I was reading Tristan Derème's Le Poisson Rouge (Grasset, 1934) last night and came upon the following passage, which immediately struck a chord.
...tandis qu'entre deux nuages apparaissait la lune. Elle était quasi transparente et si légère que l'on craignait, si elle se heurtait à la pointe du peuplier, qu'elle ne se brisât comme une bulle de savon.
Now, re-read Vérane's 1911 Le Nain qui Jonglait....
Monday, December 21, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Contrerime XI
Contrerime XI is subtitled C' était longtemps avant la guerre.
This is the original:
Sur la banquette en moleskine
Du sombre corridor,
Aux flonflons d' Offenbach s' endort
Une blanche Arlequine.
... Zo' qui saute entre deux MMrs,
Nul falzar ne dérobe
Le double trésor sous sa robe
Qu' ont mûri d' autres cieux.
On soupe... on sort... Bauby pérore...
Dans ton regard couvert,
Faustine, rit un matin vert...
... Amour, divine aurore.
Tricky to translate in the Toulet rhyme-scheme, but here's my attempt.
On a moleskin sofa
in the dim wings
Harlequin grabs forty winks
during Offenbach’s om-pah.
Zo' leaps between two guys
flaunting an ass
(underwear? Pass!)
tanned ‘neath tropic skies
One sups…one leaves…Bauby declaims…
in your veiled glances,
Faustine, a new dawn dances…
…Love, divine flame.
Some notes are needed to decipher some of Toulet's more arcane references.
Léopold Bauby (1867-1933) born seven days after Toulet, was one of Toulet’s best friends (and friend of Francis Jammes, who wrote of him: “un délicieux vieux garçon, aimable autant que savant et artiste". He was curator of the museum at Pau. He was the nephew of the Provencal writer Adrien Planté, mayor of Orthez, and possessed a library famous for its size and quality. His memoire of Toulet and he going to school can be found on p. 1377, of Laffont's edition of Toulet's Oeuvres Complètes, note 10. Gimeno, in his Spanish edition, remarks that in the poem Bauby is a poetic character without connotations. For a correct reading of verse rhythm, this name must be read in the French accent. Also, MMrs should be pronounced Messieurs in its entirety.
Moleskin: originally referring to the short, silky fur of a mole, moleskin is heavy cotton fabric, woven and then sheared to create a short soft pile on one side. The word is also used for clothing made from this fabric.
Zo': Female character created by Toulet; appears also in other places in his poems and prose works. It is a Créole source (Zoe or Zoroaide) of Mauritius in particular, where Toulet spent some time in his youth. It should be noted that the same character can acquire, according to context, different attributes and connotations.
Faustine: emblem of the girls of Bearn - easy (going?) shopgirls, domestics etc. No real possibility of an exact correlation in real life.
Falzar: Argot et familiar. Pantalon. Son falzar, il ne tenait plus qu'avec des ficelles et des épingles de nourrice (Louis-Ferdinand CÉLINE, Mort à crédit, 1936.)
Tout l'hiver j'avais fait la guerre dans les pantalons noirs d'un curé, falzar que j'avais découvert au presbytère de Frise, en fouinant dans un placard (Blaise CENDRARS, Main coupée, 1946)
I don't need to explain Offenbach, but Gimeno makes this interesting observation:
"One of the various portraits that Nadar did (of Offenbach) summarizes an entire world, the end of the Second Empire, the neck wrapped in marten fur, aged, the face deeply Semitic, his look worn by sarcasm and melancholy."
This is the original:
Sur la banquette en moleskine
Du sombre corridor,
Aux flonflons d' Offenbach s' endort
Une blanche Arlequine.
... Zo' qui saute entre deux MMrs,
Nul falzar ne dérobe
Le double trésor sous sa robe
Qu' ont mûri d' autres cieux.
On soupe... on sort... Bauby pérore...
Dans ton regard couvert,
Faustine, rit un matin vert...
... Amour, divine aurore.
Tricky to translate in the Toulet rhyme-scheme, but here's my attempt.
On a moleskin sofa
in the dim wings
Harlequin grabs forty winks
during Offenbach’s om-pah.
Zo' leaps between two guys
flaunting an ass
(underwear? Pass!)
tanned ‘neath tropic skies
One sups…one leaves…Bauby declaims…
in your veiled glances,
Faustine, a new dawn dances…
…Love, divine flame.
Some notes are needed to decipher some of Toulet's more arcane references.
Léopold Bauby (1867-1933) born seven days after Toulet, was one of Toulet’s best friends (and friend of Francis Jammes, who wrote of him: “un délicieux vieux garçon, aimable autant que savant et artiste". He was curator of the museum at Pau. He was the nephew of the Provencal writer Adrien Planté, mayor of Orthez, and possessed a library famous for its size and quality. His memoire of Toulet and he going to school can be found on p. 1377, of Laffont's edition of Toulet's Oeuvres Complètes, note 10. Gimeno, in his Spanish edition, remarks that in the poem Bauby is a poetic character without connotations. For a correct reading of verse rhythm, this name must be read in the French accent. Also, MMrs should be pronounced Messieurs in its entirety.
Moleskin: originally referring to the short, silky fur of a mole, moleskin is heavy cotton fabric, woven and then sheared to create a short soft pile on one side. The word is also used for clothing made from this fabric.
Zo': Female character created by Toulet; appears also in other places in his poems and prose works. It is a Créole source (Zoe or Zoroaide) of Mauritius in particular, where Toulet spent some time in his youth. It should be noted that the same character can acquire, according to context, different attributes and connotations.
Faustine: emblem of the girls of Bearn - easy (going?) shopgirls, domestics etc. No real possibility of an exact correlation in real life.
Falzar: Argot et familiar. Pantalon. Son falzar, il ne tenait plus qu'avec des ficelles et des épingles de nourrice (Louis-Ferdinand CÉLINE, Mort à crédit, 1936.)
Tout l'hiver j'avais fait la guerre dans les pantalons noirs d'un curé, falzar que j'avais découvert au presbytère de Frise, en fouinant dans un placard (Blaise CENDRARS, Main coupée, 1946)
I don't need to explain Offenbach, but Gimeno makes this interesting observation:
"One of the various portraits that Nadar did (of Offenbach) summarizes an entire world, the end of the Second Empire, the neck wrapped in marten fur, aged, the face deeply Semitic, his look worn by sarcasm and melancholy."
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Contrerime X
This poem introduces for the first time a Chinese element to the Contrerimes. The poet Fô, of Toulet's invention, clearly has deliberate echos of the famous Li Po. Fô is the name of a poet, lover of Doliah, wife of the mandarin Jean Chicaille, who appeared for the first time in Les Ombres Chinoises, reprised in Comme une fantaisie. There will be more Chinoiserie later on, as we will see. Fô is speaking in verses one and two.
Toulet loved puns, faire les calembours, so the opportunity to use the word for worm le ver and for verses ses vers is seized upon gleefully. Le ver dans son linceul is of course the Chinese silkworm, le ver à soie. Tirer les vers du nez à quelqu'un is to worm something out of somebody - in my case it's to drag a translation out of my brain. L' or noir des tisanes refers to les tisanes opiacées - opium, to which Toulet was hopelessly addicted.
« Ce tapis que nous tissons comme
« Le ver dans son linceul
« Dont on ne voit que l' envers seul :
« C' est le destin de l' homme.
« Mais peut-être qu' à d' autres yeux,
« L' autre côté déploie
« Le rêve, et les fleurs, et la joie
« D' un dessin merveilleux. »
Tel Fô, que l' or noir des tisanes
Enivre, ou bien ses vers,
Chante, et s' en va tout de travers
Entre deux courtisanes.
Translation
“This tapestry we plot
like a worm in his pall
we may never see all:
that is man’s lot.”
“Mayhap for another eye
the obverse may show
the dream, and the flowers, and the glow
of a marvellous design.”
Thus Fô, whom the dark, gold tisanes
(or his poems), inebriate,
singing, leaves in a state,
between two courtesans.
Toulet loved puns, faire les calembours, so the opportunity to use the word for worm le ver and for verses ses vers is seized upon gleefully. Le ver dans son linceul is of course the Chinese silkworm, le ver à soie. Tirer les vers du nez à quelqu'un is to worm something out of somebody - in my case it's to drag a translation out of my brain. L' or noir des tisanes refers to les tisanes opiacées - opium, to which Toulet was hopelessly addicted.
« Ce tapis que nous tissons comme
« Le ver dans son linceul
« Dont on ne voit que l' envers seul :
« C' est le destin de l' homme.
« Mais peut-être qu' à d' autres yeux,
« L' autre côté déploie
« Le rêve, et les fleurs, et la joie
« D' un dessin merveilleux. »
Tel Fô, que l' or noir des tisanes
Enivre, ou bien ses vers,
Chante, et s' en va tout de travers
Entre deux courtisanes.
Translation
“This tapestry we plot
like a worm in his pall
we may never see all:
that is man’s lot.”
“Mayhap for another eye
the obverse may show
the dream, and the flowers, and the glow
of a marvellous design.”
Thus Fô, whom the dark, gold tisanes
(or his poems), inebriate,
singing, leaves in a state,
between two courtesans.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Contrerime IX
Once again I've skipped a sequence, until I find a solution that satisfies. Meanwhile, here is Contrerime IX, subtitled Nocturne.
Ô mer, toi que je sens frémir
À travers la nuit creuse,
Comme le sein d' une amoureuse
Qui ne peut pas dormir ;
Le vent lourd frappe la falaise...
Quoi ! Si le chant moqueur
D' une sirène est dans mon coeur-
Ô coeur, divin malaise.
Quoi, plus de larmes, ni d' avoir
Personne qui vous plaigne...
Tout bas, comme d' un flanc qui saigne,
Il s' est mis à pleuvoir.
Translation:
Across the night’s hollow,
O sea, you whom I sense quiver
Like the breast of a lover
Turning on her pillow;
The heavy wind strikes the bluff…
What! If the mocking dart
Of a siren is in my heart –
O heart, divine rebuff.
What, no more tears,
Since no one heeds…
Quietly, like a heart that bleeds,
The rain appears.
Ô mer, toi que je sens frémir
À travers la nuit creuse,
Comme le sein d' une amoureuse
Qui ne peut pas dormir ;
Le vent lourd frappe la falaise...
Quoi ! Si le chant moqueur
D' une sirène est dans mon coeur-
Ô coeur, divin malaise.
Quoi, plus de larmes, ni d' avoir
Personne qui vous plaigne...
Tout bas, comme d' un flanc qui saigne,
Il s' est mis à pleuvoir.
Translation:
Across the night’s hollow,
O sea, you whom I sense quiver
Like the breast of a lover
Turning on her pillow;
The heavy wind strikes the bluff…
What! If the mocking dart
Of a siren is in my heart –
O heart, divine rebuff.
What, no more tears,
Since no one heeds…
Quietly, like a heart that bleeds,
The rain appears.
Contrerime VII
This conterime is a bit of an oddity, bringing Clostridium botulinum, sausages, and apparently a German customs officials into the realm of poetry - well, verse anyway.
It is generally forgotten now that for much of the 19th and 20th century the Germans were called Boches in quite a pejorative mood. In France Francophililia and Germanophobia were two very complementary attitudes characteristic of the culture of postwar 1870, when the Prussians gave the French a very bloody nose. This attitude can be detected in many of the works of Toulet - when he tried to enlist in the '14-'18 war, he was very eager to have the Rhineland occupied and under French control, as Jacques Boulenger recounts in Toulet au bar et à la poste (still findable on eBay, or try www.maxichoice.com).
The word us is seen here as meaning a learned individual, not a customs official: Steinmetz notes : le –us serait celui d’un savant professeur, évidemment latinisé.
During the 19th century, it was believed that botulinum toxins developed from eating rotten sausages; the term botulism or the Latin botulus means black sausage. At the end of the 18th century, some well-documented outbreaks of sausage poisoning in Southern Germany, especially in Württemberg, prompted early systematic botulinum toxin research. The German romantic poet and district medical officer Justinus Kerner (1786-1862) published the first accurate and complete descriptions of the symptoms of food-borne botulism between 1817 and 1822. Kerner did not succeed in defining the suspected biological poison which he called sausage poison or fatty poison.
Eighty years after Kerner's work, in 1895, a botulism outbreak was recorded after a funeral dinner in the Belgian village of Ellezelles. Musicians in a brass band developed double vision and muscle paralysis after sharing a meal of pickled ham. This led to the discovery of the pathogen Clostridium botulinum by Emile Pierre van Ermengem, Professor of bacteriology at the University of Ghent. Ermengen found the bacterium in both the pickled ham and in the three unfortunate victims at post-mortem. Toulet seems to have published the first versions of the poem in 1913, first in Les Marches de Provence, in the first trimester of that year, then in the October-December issue of Vers et prose. Goodness knows where he read about the bacterium.
Here's the poem:
Le microbe : Botulinus
Fut, dans ses exercices,
Découvert au sein des saucisses
Par un alboche en us.
Je voudrais, non moins découverte,
Floryse, que ce fut
Vous que je trouve, au bois touffu
Dormante à l' ombre verte ;
Si même l' archer de Vénus
Des traits en vous dérobe
Plus dangereux que le microbe
Nommé : Botulinus.
Translation (don't look for too much poetry):
The Botulinum microbe
Was, while doing his worst,
Unmasked in the bratwurst
by a Boche in a robe.
Floryse, I would give thanks
To find you in the shade,
Asleep in the green glade,
Displaying your flanks;
Even if Cupid’s bow
Buries in you arrows
As deadly as the sorrows
Clostridium might sow.
It is generally forgotten now that for much of the 19th and 20th century the Germans were called Boches in quite a pejorative mood. In France Francophililia and Germanophobia were two very complementary attitudes characteristic of the culture of postwar 1870, when the Prussians gave the French a very bloody nose. This attitude can be detected in many of the works of Toulet - when he tried to enlist in the '14-'18 war, he was very eager to have the Rhineland occupied and under French control, as Jacques Boulenger recounts in Toulet au bar et à la poste (still findable on eBay, or try www.maxichoice.com).
The word us is seen here as meaning a learned individual, not a customs official: Steinmetz notes : le –us serait celui d’un savant professeur, évidemment latinisé.
During the 19th century, it was believed that botulinum toxins developed from eating rotten sausages; the term botulism or the Latin botulus means black sausage. At the end of the 18th century, some well-documented outbreaks of sausage poisoning in Southern Germany, especially in Württemberg, prompted early systematic botulinum toxin research. The German romantic poet and district medical officer Justinus Kerner (1786-1862) published the first accurate and complete descriptions of the symptoms of food-borne botulism between 1817 and 1822. Kerner did not succeed in defining the suspected biological poison which he called sausage poison or fatty poison.
Eighty years after Kerner's work, in 1895, a botulism outbreak was recorded after a funeral dinner in the Belgian village of Ellezelles. Musicians in a brass band developed double vision and muscle paralysis after sharing a meal of pickled ham. This led to the discovery of the pathogen Clostridium botulinum by Emile Pierre van Ermengem, Professor of bacteriology at the University of Ghent. Ermengen found the bacterium in both the pickled ham and in the three unfortunate victims at post-mortem. Toulet seems to have published the first versions of the poem in 1913, first in Les Marches de Provence, in the first trimester of that year, then in the October-December issue of Vers et prose. Goodness knows where he read about the bacterium.
Here's the poem:
Le microbe : Botulinus
Fut, dans ses exercices,
Découvert au sein des saucisses
Par un alboche en us.
Je voudrais, non moins découverte,
Floryse, que ce fut
Vous que je trouve, au bois touffu
Dormante à l' ombre verte ;
Si même l' archer de Vénus
Des traits en vous dérobe
Plus dangereux que le microbe
Nommé : Botulinus.
Translation (don't look for too much poetry):
The Botulinum microbe
Was, while doing his worst,
Unmasked in the bratwurst
by a Boche in a robe.
Floryse, I would give thanks
To find you in the shade,
Asleep in the green glade,
Displaying your flanks;
Even if Cupid’s bow
Buries in you arrows
As deadly as the sorrows
Clostridium might sow.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Léon Vérane
As an aside from the Contrerimes, here are two more translations of Vérane. Both poems are from his volume Bars, published in Toulon in 1923. Ths first is called, simply
BAR
Parmi les nickels et les glaces
De ce bar où l’alcool est roi,
Pauvre homme tu caches ta face
Sous la grille de tes dix doigts.
Une liqueue flambe et rutile
Dans ton verre et son parfum dur
Evoque de lointaines îles
Incrustant une mer d’azur.
Mais que t’importent les Antilles,
Leurs lianes et leurs palmiers
Et le morne où de rouges filles
S’éventent sous les girofliers?
Autre que les buveurs vulgaires,
Toi, tu n’accoudes au comptoir,
Parmi les flacons et les verres,
Que le poids de ton désespoir.
Et nulle ivresse ne peut faire
Que s’efface enfin de tes yeux
Ce corps souple et blanc dont s’éclaire
Le divan aux coussins soyeux,
Ce corps où tu voudrais inscrire,
A la fois martyr et bourreau,
Et ta détresse et ton délire
Avec la pointe du couteau.
Where nickel and glass mingle
in this bar where alcohol reigns,
behind the grid of your ten fingers,
poor fellow, you hide your pain.
A liqueur flames and gleams
in your glass and its heavy must
evokes an azure sea
that distant isles encrust.
But what do you care for the Antilles
their lianas and palm tree groves
where the redheads on the hills
fan themselves under the cloves?
Unlike the common drinkers
you lean heavily, elbows on bar,
among the flagons and clinkers
weighing only your despair.
And drunkeness alone can erase
definitively from your sight
this supple white body that the chaise
with its silk cushions makes bright,
this body you would make an engraving,
at once sadist and game
of your distress and your craving
with the point of a skean.
Le Diable au Bar
Les alcools fleurissaient les verres à facettes
Et le zinc lumineux semblait un reposoir.
Je trouvais au patron une figure honnête,
Un nerf de bœuf était derrière le comptoir.
Les flacons arboraient d’étranges étiquettes,
Une fille faisait ses lèvres au miroir.
L’aveugle sur le seuil, d’une aigre clarinette
Aggravait à dessein la descente du soir.
Des marins qui n’étaient inscrits sur aucun rôle
Troquaient pour un peu d’or de maigres perroquets
Ou des singes pelés juchés sur leur épaule
Et les barques s’entrechoquaient le long des quais.
Alors au ciel monta la lune lente et plate
Qui fait hurler en chœur les déments et les chiens
Et le Diable vêtu d’un chandail écarlate
Pénétra dans le bar et dénombra les siens.
THE DEVIL AT THE BAR
The drinks bloomed in the cut glass,
And the polished zinc was an altar,
I thought the patron had an honest face,
Though a cosh was behind the counter.
Each flagon bore a strange label,
A girl fixed her lips in a glass on the wall,
A blind man leaning on the gable
Squeaked his clarinet toward nightfall.
The sailors who were not on deck,
Bartered scrawny parrots for little tender,
Or bald monkeys perched at their neck,
At the quay the boats bumped their fender.
The flat, slow moon rose in the sky
Making dogs and lunatics moan,
And the Devil, in a scarlet guernsey
Arrived, took account of his own.
BAR
Parmi les nickels et les glaces
De ce bar où l’alcool est roi,
Pauvre homme tu caches ta face
Sous la grille de tes dix doigts.
Une liqueue flambe et rutile
Dans ton verre et son parfum dur
Evoque de lointaines îles
Incrustant une mer d’azur.
Mais que t’importent les Antilles,
Leurs lianes et leurs palmiers
Et le morne où de rouges filles
S’éventent sous les girofliers?
Autre que les buveurs vulgaires,
Toi, tu n’accoudes au comptoir,
Parmi les flacons et les verres,
Que le poids de ton désespoir.
Et nulle ivresse ne peut faire
Que s’efface enfin de tes yeux
Ce corps souple et blanc dont s’éclaire
Le divan aux coussins soyeux,
Ce corps où tu voudrais inscrire,
A la fois martyr et bourreau,
Et ta détresse et ton délire
Avec la pointe du couteau.
Where nickel and glass mingle
in this bar where alcohol reigns,
behind the grid of your ten fingers,
poor fellow, you hide your pain.
A liqueur flames and gleams
in your glass and its heavy must
evokes an azure sea
that distant isles encrust.
But what do you care for the Antilles
their lianas and palm tree groves
where the redheads on the hills
fan themselves under the cloves?
Unlike the common drinkers
you lean heavily, elbows on bar,
among the flagons and clinkers
weighing only your despair.
And drunkeness alone can erase
definitively from your sight
this supple white body that the chaise
with its silk cushions makes bright,
this body you would make an engraving,
at once sadist and game
of your distress and your craving
with the point of a skean.
Le Diable au Bar
Les alcools fleurissaient les verres à facettes
Et le zinc lumineux semblait un reposoir.
Je trouvais au patron une figure honnête,
Un nerf de bœuf était derrière le comptoir.
Les flacons arboraient d’étranges étiquettes,
Une fille faisait ses lèvres au miroir.
L’aveugle sur le seuil, d’une aigre clarinette
Aggravait à dessein la descente du soir.
Des marins qui n’étaient inscrits sur aucun rôle
Troquaient pour un peu d’or de maigres perroquets
Ou des singes pelés juchés sur leur épaule
Et les barques s’entrechoquaient le long des quais.
Alors au ciel monta la lune lente et plate
Qui fait hurler en chœur les déments et les chiens
Et le Diable vêtu d’un chandail écarlate
Pénétra dans le bar et dénombra les siens.
THE DEVIL AT THE BAR
The drinks bloomed in the cut glass,
And the polished zinc was an altar,
I thought the patron had an honest face,
Though a cosh was behind the counter.
Each flagon bore a strange label,
A girl fixed her lips in a glass on the wall,
A blind man leaning on the gable
Squeaked his clarinet toward nightfall.
The sailors who were not on deck,
Bartered scrawny parrots for little tender,
Or bald monkeys perched at their neck,
At the quay the boats bumped their fender.
The flat, slow moon rose in the sky
Making dogs and lunatics moan,
And the Devil, in a scarlet guernsey
Arrived, took account of his own.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Contrerime XVI
Toulet made an appearance with others of the Fantaisistes in the first issue of Le Cahier des Poètes, November 1912. He published four poems under the general heading Madrigaux. The first three were printed under the group title L’eau qui courait (Running water), and were titled individually Agesipolis (to become Contrerime XXXVI), Le Cocher de Fiacre (Contrerime XXXVI) and Pyrenées (Contrerime XXXIII). The fourth poem, under the heading Querelles was called La Paille Rompue – I guess you could call it “The Last Straw”. It was to become, with two very small alterations, Contrerime XVI. Toulet substituted Trottoir de l' Élysé'-Palace for Trottoir de l'Élysée-Palace in the first line for metrical rigour, and in the second line - Et toi, nuit en velours became Dans la nuit en velours.
Trottoir de l' Élysé'-Palace
Dans la nuit en velours
Où nos coeurs nous semblaient si lourds
Et notre chair si lasse ;
Dôme d' étoiles, noble toit,
Sur nos âmes brisées,
Taxautos des champs-élysées,
Soyez témoins ; et toi,
Sous-sol dont les vapeurs vineuses
Encensaient nos adieux -
Tandis que lui perlaient aux yeux
Ses larmes vénéneuses.
By the Elysée palace
In the velvety eve
When our hearts seemed to heave
And our flesh without solace;
Dome of stars, noble roof,
See our souls on the rack,
Champs-Elysées taxis,
Bear witness; and you
Basement bar, bless our goodbyes
With winy fumes
While tears of doom
Make pearls of her eyes.
Trottoir de l' Élysé'-Palace
Dans la nuit en velours
Où nos coeurs nous semblaient si lourds
Et notre chair si lasse ;
Dôme d' étoiles, noble toit,
Sur nos âmes brisées,
Taxautos des champs-élysées,
Soyez témoins ; et toi,
Sous-sol dont les vapeurs vineuses
Encensaient nos adieux -
Tandis que lui perlaient aux yeux
Ses larmes vénéneuses.
By the Elysée palace
In the velvety eve
When our hearts seemed to heave
And our flesh without solace;
Dome of stars, noble roof,
See our souls on the rack,
Champs-Elysées taxis,
Bear witness; and you
Basement bar, bless our goodbyes
With winy fumes
While tears of doom
Make pearls of her eyes.
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