Collected Poems in English and French (8 page)
Read Collected Poems in English and French Online
Authors: Samuel Beckett
infants
They fill with their smell the station of Saint-Lazare
Like the wise men from the east they have faith in their
star
They hope to prosper in the Argentine
And to come home having made their fortune
A family transports a red eiderdown as you your heart
An eiderdown as unreal as our dreams
Some go no further doss in the stews
Of the Rue des Rosiers or the Rue des Ecouffes
Often in the streets I have seen them in the gloaming
Taking the air and like chessmen seldom moving
They are mostly Jews the wives wear wigs and in
The depths of shadowy dens bloodless sit on and on
Tu es debout devant le zinc d'un bar crapuleux
Tu prends un café à deux sous parmi les malheureux
Tu es la nuit dans un grand restaurant
Ces femmes ne sont pas méchantes elles ont des soucis
cependant
Toutes même la plus laide a fait souffrir son amant
Elle est la fille d'un sergent de ville de Jersey
Ses mains que je n'avais pas vues sont dures et gercées
J'ai une pitié immense pour les coutures de son ventre
J'humilie maintenant à une pauvre fille au rire horrible
ma bouche
Tu es seul le matin va venir
Les laitiers font tinter leurs bidons dans les rues
La nuit s'éloigne ainsi qu'une belle Métive
C'est Ferdine la fausse ou Léa l'attentive
Et tu bois cet alcool brûlant comme ta vie
Ta vie que tu bois comme une eau-de-vie
You stand at the bar of a crapulous café
Drinking coffee at two sous a time in the midst of the
unhappy
It is night you are in a restaurant it is superior
These women are decent enough they have their troubles
however
All even the ugliest one have made their lovers suffer
She is a Jersey police-constable's daughter
Her hands I had not seen are chapped and hard
The seams of her belly go to my heart
To a poor harlot horribly laughing I humble my mouth
You are alone morning is at hand
In the streets the milkmen rattle their cans
Like a dark beauty night withdraws
Watchful Leah or Ferdine the false
And you drink this alcohol burning like your life
Your life that you drink like spirit of wine
Tu marches vers Auteuil tu veux aller chez toi à pied
Dormir parmi tes fétiches d'Océanie et de Guinée
Ils sont des Christ d'une autre forme et d'une autre croyance
Ce sont les Christ inférieurs des obscures espérances
Adieu Adieu
Soleil cou coupé
1913
You walk towards Auteuil you want to walk home and
sleep
Among your fetishes from Guinea and the South Seas
Christs of another creed another guise
The lowly Christs of dim expectancies
Adieu Adieu
Sun corseless head
1950
Huit maximes
Le sot qui a un momen d'esprit étonne et scandalise comme des chevaux de fiacre qui galopent.
Wit in fools has something shocking
Like cabhorses galloping.
Le théâtre tragique a le grand inconvénient moral de mettre trop d'importance à la vie et à la mort.
The trouble with tragedy is the fuss it makes
About life and death and other tuppenny aches.
Quand on soutient que les gens les moins sensibles sont à tout prendre, les plus heureux, je me rappelle le proverbe indien: ‘Il vaux mieux être assis que debout, couché que assis, mort que tout cela.’
Better on your arse than on your feet,
Flat on your back than either, dead than the lot.
Quand on a été bien tourmenté, bien fatigué par sa propre sensibilité, on s'aperçoit qu'il faut vivre au jour le jour, oublier beaucoup, enfin éponger la vie à mesure qu'elle s'écoule.
Live and clean forget from day to day,
Mop life up as fast as it dribbles away.
La pensée console de tout et remédie à tout. Si quelquefois elle vous fait du mal, demandez-lui le remède du mal qu'elle vous a fait, elle vous le donnera.
Ask of all-healing, all-consoling thought
Salve and solace for the woe it wrought.
L'espérance n'est qu'un charlatan qui nous trompe sans cesse; et, pour moi, le bonheur n'a commencé que lorsque je l'ai eu perdu. Je mettrais volontiers sur la porte du paradis le vers que le (sic) Dante a mis sur celle de l'enfer:
Lasciate ogni speranza etc
.
Hope is a knave befools us evermore,
Which till I lost no happiness was mine.
I strike from hell's to grave on heaven's door:
All hope abandon ye who enter in.
Vivre est une maladie dont le sommeil nous soulage toutes les seize heures. C'est un palliatif; la mort est le remède.
sleep till death
healeth
come ease
this life disease
Que le coeur de l'homme est creux et plein d'ordure.
how hollow heart and full
of filth thou art
PART ONE
Whoroscope
Written as an entry for the Nancy Cunard £10 Competition for the best poem on the subject of Time in the Summer of 1930, which it won. The judges were Nancy Cunard and Richard Aldington. The original edition consisted of 100 signed and 200 unsigned copies published by Nancy Cunard's
Hours Press
. One condition of the Competition was that the poem should be no more than 100 lines. The Notes were added later at the suggestion of Richard Aldington. The poem is based on Adrien Baillet's late 17th century life of Descartes.
Gnome
First published in the Dublin Magazine IX (July–September 1934) Inspired by Goethe's Xenien.
Home Olga
First published in Contempo (Chapel Hill N.C.) III, No 13 (February 15, 1934). The poem is an obscure acrostic on the name of Joyce, composed for a special Joycean occasion, which may have been Bloomsday 1932. The title is a euphemism for ‘
foutons le camp d'ici
’, which was freely used by Tom MacGreevy and his friends.
The Vulture
Based on a fragment from Goethe's Harzreise in Winter.
Enueg I and II
Written in the form of a Provençal dirge or lament. The poet at the time was a lecturer at Trinity College.
Alba
Written about the same time as the above, and also based on a provençal model. Alba is the dawn which lovers dread, as they must separate when it breaks. First appeared Dublin Magazine VI (Oct–Dec 1931).
Dortmunder
Written in Kassel. The title is taken from the German beer.
Sanies I and II
The first poem is set in Dublin, the second in Paris. Both are also based on Provençal models. The title is latin for “morbid discharge”.
Serena I, II and III
Again the models are Provençal, based on Troubador evening poems. Thales (line 2) took a pantheistic view of the soul (“all things full of Gods”).
Malacoda
Written after the death of the poet's father from a heart attack in 1933. In Dante, Malacoda is a deceitful demon.
Da Tagte Es
Also written after the death of the poet's father. Compare Walther von der Vogelweide's
Nemt
,
frowe
,
disen kranz
of which the last line of the second to last stanza reads
do taget ez und muoso ich wachen
.
Echo's Bones
Title taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses iii. 341–401.
The whole cycle of poems was published in 1935 by Europa Press (George Reavey) and was No 3 in the series Europa Poets. The original title was Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates.
Cascando
First published in the Dublin Magazine XI (Oct.–Dec. 1936). Line 4 originally read
is it better abort than be barren
and was the first line. The first three lines and the addition of
not
is a later version.
Ooftish
First published in Transition: Tenth Anniversary (April–May 1938). The title is a yiddish expression meaning ‘put your money down on the table.’
Saint-Lô
Written in 1946 and first published in the Irish Times June 24 that year. Originally in five lines with lines 3 and 4 as follows:
and the old mind/ghost-abandoned
Something there
First published in New Departures, Special Issue No 7/8 and 10/11 1975.
The Notes to Part I were compiled by the publishers with reference to Samuel Beckett: His Works and His Critics by Raymond Federman and John Fletcher. (Univ. of California Press 1970). James Knowlson and the author also contributed information.
PART TWO
elles viennent
Originally written in English in 1937 and translated into French by the author before 1946. The English text is given by Peggy Guggenheim in her memoirs (Out of This Century, New York 1946 page 25on) and differs slightly from the French version (the last line containing
life
where one would expect
love
) in the Guggenheim book. In this volume Mr. Beckett has changed
life
back to
love
. The French version appeared for the first time in Les Temps Modernes Volume Two No. 14 (November 1946).
à elle l'acte calme
Written between 1937 and 1939, this poem appeared for the first time in Les Temps Modernes (as above).
être là sans machoires sans dents
Written between 1937 and 1939 and appeared for the first time in Les Temps Modernes (as above).
Ascension
Same as above.
La Mouche
Same as above. Compare with the last verse of Serena I in Part One.
musique de l'indifférence
This poem also appeared during the same period and was first published in Les Temps Modernes (as above).
bois seul
Same as above.
ainsi a-t-on beau
Same as above. In line 11
bon
was originally
gentil
.
Rue de Vaugirard
Same as above. Line 2 originally started
je me débraye
.
Dieppe
Written in 1937 and suggested by a passage from
Der Spaziergang
by Hölderlin. First appeared in Les Temps Modernes (as above). Last line now changed from
towards the lighted town
.
Arènes de Luteèce
Same as above. Line 21 was originally
qui vous éclaire
.
jusque dans la caverne ciel et sol
Written in the same period and first published in Les Temps Modernes (as above).
bon bon il est un pays
Written between 1947 and 1949 and appeared for the first time in les Cahiers des Saisons No. 2 (October 1955) under the title Accul. Line 18 originally started with a capital letter.
Mort de A.D.
Poem written about 1947 in memory of a colleague at the Irish Red Cross Hospital in Saint-Lô (Manche), which appeared for the first time in les Cahiers des Saisons (as above). The second last line originally read
vieux bois grêlé témoin des départs
.
vive morte ma seule saison
Date and publication as above.
je suis ce cours de sable qui glisse
Written in 1948 and published for the first time in Transition Forty-Eight No. 2 (June 1948 page 96).
que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questions
Time of writing and publication as above. In the first line
visage
was originally plural. In line 10 the wording was originally
comme hier comme avant-hier
.
je voudrais que mon amour meure
Date of writing and publication as above. Variation in the French version in line 3 from
et dans les rues
and in line 4 from
pleurant la seule qui m'ait aimé
. In the English section the last line originally read
mourning the first and last to love me
(Poems in English, John Calder, London 1961), but was varied in later editions with an alternative last line
mourning her who sought to love me
. The last line has now been finally changed to
mourning her who thought she loved me
.
hors crâne seul dedans
First published in
MINUIT 21: Revue Périodique
, (1976), page 20, and was added after John Fletcher had compiled his notes for the Minuet edition of
Poèmes
.
The Notes to Part Two are translated from those prepared by John Fletcher for Editions de Minuit (1968) and revised by the publishers.
PART THREE
Translations from Eluard
These appeared together with many other translations by Samuel Beckett in the special Surrealist Number of This Quarter (Guest Editor: André Breton) in September 1932. The poems come from four collections Mourir de ne pas Mourir, La Vie Immediate, Love Poetry, and A Toute Epreuve.
Drunken Boat
The circumstances in which Samuel Beckett's early unpublished translation of Arthur Rimbaud's
Le Bateau Ivre
came to be written are in themselves of some interest. But the reasons why his original typescript has been preserved and the coincidence that has led to its eventual publication here, more than forty years after it was written, are even more curious and worth relating.
At the end of December 1931, Beckett left Trinity College, Dublin, where he had been Lecturer in French for only four terms. He then travelled to Germany and resigned his academic appointment by post from Kassel. After a short stay in Germany, he moved to Paris where he joined his friend and fellow Irishman, Thomas MacGreevy, with whom Beckett had been
lecteur d'anglais
at the École Normale Superiéure in the rue d'Ulm in 1928, Beckett staying on alone for a further year. It was in 1932, while staying in the same hotel as MacGreevy, that Beckett was working on his first unpublished novel,
Dream of fair to middling women
.