Monday, April 13, 2015

April soft and cold: My soul continually at war

It’s Monday in National Poetry Week, so time for another poem on World War I. This time we’ll get a Francophone view. Guillaume Apollinaire was born in Rome to a Polish noblewoman (father unknown); he moved to France in his teens and became a major figure in several artistic movements, including cubism and surrealism. (He actually coined that term in program notes for a ballet by Satie and Cocteau.) He experimented in a number of genres, including novels (some pornographic), theatre and criticism, besides poetry.

He was in his mid-30s when the war began. He received a severe shrapnel wound to the head in 1916, from which he never fully recovered. He died in the influenza pandemic in 1918.

I love the way Apollinaire used forms as well as words to make his point. He called them “calligrammes”. One of his most famous is “Du coton dans les oreilles”, “Cotton in your ears”. It’s about the experience of artillery fire, and it looks like what it describes.


In English it’s:


“Ombre” is something a little more straightforward in terms of construction.

“Ombre”

Vous voilà de nouveau près de moi
Souvenirs de mes compagnons morts à la guerre
L'olive du temps
Souvenirs qui n'en faites plus qu'un
Comme cent fourrures ne font qu'un manteau
Comme ces milliers de blessures ne font qu'un article de journal
Apparence impalpable et sombre qui avez pris
La forme changeante de mon ombre
Un Indien à l'affût pendant l'éternité
Ombre vous rampez près de moi
Mais vous ne m'entendez plus
Vous ne connaîtrez plus les poèmes divins que je chante
Tandis que moi je vous entends je vous vois encore
Destinées
Ombre multiple que le soleil vous garde
Vous qui m'aimez assez pour ne jamais me quitter
Et qui dansez au soleil sans faire de poussière
Ombre encre du soleil
Ecriture de ma lumière
Caisson de regrets
Un dieu qui s'humilie

Here it is in English:

“Shadow”

Here you are beside me again
Memories of my companions killed in the war
The olive-branch of time
Memories that make only a single memory
As a hundred skins make only a single coat
As these thousands of wounds make only a single
newspaper article
Impalpable and ark presence who have assumed
the changing shape of my shadow
an Indian on the watch through all Eternity
shadow you creep beside me
but you do not hear me any more
you will not know any more the divine poems I sing
but I hear you still and see you still
Destinies
Multiple shadows may the sun preserve you
You who love me so much that you will never leave me
And who dance in the sun without stirring the dust
Shadow ink of the sun
Signature of my light
Holder of sorrows
A god that condescends.




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