Contrerime I

This is the first of Toulet's contrerimes and already one can read a subtle eroticism into the text. (If it seems a bit early to see this, I assure you that it can be less dissembled in other poems. But Toulet was never earthy or crude - wit and elegance were more his style.) It does seems a bit odd though posting this poem in November.

Avril, dont l' odeur nous augure
Le renaissant plaisir,
Tu découvres de mon désir
La secrète figure.

Ah, verse le myrte à Myrtil,
L' iris à Desdémone :
Pour moi d' une rose anémone
S' ouvre le noir pistil.

And my translation:

April, whose scents precede
A reborn pleasure,
You discern the furtive measure
Of my need.

Ah, strew the myrtle for Myrtil,
The iris for Desdémone:
For me a pink anemone
Flaunts its dark pistil.

The critic Charles Dantzig wrote of this poem in Figaro magazine, 4 October 2008, "Il n’a pas eu la chance que cette allusion sexuelle fasse scandale"

Peter Cogman, whose erudition is past the plunge of plummet, suggests that Dantzig is thinking of the scandal aroused (in those who saw a sexual allusion in it) by Baudelaire's quatrain on Manet's painting of Lola de Valence:

Entre tant de beautés que partout on peut voir,
Je contemple bien, amis, que le désir balance;
Mais on voit scintiller en Lola de Valence
Le charme inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir.

Translated thus by William Aggeler:

Among such beauties as one can see everywhere
I understand, my friends, that desire hesitates;
But one sees sparkling in Lola of Valencia
The unexpected charm of a black and rose jewel.


Somewhere in Lorca there is a line: "her belly's bluish rose". Does anyone know the original in Spanish?
P.S. I found it. The poem is Preciosa y el aire and the lines are self-explanatory:

Niña, deja que levante
tu vestido para verte.
Abre en mi dedos antiguos
la rosa azul de tu vientre.

Je me presente

The title of this blog is a translation of the French contrerimes - a verse form invented by the poet and novelist Paul-Jean Toulet (1867-1920) and also the title of his single and singular collection of poems. In this work there are 70 contrerimes proper, 14 Chansons,12 Dixaines, and 109 Coples (not, I assure you, couplets.) This blog will present them from time to time, in no particular order, with an attempt to render them into English with as much attention to the inherent poetry as I can achieve. I hope some readers will suggest improvements and alternatives.
To start, I am posting perhaps his best-known poem, the first of the chansons, and the first of four ROMANCES SANS MUSIQUE. It is En Arles.

Dans Arle, où sont les Aliscams,
Quand l’ombre est rouge, sous les roses,
Et clair le temps,

Prend garde à la douceur des choses,
Lorsque tu sens battres sans cause
Ton cœur trop lourd ;

Et que se taisent les colombes :
Parle tout bas, si c’est d’amour,
Au bord des tombes.

Les Alyscamps is a long avenue bordered by cypress and poplar trees, and lined with numerous Roman marble sarcophagi. It was once part of a vast cemetery complex surrounding the town, and believed to be the largest collection in Western Europe outside Rome. The first bishops of Arles were buried here. Some of the sarcophagi have been removed and are housed in museums and churches in Arles. Both Van Gogh and Gaugin were inspired by the beauty and atmosphere of Les Alyscamps. The church of Saint-Honorat lies at the end of the avenue. It was originally the site of a priory built in 1040, which was replaced a century later by the Romanesque church.

Les Alyscamps is of course basically Champs Elysée backwards. The cemetery was painted both by Van Gogh and Gauguin. Van Gogh painted it at least four times - this version, in the Goulandris collection, was completed in 1888, and shows a view down the Allee des Tombeaux, the poplar-flanked path between rows of ancient sarcophagi, in which Vincent van Gogh portrayed two lovers taking a stroll.

The woman in Les Alyscamps wears the distinctive local costume, while the man's uniform identifies him as a Zouave whose regiment was temporarily billeted in Arles. This adds a poignant note to Vincent van Gogh's's favorite motif of companionship. Soon the soldier would move on, and the relationship would end.