d’une trop courte étude, menée aussi rondement que possible, – il faut en venir au pépin. Ce grain, de la forme d’un minuscule citron, offre à l’extérieur la couleur du bois blanc de citronnier, à l’intérieur un vert de pois ou de germe tendre. C’est en lui que se retrouvent, après l’explosion sensationnelle de la lanterne vénitienne de saveurs, couleurs et parfums que constitue le ballon fruité lui-même, – la dureté relative et la verdeur (non d’ailleurs entièrement insipide) du bois, de la branche, de la feuille: somme toute petite quoique avec certitude la raison d’être du fruit.
And one remains wordless what’s more to confess the admiration merited by the outer wrapping of the tender, fragile and pink oval ball in this dense moist blotting-pad whose epidermis, extremely thin but highly pigmented, acerbically savoury, is just wrinkled enough to catch the light with dignity on the perfect form of the fruit.
But at the end of a study that is all too short, carried out as roundly as possible, – we must come to the pip. This seed, in the form of a tiny lemon, presents on the outside the colour of the lemon tree’s white wood, on the inside a green as of peas or a tender shoot. Within it are united, after the sensational explosion of the Chinese lantern of flavours, colours and scents that is the ball of fruit itself, – the relative hardness and the greenness (by no means entirely insipid) of the wood, of the branch, of the leaf: small, when all’s said and done, though certainly the reason for being of the fruit.
Végétation
La pluie ne forme pas les seuls traits d’union entre le sol et les cieux: il en existe d’une autre sorte, moins intermittents et beaucoup mieux tramés, dont le vent si fort qu’il l’agite n’emporte pas le tissu. S’il réussit parfois dans une certaine saison à en détacher peu de choses, qu’il s’efforce alors de réduire dans son tourbillon, l’on s’aperçoit à la fin du compte qu’il n’a rien dissipé du tout.
A y regarder de plus près, l’on se trouve alors à l’une des mille portes d’un immense laboratoire, hérissé d’appareils hydrauliques multiformes, tous beaucoup plus compliqués que les simples colonnes de la pluie et doués d’une originale perfection: tous à la fois cornues, filtres, siphons, alambics.
Vegetation
The rain does not form the only hyphens between the earth and the heavens: another kind exists, less intermittent and much better woven, and whose fabric is not carried away by the wind however hard it shakes it. If sometimes it succeeds in a certain season in dislodging a few bits which it strives then to pound to dust in its eddying, we perceive in the final reckoning that it has dispelled nothing at all.
Looking more closely, we find ourselves now at one of the thousand doors of a huge laboratory, bristling with hydraulic apparatus of many forms, all much more intricate than the simple columns of the rain and endowed with an original perfection: all simultaneously retorts, filters, siphons and stills.
Ce sont ces appareils que la pluie rencontre justement d’abord, avant d’atteindre le sol. Ils la reçoivent dans une quantité de petits bols, disposés en foule à tous les niveaux d’une plus ou moins grande profondeur, et qui se déversent les uns dans les autres jusqu’à ceux du degré le plus bas, par qui la terre enfin est directement ramoitie.
Ainsi ralentissent-ils l’ondée à leur façon, et en gardent-ils longtemps l’humeur et le bénéfice au sol après la disparition du météore. A eux seuls appartient le pouvoir de faire briller au soleil les formes de la pluie, autrement dit d’exposer sous le point de vue de la joie les raisons aussi religieusement admises, qu’elles furent par la tristesse précipitamment formulées. Curieuse occupation, énigmatiques caractères.
It is precisely these instruments that the rain first meets, before it reache
s the ground. They receive it in an abundance of small bowls, set out in great numbers at all levels of a greater or lesser depth, and emptying one into another down to those at the lowest stage, by which finally the earth is directly moistened.
Thus in their fashion they slow the downpour, and retain for a long time its fluid and its benefit for the earth after the meteorological event has vanished. Theirs alone is the power to make shine in the sunlight the shapes of the rain, in other words to display within the perspective of joy the formulations as religiously acknowledged as they were precipitately articulated by sorrow. A curious occupation1, enigmatic characters.
Ils grandissent en stature à mesure que la pluie tombe; mais avec plus de régularité, plus de discrétion; et, par une sorte de force acquise, même alors qu’elle ne tombe plus. Enfin, l’on retrouve encore de l’eau dans certaines ampoules qu’ils forment et qu’ils portent avec une rougissante affectation, que l’on appelle leurs fruits.
Telle est, semble-t-il, la fonction physique de cette espèce de tapisserie à trois dimensions à laquelle on a donné le nom de végétation pour d’autres caractères qu’elle présente et en particulier pour la sorte de vie qui l’anime… Mais j’ai voulu d’abord insister sur ce point: bien que la faculté de réaliser leur propre synthèse et de se produire sans qu’on les en prie (voire entre les pavés de la Sorbonne), apparente les appareils végétatifs aux animaux, c’est-à-dire à toutes sortes de vagabonds, néanmoins en beaucoup d’endroits à demeure ils forment un tissu, et ce tissu appartient au monde comme l’une de ses assises.
They grow in stature in proportion as the rain falls; but with more regularity, more discretion; and, by a kind of acquired strength, even when it falls no longer. And finally, water can still be found in certain inflated phials1 that they form and wear with a blushing affectation2, which we call their fruit.
Such, it seems, is the physical function of this kind of three-dimensional tapestry which has been named vegetation for other characteristics that it presents and in particular for the sort of life that animates it… But I wanted primarily to insist upon this point: although the ability to accomplish their own synthesis and to engender themselves without being asked (as between the paving stones of the Sorbonne), connects the vegetative apparatus to the animals, in other words to all kinds of wanderers, nevertheless in many places they form a permanent fabric, and this fabric belongs in the world like one of its foundations.
‘Négritude’: Senghor and Césaire
These two black poets, from Senegal and Martinique respectively, were instrumental in the development of francophone black poetry in the 1930s and ’40s. Incorporating into their native culture the ambiguous influence of a European education (both came to Paris on scholarships), taking inspiration both from black American writers and from anti-colonialist and Marxist ideology, they formed and promoted the concept of ‘Négritude’, or black consciousness, among African and Caribbean intellectuals. Both men later became elected leaders in their home countries, and both continued to blend poetry and politics in a remarkable way.
Léopold Sédar Senghor
(1906– )
Senghor was powerfully affected by the turbulent political and intellectual climate of Europe in the 1930s, while also struggling with his awareness that he had been uprooted from his culture and transplanted into a French tradition. In truth, however, the two already coexisted to a degree in his mind, for elements of African spirituality had mingled with Catholicism in his upbringing.
Drafted into the French army in 1939, he was captured and spent two years in a German POW camp, where he wrote quite prolifically. His wartime poetry seems to identify a moral strength in Africa that Europe has lost irrevocably. Repatriated on health grounds, he taught African languages in Paris, and his growing reputation as both poet and anti-colonialist thinker was boosted further by Jean-Paul Sartre’s interest and endorsement. Senghor was elected as a député for Senegal in 1945. Fifteen years later he became President of that country, and held the office until 1980.
Spirituality, poetry and politics know no boundaries for Senghor. His work is filled with a sense of African identity and destiny, but is also influenced by the Symbolist aesthetic of poetic penetration into a unity beyond appearances, and an African, passionate, erotic sensibility to the pulse of the natural world thus finds a French medium of expression.
Volumes: Chants d’ombre 1945, Hosties noires 1948, Chants pour Naët 1949, Ethiopiques 1956, Nocturnes 1961, Lettres d’hivernage 1973, etc.
Femme noire
Femme nue, femme noire
Vêtue de ta couleur qui est vie, de ta forme qui est beauté!
J’ai grandi à ton ombre; la douceur de tes mains bandait mes yeux.
Et voilà qu’au coeur de l’Eté et de Midi, je te découvre Terre promise, du haut d’un haut col calciné
Et ta beauté me foudroie en plein coeur, comme l’éclair d’un aigle.
Femme nue, femme obscure
Fruit mÛr à la chair ferme, sombres extases du vin noir, bouche qui fais lyrique ma bouche
Savane aux horizons purs, savane qui frémis aux caresses ferventes du Vent d’Est
Tamtam sculpté, tamtam tendu qui grondes sous les doigts du Vainqueur
Ta voix grave de contre-alto est le chant spirituel de l’Aimée.
Black Woman
Naked woman, black woman Clothed in your colour which is life, in your form which is beauty! I have grown in your shadow; the softness of your hands shielded my eyes. And now in the heart of Summer and Noon, I discover you Promised Land, from the summit of a high and white-hot pass And your beauty strikes lightning deep into my heart, like the flash of an eagle.
Naked woman, mysterious woman Ripe fruit with firm flesh, dark ecstasies of black wine, mouth that makes my mouth lyrical Savanna with pure horizons, savanna trembling at the ardent caresses of the East Wind Sculpted tom-tom, taut tom-tom booming beneath the Victor’s fingers Your solemn contralto voice is the spiritual song of the Beloved.
Femme nue, femme obscure
Huile que ne ride nul souffle, huile calme aux flancs de l’athlète, aux flancs des princes du Mali
Gazelle aux attaches célestes, les perles sont étoiles sur la nuit de ta peau
Délices des jeux de l’esprit, les reflets de l’or rouge sur ta peau qui se moire
A l’ombre de ta chevelure, s’éclaire mon angoisse aux soleils prochains de tes yeux.
Femme nue, femme noire
Je chante ta beauté qui passe, forme que je fixe dans l’Eternel,
Avant que le Destin jaloux ne te réduise en cendres pour nourrir les racines de la vie.
Naked woman, mysterious woman Oil rippled by no breath, calm oil on the athlete’s flanks, on the flanks of the princes of Mali Gazelle with celestial limb-joints, pearls are stars on the night of your skin Delights of the play of the spirit, reflections of red gold on your iridescent silky skin In the shadow of your hair, my anguish is illumined by the suns of your eyes close by me.
Naked woman, black woman I sing your passing beauty, a form that I fix in Eternity, before jealous Destiny reduces you to ashes to nourish the roots of life.
Camp 1940
A Abdoulaye Ly
Saccagé le jardin des fiançailles en un soir soudain de tornade
Fauchés les lilas blancs, fané le parfum des muguets
Parties les fiancées pour les Isles de brise et pour les Rivières du Sud.
Un cri de désastre a traversé de part en part le pays frais des vins et des chansons
Comme un glaive de foudre dans son coeur, du Levant au Ponant.
Camp 1940
For Abdoulaye Ly
Ravaged the garden of betrothal in a sudden tornado evening Mown down the white lilacs, faded the fragrance of lily-of-the-valley Departed the fiancées for the Islands of breeze and the Rivers of the South. A cry of disaster has pierced from end to end the cool land of wines and songs Like a swordblade of thunder in its heart, from the East to the West.
C’est un vaste village de boue et de branchages, un village crucifié par deux fosses de pestilences.
Haines et faim y fermentent dans la torpeur d’un été mortel.
C’est un grand village qu’encercle l’immobile hargne des barbelés
Un grand village sous la tyrannie de quatre mitrailleuses ombrageuses.
Et les nobles guerriers mendient des bouts de cigarette
Ils disputent les os aux chiens, ils se disputent chiens et chats de songe.
Mais seuls Ils ont gardé la candeur de leur rire, et seuls la liberté de leur âme de feu.
Et le soir tombe, sanglot de sang qui libère la nuit.
Ils veillent les grands enfants roses, leurs grands enfants blonds leurs grands enfants blancs
Qui se tournent et se retournent dans leur sommeil, hanté des puces du souci et des poux de captivité.
Les contes des veillées noires les bercent, et les voix graves qui épousent les sentiers du silence
Et les berceuses doucement, berceuses sans tamtam et sans battements de mains noires
This is a vast village of mud and branches, a village crucified by two plague ditches. Hatreds and hunger ferment here in the torpor of a mortal summer. It is a great village encircled by the motionless hostility of the barbed wire A great village under the tyranny of four itchy machine-guns. And the noble warriors beg for cigarette-ends They fight the dogs for the bones, they fight each other for dream dogs and cats. But They alone have kept the frankness of their laughter, they alone the freedom of their soul of fire. And evening falls, a sob of blood that liberates the night. They watch over the big pink children, their big blond children their big white children Who turn and turn again in their sleep, possessed by the fleas of anxiety and the lice of captivity. The stories of black night-watches cradle them, and the solemn voices that espouse the pathways of silence And the lullabies gently, lullabies with no tom-tom and with no pounding of black hands – That will be for tomorrow,