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
SÉBASTIEN CHAMFORT
Huit maximes
Le sot qui a un momen d'esprit étonne et scandalise comme des chevaux de fiacre qui galopent.
Long after Chamfort
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
NOTES
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
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
SÉBASTIEN CHAMFORT
Huit maximes
Le sot qui a un momen d'esprit étonne et scandalise comme des chevaux de fiacre qui galopent.
Long after Chamfort
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
NOTES
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
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