Robert Desnos : A Unique French Surrealist Poet
Introductory Notes and Translations by Michael Benedikt
[Last Modified 3/03. Prior 8/02]
To See A Version of this Site with 4 additional
Poems,
'Identity of Imagery,' 'Despair of the Sun,'
new 'Remarks From The Rocks' &
new 'Suicided By Night,' click
for
Desnos2.
Also at our 2nd Desnos site: Opening Stanzas of Desnos' 26-stanza,
1934 Masterpiece 'Complaint of Fantomas'
Read About Fantomas at this Page
To learn more about
Desnos 2, a
page-in-progess,
please click 'About This Desnos Page' if you go there
SITE CONTENTS THUS FAR
(1)
Brief Intro. to Life & Work of Robert
Desnos, based on both Intro. to Desnos in Benedikt's antho. The Poetry
of Surrealism
(Little, Brown & Co., l974) and Intro. in Benedikt's earlier,
small-press chapbook 22 Poems of Desnos (Kayak Press,
l971).
(The latter was the first presentation of Desnos, via a sizable selection
of his poetry, in the English language)
(2)
6 major Desnos love poems, The
Voice of Robert Desnos,
If You Only Knew,
Spaces Inside Sleep,
I've Dreamed Of You So
Much, No,
Love Is Not Dead
&
From The Marble
Rose To The Rose Of Iron
(includes Translator's Notes,
with misc. textual explication re 4 of the 6 poems above. More to
come)
(3)
Updated in '03:
List of Principal Desnos works
(4)
Gen'l Info re The Poetry of
Surrealism, incl. names of distinguished poet-translators & brief
MB bio.
Info re The Poetry of Surrealism is now preceded by titles
of 19 Desnos poems in that anthology
as well as titles of the poems in 22 Poems of Robert Desnos
omitted from POS. Some, to reappear here or at
Desnos
2.
("No, Love Is Not Dead," at this page, is a new translation not in
either volume).
Relatively New :
A link at end-site to a Web Premiere--the first site in English dedicated
to works by
19th-century French poet & forerunner of Surrealism,
Aloysius Bertrand
FORTHCOMING TO OUR DESNOS PAGES
Other Selected Translations from both the Kayak and Little, Brown
& Co. volumes, many in new versions.
(Note: several poems from Kayak/ '71 appeared in
revised versions--together with additional Desnos poems--
in the Little, Brown & Co. anthology/ '74. Both collections include,
in all, 24 Desnos poems).
"The Voice of Robert Desnos"
"If You Only Knew"
"Spaces Inside
Sleep"
"I've Dreamed Of You So
Much"
"No, Love Is Not
Dead"
"From The
Marble Rose To The Rose Of Iron"
Click for further info. on The Poetry of Surrealism
Desnos in 1922
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE & WORK
Robert Desnos was one of the original participants in the Surrealist movement--a movement
which proposed, in various ways and at various times during its relatively short history, to do
nothing less than "transform the world." Although one of the most accomplished practitioners of
Surrealist techniques, Desnos was also one of Surrealism's most devotedly independent spirits.
On several levels the poet possessed, as he once claimed, "a mind full of metamorphoses."
Desnos' first extant poetry in published form dates from 1919. It was first published in the
Dadaist/Pre-Surrealist magazine Littérature during the movement's so-called "laboratory," or
incubational, period--a period dominated by experiments with spontaneous composition and
the Surrealist technique (or rather anti-technique), known as "Automatic Writing." In tune with that,
many early Desnos poems make drastic experiments with language. Often, their structuring is
based on verbal "accidents," i.e., on puns, random or semi-random interchanges of syllables, the
deliberate mishearing of homonyms and other kinds of unconscious or semi-conscious wordplay
inherent in everyday, natural speech--wordplay of a kind which poets who view poetry as
something wholly formal and set apart from everyday life, tend to regard as beneath notice. The
imagistic juxtapositions produed by this Verbal Alchemy (or "cooked language" as Desnos himself
called it) are "marvelous" in the sense about to be codified by Surrealism's leading theorist, André
Breton, in the first Manifeste du Surréalisme (Manifesto of Surrealism, l924). Breton singles out
Desnos for particular praise in the Manifesto itself, and also in the autobiographical Les Pas
Perdus of 1924 and in the novel Nadja (1928). In the latter, Breton speaks with admiration--and
indeed, evident awe--of Desnos' ability to write and speak automatically, under almost any
circumstances; and of Desnos' ability to "fall asleep" and enter states of trance more or less at will.
This was the decade in Surrealism's history (for many readers and critics alike, its greatest period)
in which the Surrealist group expressed belief that their stated goal of "transforming the world"
could best be achieved by re-structuring the world to resemble the unconscious and dreams
--thus, by implication, setting the world to rights by setting it in tune with human wishes and desires
generally.
*
By the later l920's all that had changed. Breton, and poets closest to him such as Louis Aragon and
Paul Eluard had begun to believe otherwise. Surrealism's so called "inner circle" began to
place/misplace their faith in political changes promised by Marxism--a political philosophy which,
oddly enough, even more than most political philosophies and movements and the governments
they give rise to, has lots to say about human responsibilities and personal sacrifices; and relatively
little to say about the fulfillment of the dreams of the individual.
*
During the later 1920's Desnos' interest in possible metamorphoses began to extend to Surrealism
itself. In disagreement with its "inner circle" politically, personally unwilling to subject himself in the
slightest to the dictates of "party discipline," he also found himself at odds with certain of the more
anti-esthetic aspects of Surrealist techniques--and particularly, out of tune with the rather noble but
also relentlessly lofty tone which was beginning to characterize the work of many Surrealist poets.
Desnos had a humorous side, to say the least--a side which understood that life is full of
paradoxes, contradictions and, occasionally, outright pratfalls. Following cues already given by his
exceptionally restless temperament, he began to make highly personal modifications of Surrealist
methodology in relation to that side of his personality. Desnos was one of the Surrealist
movement's leading (and most prolific) poets of desire. The subject of desire, and the place of
love and eroticism in the world, are at the core of Surrealist concerns--with the marvels of love
being a touchstone for the "transformation of the world" which the original Surrealist group of the
early-to-mid-l920's had called for. But Desnos' love poems are unpredictable--even in the
Surrealist context! Whereas Surrealist love poets especially, tend toward a lofty, 20th-Century,
latter-day Romanticism--with the fulfillment of desire practically constituting a moral imperative
in a writer such as Eluard--Desnos frequently considers the possibly beneficial relationship to
feeling of, of all things, desire deferred. And, he deals frankly and frequently with the phenomenon
of desire totally thwarted--a subject which, with all its pathos, bathos, and pure, unadulterated
pain, is one Surrealist poetry generally chooses to either omit or downplay. And yet, as we know,
amorous alienation--and even romantic rejection--happen all the time!
*
As I see it, it's with two remarkable books of love poems published in the later l920's,
À la Mystérieuse (To The Mysterious One, l926), and Les Ténèbres (Shadows, l927), that
Desnos began to signal his literary break with the movement--three or four years before his
definitive, formal, stated break with it. Love, Desnos seems to wish to remind his contemporaries,
involves not only passion (and Desnos' love poems have passion to an extraordinary degree), but
also a certain self-possessed sensual playfulness; and a realistic determination to come to some
kind of terms with being romantically rejected, even if those terms involve resignation; and even if
that rejection is only temporarily. What is one to make of a Surrealist--or indeed any other
Romantic, post-Romantic, or even quasi-romantic poet--who can also write a poem like this, from
l926's À la Mystérieuse--"À la faveur de la nuit" ("Under Cover Of Darkness"):
To slip into your shadow thoroughly concealeded by night
To follow your footsteps, your shadow at the window.
That shadow at the window is you--no, it's not a shadow, it's really you!
But don't open that window behind whose curtains you're pacing back and
forth.
Instead, close your eyes.
I'd like to shut them myself--with my lips.
But the window opens and the wind--the wind, which bizarrely balances both
flame and flag--
wraps my escape in its cloak.
The window opens: no, it's not you after all.
I knew it all along!
*
Desnos' qualifiedly passionate outlook is reflected in many poems in which (a) either his love
triumphs, or promises to triumph; or (b) his poetry triumphs, while his love doesn't (certainly not
at first, at least). The woman Desnos was in love with in l926 and l927, and about whom he
wrote the poems of both À la Mystérieuse and Les Ténèbres, was Yvonne George--a
cabaret-singer who featured seafaring songs in her act. Never mentioned by name in the poems
of these two books, she is the "ghostly seagull" referred to in an otherwise semi-impenetrable line
in one of Desnos' best-known poems, 1927's "Vie d'ébène" ["Ebony Life"--a poem eventually to
appear at this website together with, for example, six other major utterances of the period
which are already here: the yearning, compellingly powerful "La voix de Robert Desnos" ("The
Voice of Robert Desnos"); the hauntingly plaintive "Si tu savais" ("If You Only Knew"); the
bewitchingly sleep-&-dream-related "Les Espaces du sommeil" ("Spaces Inside Sleep"); the
transcendently noble and almost intolerably intense and direct "Non, L'Amour n'est pas mort"
( "No, Love Is Not Dead"); the symbol-supercharged and imagistically fierce tour de force
"De La Rose De Marbre À La Rose De Fer" ("From The Marble Rose To The Rose Of
Iron") ; and perhaps Desnos' best-known poem of all, the brief but deleriously lyrical
"J'ai tant rêvé de toi" ("I've Dreamed of You So Much" ) ].
*
The curiously anti-rhapsodic side of Desnos' poised, yet powerfully passionate outlook is also
evinced in the semi-informal "asides" which occur in many, many of his poems--love poems or not.
These asides swerve suddenly and dramatically from the purely lyrical path to take the reader
informally into the poet's confidence. For example, there's the "aside" in 1926's "Les Espaces du
sommeil" ("The Spaces Inside Sleep"), in which Desnos speaks of wishing to behold his beloved
with a clarity transcending all literary imagery--the rhetoric of already quasi-conventionalized
Surrealist imagery not excluded; and to see "You, despite a facile rhetoric in which tides expire on
sandy beaches, in which crows flap through abandoned factories, in which entire forests lie rotting,
crackling beneath a leaden sun." Desnos does indeed reject the more "facile," easy and more
simple-minded forms of rhetoric--or, at least, looks askance at them--and does so in genres other
than poetry, too. For example, in his novel, La Liberté ou l'Amour! (Liberty or Love!, l927), the
poet, in a similarly self-exacting and self-aware way, interrupts a paean to the beloved to question
himself:
The woman whom I love, the woman, ah! I was about to write her name. I was about to write
'I was about to speak her name.' Count, O Robert Desnos, count the number of times
you've used the words "marvelous" and "magnificent" to describe her.
*
Aside To The Reader: On those occasions when Desnos is
rhetorical, he reaches levels of a kind of unheard-of-before,
outrageously elaborate & almost mind-bogglingly imagistically
super-charged super-rhetoric. We'll have more to say about
what we call Desnos' super-rhetorical linguistic flights, & Desnos'
command of the (thus far nameless) genre he created,
in future editions of this Website--especially by way of other Surrealist-period
Desnos poems we're planning to present here.
Anxious as we are to get versions of Desnos' lesser-known and emphatically
post-Surrealist (and even somewhat
anti-Surrealist) poems online, we think it's logical to first present
a few translations of Desnos' other Surrealist-period marvels,
some of which are still more "go-for-broke" in nature--if such a thing is
possible--than his poems already here.
("From The Marble
Rose To The Rose Of Iron"
reflects the direction we're referring
to. Not all of these Surrealist-period
marvels are strictly speaking love poems either, it perhaps goes without
saying).
*
Desnos' later literary production violates expectations in genre as well as style. In the later l920's
and early l930's, while Breton was warning against the excessive popularization of Surrealism,
Desnos was busily beginning to explore various media apparently antithetical to the spirit of less
unconventional poets than he was--and, according to Breton at least, antithetical to the spirit of
Surrealist poetics in particular. For example, while Breton was cautioning against the excessive
popularization of Surrealism, Desnos was busy writing film criticism for no less than three Parisian
newspapers. Also, he wrote film scenarios and one of the Surrealist movement's most effective and
sustained theatre pieces, La Place de l'Etoile (1927; revised 1944). Subtitled "antipoem,"
Desnos' play, like his Surrealist-period poems, is a mixture of romantic vision tempered with
humorous, indeed often hilariously incongruous detail, producing an overall effect which is
"marvelous" in the Surrealist sense, and magical in the extreme. Castigated in Breton's Second
Manifeste du Surréalisme (Second Manifesto of Surrealism, l929/30) for both his journalistic work
and for being what Breton termed too "talented"--that is, too eclectic--a writer, Desnos'
counterattack came via his own Manifesto: Troisième Manifeste du Surréalisme (Third Manifesto
of Surrealism, 1930). Far from furthering formal Surrealism's cause, as its title might seem to imply,
Desnos' "Manifesto" actually focusses exclusively on alleged flaws in Breton's character--accusing
Surrealism's otherwise virtually unchallenged leader of hiding numerous contradictions between his
writings and his life. (Attacks by other former Surrealists, and by Desnos himself--in a collective
document issued earlier in l930 and called Un Cadavre--were not quite that cutting; so telling; or so
trenchant). Besides that, Desnos criticizes Breton for being (among countless other unappealingly
pseudo-ecclesiastical things) "serious as a Pope"; and, fundamentally, "puritanical." "Surrealism,"
Desnos concluded by declaring rather startlingly, "has now entered the public domain."
*
Beginning in 1932, Desnos' activities included association with Radiodiffusion Francaise, a major
French broadcasting network to which he frequently contributed material--perhaps most
startlingly from the point-of-view of bringing his work still closer to popular culture, a relatively
regularly metered poem of several pages based on the adventures of Fantomas, a character in popular
French detective fiction. Poem's called "Complainte de Fantomas" [Note: Here's a link to our
translation of the opening of the poem at our 2nd Desnos page. The translation, like the page,
a work-in-progress): "Complaint of Fantomas"]. Desnos' "Fantomas" was set to music by Kurt Weill--
composer of "The Threepenny Opera"--and broadcast in 1934, with Surrealist poet and theatre
theoretician Antonin Artaud acting in title role. Top Desnos' poems of the 1930's
continued to be imagistically adventurous and original (the poet had an uncanny way with
imagery which is unique even in the Surrealist context!); but also became more musical and more
direct--and for the most part more poised and masterful. And, even somewhat serene. Desnos'
diction followed suit, in the direction of directness. Even in the relatively conventionality-
liberated context of Surrealist poetry, Desnos' diction remains remarkable for its expressively
effective interweavings of the lyrical and the low, the ecstatic and the dignified, the hilarious and
the serious and--perhaps most strikingly--the romantic and the colloquial. Contemporary slang
and informal, natural speech--with all the "street-smart" overtones and intonations of the vernacular--
are woven into the textures of all of Desnos' verse; but are to be found in the later poems especially.
[Some of Desnos last poems--such as those in his volume called Contrée (Country, l943)--
establish a standard of clarity and beauty for which there are not many poetic precedents].
*
It perhaps goes without saying that many of Desnos' later poems explore the implications of his
literal, "real life" personal explorations of purportedly non-Surrealist perspectives. It's a relatively
seldom-addressed dimension of Desnos poetry which as time goes on--and after we've
looked further at his more purely Surrealist work--we'll be exploring at this & our
2nd Desnos Website. For example, a translation of a key Desnos poem definitively reflecting his break
with formal Surrealism, the lovely, self-searching yet masterful "Half-Way" from Les Sans Cou
(The Neckless Ones, l934) will be posted here in 2003. To be posted at our 2nd Desnos site, will be
the acridly disdainful title poem of that volume: "Les Quatre sans cou" ("The Four Who Lacked All Neck").
*
Desnos continued to draw strength from all that he had done and all that he had learned during
his Surrealist years. For example: in 1936, in an experiment recalling his earlier experiments with
"Automatic Writing," he undertook to write one poem a day for an entire year. At the same time,
still branching out in accordance with his exceptionally restless temperament, Desnos made
further experiments in literary areas seldom explored by Surrealist poets. For example: towards
the end of his life, he completed a book of childrens' poetry. And he wrote poetry in strict forms,
such as the sonnet--also speaking admiringly towards the end of his life of the formal energy of
Villon's colloquial and "jargon" ballades. Although the "beginnings" of Desnos later work in stricter
forms and meters had been decried by Breton in the 1929/30 Second Manifesto as a deed
traitorous to Surrealism, and ridiculed in the bargain, actually Desnos was simply hearking back to
the poems he'd written in traditional forms and meters prior to the start of the Surrealist movement:
poems in Alexandrines such as "Le Fard des Argonauts" (which was in quatrains, too!) and "L'Ode
à Coco," both composed in l919.
*
During the Nazi occupation Desnos worked as an editor for the clandestine publishing house
Les Éditions du Minuit. In addition, he continued to publish poems of his own with other
publishing houses, using various pseudonyms. The day after a film based on one of his scenarios,
Bonsoir Mesdames, bonsoir Monsieurs, was premiered, the poet was arrested. Deported first to
Buchenwald; and then, as Allied forces approached, force-marched to the Terezine
concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, he died of typhus in 1945--just a few days after that
camp's liberation. The paranormal side of Desnos' interests extended to fortune-telling. A strange
and moving anecdote re Desnos towards the end tells of his presence among inmates lined up for
the gas-chamber, moving up and down along the lines, reading palms and predicting long life...
*
In one of his few critical writings on the subject of poetry, the very late Réflexions sur la poésie
(Reflections on Poetry, 1944), Desnos characterized the general direction of his ever-evolving
interests as an attempt to
fuse popular language, even the most colloquial, with an inexpressible "atmosphere"; and with a
vital use of imagery, so as to annex for ourselves those domains which—to this very day—
remain incompatible with that fiendish, plaguing poetic dignity which endlessly oozes from
tongues formerly ripped from that scabrous Cerberus still blocking the gateway to the domains of poetry.
It may well be that what Desnos was particularly resisting in all his work was the survival into his
time, via some of the more pretentiously inflated poetic expressions of Surrealism, of the 18th-
century commitment to "Sublime" subjects and unrelievedly "lofty" dictional styles--producting as
a lamentable contemporary side-effect, a relatively humorless and egocentric posturing in poetry.
And doubtless what Desnos was resisting also, was the predictable survival of such habits into
later times, too, via the poetry of the many French and other poets who imitated Surrealism
without taking into account Surrealism's demands for a poetic revolution that would be self-
exacting--and thus self-renewing, permanent and perpetual. To the end of his life Desnos
continued in an esthetically radical--and I for one believe truly exemplary way--to regard false
poetry of all kinds (i.e., poetry generated by mere poetic habit, even when written even by poets
of some talent, and even when written by poets of established reputation)--as the enemy of
True Poetry. For True Poetry, as defined by the example given by Desnos in his all-too-brief
lifetime, is surely both produced and propelled by a willingness on the part of poets to make
changes--sometimes radical ones--in their own work; and to explore the interactions of Poetry
& the world that seemingly lies outside of it; and to take risks--even major, "career"-risking ones.
*
In the l944 Reflections on Poetry Desnos, looking into the future which he knew might soon
survive him, proclaimed:
Poetry can be this or it can be that. (But) it ought not be restricted to being necessarily this or that . . .
except perhaps for being both delirious and lucid . . . It seems to me that beyond Surrealism, there is
a mysterious something that has yet to be isolated; beyond automatism, there is intent, beyond poetry
there is the poem, beyond passive poetry there is deliberate poetry, beyond liberated poetry there is
the liberated poet . . . try now and then, young poets, my beloved friends, to see that you are not yet really free. . . .
"I, who have some right to speak of Surrealism" Desnos even went to far as to declare in this
essay, "insist that Surrealism exists only for non-Surrealists." In a poem published in l936, well
within memory of his Surrealist years, "Au bout du monde" ("At The World's Last Outpost,"
as I read it), Desnos seemed to accurately forsee the incomprehension with which the explorations
of his truly adventurous spirit might be met by even the most liberated of his contemporaries:
That face mouthing things down in the dark street at the far end of which a river's waters
pass trembling against its riverbanks.
This cigarette butt flipped out the window creates a star...
Down in the dark street, still, that same face.
Hey--shut up down there, will you!
Thick, constricting evening, evening too thick to breathe.
An outcry comes in our direction, nearly reaches us, then gives out just before it gets here.Somewhere in the world, at the foot of an embankment,
A deserter is trying to negotiate with several sentinels who can't understand a word he's saying.
*
In 1946, in his preface to a new edition of the Second Manifesto, Breton--much to his credit and
that of the Surrealist spirit in general--said he regretted his own and Surrealism's estrangement
from the poet.
Translated by Michael Benedikt
So very like a flower or the flowing of the air
like the running of a rivulet flickering shadows everywhere
like a smile just barely glimpsed on this magnificent night at midnight
so much like happiness and just like sadness too
it's yesterday's midnight standing with naked torso above church-steeples and the tops of poplars
I summon to me now all things lost and scattered around the landscape
crumbling old skeletons tops of young oak-trees just cut down
remnants of old rags rotting on the ground and washing still drying draped on fences around farms
I summon to me tornadoes and hurricanes
cyclones tempests typhoons
tidal-waves
earthquakes
I summon to me volanic smoke wisps of smoke from cigarettes
and big smoke-rings from expensive cigars
I summon to me lovers and all their beloveds too
I summon the quick as well as dead
I summon gravediggers I summon assassins
I summon executioners I summon hangmen I summon airplane-pilots bricklayers girder-walkers
and all architects too
I summon assassins
I summon living human flesh
I summon the one I love
I summon the one I love
I summon the one I love
triumphant midnight unfolds and spreads wide its great satin wings and lands upright upon my bed
church steeples and poplar-tops both bend to my desire
the former collapse in a heap suddenly while the latter bow down slowly
things formerly lost and scattered around the landscape find their bearings once again
in finding them in me
those crumbling skeletons resurrect at my command
those cut-down young oak-trees cover themselves again in bright green
those ragged remnants which were rotting on the ground and even underground, too,
snap to and flap before my voice like banners of rebellion
clothing formerly drying on fences around farms now garbs the most adorable women
whom I do not adore
but who are nevertheless drawn to me by my voice hopelessly adoring me
tornadoes whirl around within my mouth
hurricanes bring if such a thing is possible color to my lips
tempests purr at my feet
typhoons if such a thing is possible comb my hair
I accept the drunken kisses of cyclones
tidal waves crash forward and then stop before my feet
earthquakes make me tremble not at all but cause carnage at my call
volcanic smoke attires me in its vapors
and smoke-wisps from cigarettes become my cologne
while the smoke-rings from cigars create my crown
lovers and even long-sought-for love itself take refuge here with me
while also all beloveds hearken to my voice
the quick and the dead yield to me and salute me
the first quite coldly the second with warm familiarity
gravediggers abandon their half-finished holes to announce that I and I alone can command
their nocturnal labors
assassins too salute me
executioners and hangmen cry out for revolution
invoke my voice cry out my name aviators take their fixes and then navigate from my eyes
girder-walkers suffer vertigo when they hear me
architects depart for the desert
assassins give me their benedictions
all flesh pulsates at my call
Only the one whom I love cannot hear me
the one whom I love will not listen
the one whom I love never answers.
*
--Les Ténèbres (l927)
IF YOU ONLY KNEW
Translated by Michael Benedikt
Far from me and like the stars, the sea and all the other traditional trappings of poetic mythology
Far from me yet present nonetheless although you're unaware of it
Far from me, and even more silent than you are distant, since I keep on endlessly imagining you
Far from me, my gorgeous mirage and my perpetual dream, in ways you just can't know.
If you only knew.
Far from me and perhaps all the more so because you not only ignore me, but ignore me more each day.
Far from me because undoubtedly you don't love me or, what amounts to the same thing,
because I doubt so strongly that you do.
Far from me because you so methodically ignore my each and every desire.
Far from me because you're so cruel.
If you only knew.
Far from me, O blissful as a flower dancing in a river at the tip of its underwater stem, O melancholy
as 7 pm and sunset in a mushroom-cellar.
Far from me and therefore still more silent than if you were actually present, yet more blissful still
than some lucky, stork-shaped hour that falls down from above.
Far from me at that moment when the stills are singing, at that moment when the silently foaming sea
curls back up on its white pillows.
Far from me, O my ever-present, constant torment, far from me and lost in the magnificent noises of
oyster-shells, crushed by footsteps of some night-owl at the harborside, passing cafe-doors at dawn.
If you only knew.
Far from me, O my deliberate, material mirage.
Far from me there's an island turning around as ships pass.
Far from me, a herd of docile cattle wanders off a path, then obstinately stops at the edge of a steep cliff,
far from me, O cruel one!
Far from me a shooting star lands in the poet's nightly bottle. He promptly corks it up again, and for a
long time afterwards gazes through its glass at the captive star, glimpsing constellations
forming within its walls, far from me, you're that far from me.
If you only knew.
Far from me a house long under construction has just finally been completed.
At the top of a scaffold a bricklayer in dusty white overalls sings a sad little song to himself and then, in the
leftover cement in his mortar tray, sees the entire future of the house: the kisses the lovers and the
suicide pacts, nakedness in the bedrooms of beautiful strangers and their most intimate midnight
dreams, together with various voluptuous secrets caught in the act and revealed by squares of polished
parquet.
Far from me,
If you only knew.
If you only knew how I love you and--even though you don't love me--how happy I've become,
how empowered and proud, for being able with your image in my mind to step out into this world,
and able even to step out of this entire universe,
And for being so happy, moreover, even to die for this.
If you only knew how I've conquered the world.
And you, so beautiful, and so seemingly unconquerable too, how completely you've become my prisoner.
Oh you, who from so far away, completely conquor me!
If you only knew.
*
--À la Mystérieuse (l926)
SPACES INSIDE SLEEP
Translated by Michael Benedikt
Here in the night there are of course the seven wonders of the world and grandeur and tragedy and
enchantment
Here forests mingle in confusion with legendary creatures hidden in their thickets.
You're here, too.
Here in the night are the footsteps of a passerby, footsteps of an assassin, footsteps of a cop,
the light from a lamp-post and from some ragpicker's lantern.
You're here, too.
Here in the night trains and boats travel by together with mirages from countries where it's still
daytime. The last sighs of twilight and the initial shivers of dawn.
Notes from a piano, someone shouting.
A door slamming. A clock chiming.
And not merely material things and beings and their literal sounds.
But myself as well, chasing myself or else endlessly running forward and past myself.
Here you are, the chosen one, the sacrifice--you, the one I await.
Sometimes just prior to slumber, strange faces appear and then disappear.
When I close my eyes, phosphorescent blossoms flourish and fade and then flare up again like
fireworks formed from flesh.
Unknown lands across which I travel in company with creatures.
You're here too, I'm sure, my lovely, discreet spy.
And the emptiness of infinite space, the soul of which I touch.
All the perfumes of the skies and of the stars and a cock-crow from 2000 years ago and the cries of
peacocks in parks on fire and lovers kissing
Hands shaking hands in a sickly, pale wan light and axles creaking along stupefyingly winding roadways.
You're there too, no doubt--you whom I don't really know, yet whom I know quite well all the same
And who, though present in all my dreams, persist in them without ever quite appearing.
You who remain out of reach both in reality and in dreams.
You who belong to me by virtue of my desire to possess you at least in illusion yet whose face never draws
closer to mine except when I close my eyes tight against both dreams and reality.
You, despite a facile rhetoric in which tides expire on sandy beaches, in which crows flap through
abandoned factories, in which entire forests lie rotting, crackling beneath a leaden sun.
You who are at the depths of all my dreams stirring up this mind full of metamorphoses,
and who leave me with just your glove upon my fingertips after I kiss your hand.
Here in the night there are the stars and the shadowy motions of oceans, of rivers, of forests,
of townships and grasses and the expanding and contracting lungs of millions and
millions of beings.
Here in the night are all the wonders of the world.
Here in the night there are no guardian angels--but there is sleep.
Here in the night, there's You.
In the daytime, too.
*
--À la Mystérieuse (l926)
Translated by Michael Benedikt
I've dreamed of you so much that you're losing your reality.
Is it already too late for me to embrace your literal, living and breathing physical body
and to kiss that mouth which is the birthplace of that voice which is so dear to me?
I've dreamed of you so much that my arms--which have become accustomed to lying crossed
upon my own chest after attempting to encircle your shadow--might not be able to unfold again
to embrace the contours of your literal form, perhaps
So that coming face-to-face with the actual incarnation of what has haunted me and ruled me
and dominated my life for so many days and years
Might very well turn me into a shadow.
Oh equilibriums of the emotional scales!
I've dreamed of you so much that it might be too late for me to ever wake up again.
I sleep on my feet, body confronting all the usual phenomena of life and love and yet
when it comes to you--you, the only being on the planet who matters to me now--
I can no more touch your face and lips than I can those of the next random passerby.
I've dreamed of you so much, have walked and talked and slept so much with your
phantom presence that perhaps the only thing left for me to do now
Is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadowy
than that shifting shape which moves and which will go on moving,
stepping lightly and happily across
the sundial of your life.
*
--À la Mystérieuse (l926)
Translated by Michael Benedikt
No, love is not dead in this heart and in these eyes and in this mouth
hereby announcing the opening of its own requiem.
Listen, I've had it with picturesqueness, colorfulness, and charm.
Love's what I love, its tenderness and its cruelty.
Still, the one whom I love has but one name and form.
Everything's transcient. Mouths may plaster themselves against my mouth
But still, the one whom I love has but one name and form.
And if some day you happen to think of it
Oh you, exact form and name of my love,
Some day, on the seas between America and Europe,
When the last ray of sunlight is flashing off the surface of the tossing waves,
or on a stormy night beneath a tree in the country, or in a speeding car,
One spring morning on the Boulevard Malesherbes,
Or on some rainy day
At dawn just before getting into bed,
Tell yourself, I insist of your innermost soul, that I loved you more than any
other man did, and that it's a shame that you didn't realize it.
But tell yourself, too, that there's nothing to regret: long before me Ronsard and
Baudelaire sang of the sorrows of old women and thoroughly dead
women who despised even the purest love.
But as for you, when you die,
You'll still remain both beautiful and desirable.
I may already be dead by then but incorporated in your timeless and immortal body, in your incomparable
image present forever among the wonders of human life and eternity, on the other hand
should I outlive you
Your voice and its intonations, your gaze and its radiance,
The fragrance of you and of your hair and many, many other things about you,
will still go on living in me
Yes in me, a poet who's neither Ronsard nor Baudelaire,
Just Robert Desnos who, for having known you and loved you so well
Have become their equal.
Just me, Robert Desnos who except for loving you, doesn't want to be remembered for doing anything else
he's ever done while walking the surface
of this miserable, despicable earth.
*
--À la Mystérieuse (l926)
TO THE ROSE OF IRON
Translated by Michael Benedikt
The enormous white Marble Rose stood alone in solitary splendor high above the deserted square where
shadows stretched out to the infinite. And as she stood there alone beneath the sun and the stars,
the marble rose reigned as Queen of Solitude. And although odorless the Marble Rose atop her stiff
stem and atop her great granite pedestal was bedewed by all the downpours of the Heavens. The moon
paused with pensiveness at her glacial heart and the goddesses of the gardens the goddesses
of marble came to try their icy bosoms against her petals.
The Glass Rose resonated with all the sounds of the seacoast. Not one sobbing, breaking wave failed to make
her tremble, too. Around her fragile stem and transparent heart rainbows revolved with the stars. The
rains ran down in delicate pellets to the tips of her leaves which sometimes the moaning winds set
atremble much to the horror of street-sewers and flickering glow-worms.
The Rose of Coal was a black female phoenix transformed by rouge into a rose of fire. But endlessly
excavated from the shadowy corridors of mines where miners pluck her with all due respect to carry
her encased in veins of anthracite intact into the light of day, the Coal Rose kept watch at the
gateways of the desert.
The Rose of Pink Blotting-paper bled sometimes towards twilight as evening came forth to genuflect at
her feet. The Rose of Pink Blotting-Paper guardian of all secrets yet unreliable confidant bled a blood
thicker than sea-foam yet which was not her own.
The Rose of the Clouds appeared above doomed cities during times of volcanic eruptions during times of
flash-fires during times of rioting and over Paris too when the Commune filled her radiant veins
with glistening gasoline and also the odor of gunpowder. And the rose of the clouds was beautiful on the
21st of January beautiful in the month of October amidst the cold wind of the steppes yes beautiful in
1905 during that time of true miracles during that high hour of love.
The Wooden Rose presided over scaffolds. She blossomed atop the Guillotine, then later slept at its feet,
in mosses sprouting beneath the immense shadows of mushrooms.
The Iron Rose had been hammered at for century after century, beaten by the blacksmiths of lightning. Each
of her leaves was a vast as some unknown horizon. When subjected to shocks she echoed with the sound
of thunder. But how gentle to women despairing of their love was this Rose of Iron.
The Rose of Marble the Rose of Glass the Coal Rose the Rose of Pink Blotting-Paper the Rose of the Clouds
the Wooden Rose the Rose of Iron will go on flowering and re-flowering forever but today they lie
leafless and trampled flat upon your carpet.
Just who are you anyway? You who trample beneath your bare, naked feet the scattered debris of the Rose of
Marble the Rose of Glass the Coal Rose the Rose of Pink Blotting-paper the Rose of the Clouds and the
Wooden Rose and the Rose of Iron.
*
--Les Ténèbres (l927)
Original Desnos texts, © various dates, Éditions Gallimard
Translations, © various dates, Michael Benedikt
Top of Poems Top & Site Contents
Re "Voice of Robert Desnos" translation, line 5: The phrase "It's yesterday's midnight standing with naked torso above church-steeples and the tops of poplars," though very close to the original, is a phrase that we're still not quite satisfied with. (The original is: "c'est le minuit passé dressant son torse nu au dessus des beffrois et des peupliers"). The image is a key image, because it 'kicks off' all the remarkable visions of longing which constitute the rest of the poem--propelled by erotic revery or, as I read it today, perhaps a suddenly-returning memory of recent sexual activity. The line 5 image is also an intense one, interrupting the flow of the milder, introductory lines with its vividness; and is I believe meant to 'lift' the poem to a visionary dimension, the way the "naked torso" lifts itself above the horizon-line--thus evoking in the poet a sense of omnipotence that turns out to be limited in one and only one respect that he can think of, which is when it comes to summoning back the marvelous sexuality of the prior midnight. The poem is fundamentally a traditional (?) 'lover's complaint' by a wildly gifted poet--couched in terms which are remarkably and hauntingly original. But somehow, we think, the image in line 5 needs to be 'cranked up' a notch. We've been working on and off for years on various versions of this vexing line, trying out various alternatives; and settling finally for something literal. It's vaguely possible that in the case of this line at least, we're not quite satified with the original, either.--M.B..
Re "Spaces Inside Sleep." various lines: In harmony with its bed-time topic, most of the lines of this poem-- although clearly the product of craftsmanship & will (& an extremely sophisticated craftsmanship & will at that)--evoke the so-called 'hypnagogic' images which come, beneath closed eyelids, to people drifting off to sleep. Some of this poem's images seem to have almost coalesced themselves into existence, rather like shapes in a Rorschach test. Note how some lines contain relatively discursive statements, while other lines resemble fragments of sleepy reverie--interrupted by other discursive statements or else other fragments of sleepy reverie--evoking various different levels of wakefulness or of somnolence. A key feature of this poem is the amazing variety of levels at which lines are 'pitched ' Notice for example how although line 1 consists of a major abstraction & generalization charged with a lovely, albeit easily recognizable 'poetry,' lines 3 & 4 take one almost as far as one can go in the opposite direction & towards the everyday & the commonplace. Line 6 mixes the levels of discourse/diction. The poem evolves according to this dialectic, returning again and again to the "you" to whom the poem is addressed, who serves as the anchoring reference driving the poem forward & preventing this poem, itself, from drifting off to sleep. The technique is used throughout. One might best begin to analyze this poem, if one is so inclined, not by standard methods of textual explication, but by drawing a kind of roadmap of the various virtual local landscapes & even global territories in which it takes place--and above all, of the levels of consciousness it reflects. At the poem's conclusion, having completed his somewhat exhaustive noctural inventory, Desnos makes an extraordinary move, we think--one that's logical, yet which is both poignant & funny at the same time. He sums up all that he's been saying: "Here in the night, there's You." He then adds what may be one of the least discardable last-line 'throwaway' lines ever written: "In the daytime, too."--M.B.
Re "I've Deamed Of You So Much," various lines: In translating this classic Desnos poem--which differs greatly from the wordier (but more rhythmic) version of some 25 years ago in The Poetry of Surrealism, we've tried above all to bear in mind two things: (1) that in this poem, Desnos is leveling as in no other with the fact of his co-mingled desire for, and his absolute awe of his beloved--and is accepting Yvonne George as a real phenomenon external to any way in which he might imagine her; and that (2) all of Desnos poems to Yvonne-- like most poems in the French love poem tradition from the troubadours and Ronsard on up--are meant to be highly seductive. For example, in line 3, it's as if he were daring Yvonne to invite him to see if his arms could actually unfold again to encircle the curves of her form; and by the final lines of the poem Desnos is picturing himself--as French love poets did starting centuries before--as his beloved's secondary shadow, her servant who is only too happy to defer to her and what is real to her and to her own reality first of all. This has a particular poignancy in the context of À la Mystérieuse, for it fundamentally casts aside questions raised in other poems re whether his beloved is real or imagined, and accepts Yvonne as perhaps 'realer' than the poet himself. That this may have been somewhat difficult for Desnos to do is reflected in qualifiers that pop up--at least at the start of the poem: phrases like "might" and "perhaps." By the close of this poem, Desnos has totally dropped the qualifiers; and one might even say that Desnos closes by bowing humbly in totally defenseless deference to the mysterous lady who is his beloved--except that this poem, itself, represents a kind of empowering triumph. After all, have many poets, French or other, been more seductive than this? Surely only an object like a heart of stone, or an object as inert as a sundial without its shadow could resist, this poem may leave more than a few readers thinking.
Adding to the almost mythical dimension which this poem has achieved in 20th century French poetry: After the death of Desnos, a fragment of "I've Dreamed Of You So Much" was found at the Terezine concentration camp in a little box among the poet's belongings. The fragment is often reprinted under the title of "The Last Poem"--and as, of all things, a prose poem. Our fondness for the prose poem aside (and the occasional identification of this poet-translator with the prose poem form aside, too) , we'd like to affirm from an at least mildly authoritative perspective that this isn't a prose poem. The line-breaks are far too important here. With each strophe of this poem, Desnos leaps from compellingly startling image to compellingly startling image, and from fresh and original train of thought to fresh and original train of thought--as it were, boxcar by boxcar. The line-breaks are necessary in order to give each image a chance to duly 'sink in' and--like blows from a hammer made entirely out of the softest and highest quality velvet--wear down resistance and,as it were, presumably heighten desire. (The same may be said about the structure of many of Desnos love poems, and some of his other poems too, incidentally).
Re "I've Dreamed Of You So Much," line 6: The original of the line which we've translated as "Oh equilibriums of the the emotional scales," is simply "O balances sentimentales." We've resisted translating this much-quoted key Desnos line as the tempting "O, the scales of sentiment" or even "O, those sentimental scales" (certainly for the time being) because (1) this poem has only the most peripheral relation to sentiment in terms of its dangerously close English-language neighbor, "sentimentality"; and (2) because the first meaning given for "scales" in some English language dictionaries (and which may perhaps spring to the minds of many people, too) is "fish-scales." (Although Desnos wrote poems about mermaids, this is obviously not one of them). Similarly, giving the word "scales" an unmodified, stand-alone status in English translation (so that "musical scales" is suggested) would encourage an allusion that seems to us irrelevant to this work, and thus to be avoided--even though there is, to be sure, something quietly virtuosic about this haunting little poem. (As for "Oh, the scales of feeling," that possibility strikes us as too flat, and in view of the alternate meanings that exist for "scales," also somewhat goofy. We'd even prefer, "Oh, the ups and downs of the scales of feeling," which although still goofier, is purposeful and at least doesn't risk inadvertently pointing readers in the wrong direction). As the 8/00 version of this Website is about to be posted, another possibility springs to mind which also does not appear in any other translation of this famous line that we're aware of: "Oh, the balancing-acts of feeling." We'll have to think about that one....--M.B.
Re "No, Love Is Not Dead" translation, line 14: The phrase "Tell yourself, I insist of your innermost soul..." attempts to translate into English the highly Francophonic phrase "Dis-toi, je l'ordonne à ton fantôme familier..." The words in the original involve a concept more familiar to French readers than to English readers--i.e., the concept of a second self, located outside the self, yet which accompanies the self. In English, we tend to locate that second self internally, rather than externally--and call it the Spirit, or even the Soul. (Some might even say, heaven forbid, the "guts"). Desnos' phrase in the original is lovely--but the concept behind it is even lovelier, and in our translation we've opted, in a translationally conservative way we believe, to try to preserve the latter, larger meaning of the line. General Note of Texual Explication: This is a poem that starts with the poet speaking in deliberately somewhat abrasive 'tough-guy' tones--as if were trying to get himself to 'snap out of it' with regard to the trance-like spell that his beloved has cast over him. Having struck a (rather uncharacteristic, for Desnos) pose, he immediately snaps out of it (but in the opposite direction!) when he reminds himself of this fact (repeated twice in 3 lines, as if he were struggling with an ineluctable fact that he'd like to escape, but can't): "Still, the one whom I love has but one name and form." The poem then becomes slightly gentler, & much more introspective & also true to the poet & to his passions both romantic & esthetic. Indeed, in "No, Love Is Not Dead" Desnos went so far as to commit the anti-Surrealist sin--even in l926, and even during Surrealism's purportedly anti-esthetic heyday--of regarding deliberate art as capable of giving additional meaning to life; & what's more, of forthrightly announcing it. And even, of regarding Art as potentially superior to Life! Like Ronsard & Baudelaire and other poets before him, Desnos insists that it is through Art that his beloved will live forever. In saying that, Desnos echoed the traditions of a thousand years of love poetry in French. But--as he does in many of his love poems--Desnos updates tradition. He does so in this poem with the sheer, stripped-down intensity & cogency of his logic. (The poem also dispenses with even most hints of conventional rhyme and rhythm in favor of maximizing the directness of the address to his beloved). In short "No, Love Is Not Dead" is among those Desnos poems which represent a fusion of old & new in a way that in & of itself is fresh. As if all of the above weren't enough for Desnos to have done, notice how (having bowed deeply, mid-poem, in the direction of tradition) Desnos daringly goes on to allude to issues of literal mortality--closing with such down-to-earth considerations as "I may already be dead by then..."; & "on the other hand should I outlive you...", which sound like references to actuarial tables estimating lifespans. These allusions to the purely temporal & practical hark back somewhat to the toughness expressed at the poem's start--except that by the end of the poem, the toughness has climbed from the lower rungs of the evolutionary ladder to the top, where it stands transformed & triumphantly--& even transcendently--human. For those in tune with Desnos' daring and uncompromisingly self-exacting thinking, one might even say that this relatively brief lyric can provide quite an upward emotional roller-coaster-ride. Re Desnos' sudden wholesale put-down of ordinary earthly life at the close of "No, Love Is Not Dead": let's remember that Computers (& The Web) hadn't been invented yet. We think--in view of his interest in electronic technologies such as Radio--that Desnos would have welcomed their advent.--M.B.
Re "From The Marble Rose to The Rose of Iron": That the rose is a much-cultivated literary symbol in virtually every national poetry in which it appears is a point which, we think, needs no laboring here. Nor, that the Rose usually appears as a symbol of the ideal, and perfect--of the ineffable somehow incarnated in earthly form. Instead, we'd like to speculate that what gives rise to this virtually worldwide cultivation of that vision of the mysterious rose starting since days of old, is the rose's literal peculiarity as a horticultural phenomenon. There's (1) the literal, temperamental delicacy of the rose-bush, which has been throughout history the despair of many rose-growers (including myself), who tend to regard rosebushes as if they were ladies perpetually in a state of distress. Also peculiar re the Rose is (2) the blossoming rose's emphatically, & perhaps incomparably overblown beauty--a beauty hinted at even when its flower is secluded within its tightly petal-packed bud, & looking as if it were about to burst. Adding to that curious allure is of course (3) the Rose's forbiddingly armored, aggressively thorny character. What Desnos does is to take the mystery of that symbolic 'bull' by its 'horns' (or, one might say, the mystery of the rose by its thorns) and render what's already powerfully symbolic still more powerfully symbolic than when he first turned his attention to it. For example: Although even a single rose in its natural state is already sufficiently streaming with mysterious, symbolic overtones (the latter, sometimes additionally enhanced by beliefs about the rose by the individual viewer of the flower), Desnos in "From The Marble Rose to The Rose of Iron"goes so far as to envision a formidable array of multiple roses. And what's more, multiple roses which become strangely hybrid because of the range of references used in evoking them; and which are nearly divested of delicacy, and invested with attributes of toughness. Desnos invokes highly daunting presences--whoppingly super-sized roses, mostly towering on high and mostly made of elemental materials--somewhat hard-to-destroy substances such as marble and iron, & glass & coal & wood. Less durable it might be argued, are the Desnos' roses made of clouds & blotting paper--but on the other hand, who can doubt the power of clouds to soak the earth with water, or the power of blotting paper (if it were ideal blotting-paper, i.e., if enough of it were around), to soak up all that rain again? Thus, Desnos ties the ineffable, quirky rose to the world of durable substances. At the close of the poem Desnos outdoes himself by proposing a contradiction to his vision of empowered roses: and introduces into this poem the vision of a Beloved so powerfully elemental in her own right, and so brutally indifferent to rose-offerings & other earthly entreaties for kindness from any rose-bestowing admirer, that she can actually "trample beneath... bare, naked feet... the Rose of Marble the Rose of Glass the Coal Rose the Rose of Pink Blotting-paper the Rose of the Clouds and the Wooden Rose and the Rose of Iron." (And, what's more, do all that damage simultaneously!). Particularly in his early to middle-period poetry--from which the poems at this page are drawn-- Desnos seems to thrive on the daringly self-administered challenge of outdoing himself in areas in which he has already outdone most other poets already--Robert Desnos included. "From The Marble Rose to The Rose of Iron" is surely among the most (if not the most) dramatic examples we have of that capacity. All that having been said (elbeit in a somewhat flowery way, we realize): we like the quick, pithy characterization of this robust poem by critic Rene Bertele which first appeared in the 1968 preface to Corps et Biens (a volume reissued by Editions Gallimard as part of NRF's handy 3-volume set of Desnos's poetry in 1999): this poem is indeed, 'fantastically sumptuous and baroque.' Top of these Translator's Notes, here Top of All Poems, here
Click to top of
the last poem
at this page so far, "From The Marble Rose To The Rose Of Iron"
"No, Love Is Not
Dead"
"I've Dreamed Of You So
Much"
"Spaces Inside
Sleep"
"If You Only Knew"
"The Voice of Robert
Desnos"
Top of Translator's Notes Top of Site & Site Contents Other Benedikt Sites & Pages
A Brief Core Bibliography Updated from The Poetry of Surrealism
Additional
new entries in this edition, incl. at close
of it reference to Éditions Gallimard's
splendid 1999 3-volume pocket edition of Desnos' poetry.
(Typography of Bibliography still in
progress)
Poetry: C'est les bottes de 7 lieues cette phrase "je me vois" (Galerie Simon, 1926); Corps et
biens (N.R.F., 1930); The Night of Loveless Nights (privately printed, 1930); Les Sans Cou
(privately printed, 1934); Fortunes (N.R.F., 1942); Stat de veille (Godet, 1943); Contree
(Godet, 1943); Le Bain avec Andromede (Ed. de Flore, 1944); 30 Chantefables pour les
enfants sages (Libraire Grund, 1944); Les Trois Solitaires, Nouvelles inedites and Oeuvres
posthumes (Les Treize Epis, 1947); Calixto, suivi de Contree (N.R.F., 1962); Cinema
(Gallimard, 1966); Corps et biens (Gallimard, Collection "Poesie," 1968); Fortunes, suivi de Les Sans cou
(Gallimard, Collection "Poesie," 1969); Destinee Arbitraire (Gallimard, Collection "Poesie,"
l975); Nouvelles Hébrides et autres textes 1922-1930 (Gallimard, 1978);.
Le Bois d'Amour (Editions des Cendres, l995). Selected poems: Choix de poemes,
L'Honneur des poetes (Ed. du Minuit, 1946); Domaine public (N.R.F., 1953). Novels: Deuil
pour deuil (Kra, 1924); La Liberte ou l'amour! (Kra, l927--both novels reissued together
(Gallimard, 1962); Le Vin est tire (novel: N.R.F., 1943). Essays: introduction to Tihanyi:
Peintures 1908-1922 (Ed. Arts, 1936); contribution to Les Problemes de la peinture, ed. by
Gaston Diehl (Confluences, 1945); introduction to Picasso: Peintures 1939-1946 (Ed. du
Grand-Chene, 1946); De l'erotisme considere dans ses manifestations ecrites et de point de Vue
de l'esprit moderne (Ed. Cercle d'Art, 1953); Écrits sur les peintres (Flammarion, 1984);.
Les Voix intérieures, chansons et textes critiques (Éditions du Petit Véhicule, 1987);
Cinema: Les Rayons et les ombres, cinéma (Gallimard, 1992); Selected Writings:: Desnos, "Poetes
d'aujourd'hui" No. 16 (Seghers, 1949). Recent: Le Pelican--Album jeunesse (Rue du monde);
Les Jours de noces (Temps des cerises). Bibliographer's Note: An essential 3-volume set
containing nearly all of Desnos poetry in handy pocket format was issued in 1999 by
leading French publisher N.R.F./Éditions Gallimard. Titles: Corps et Biens (preface. René Bertelé);
Fortunes; Destinée arbitraire (Preface, Marie-Claire Dumas). Bravo again Gallimard!
Top of Site & Site Contents Other Benedikt Sites & Pages
Its 19 Desnos poems, some of which are or will be posted at this website, are:
Arbitrary Destiny Nightfall The Spaces inside Sleep Identity of Imagery
The Voice of Robert Desnos Idée Fixe Remarks from the Rocks Suicided by Night
Cuckoo-Clock If You Only Knew For a Daylight Dream I've Dreamed of You So Much
The Rose of Marble and the Rose of Iron One Day When It Was Night Out Half-Way Ebony Life
Despair of the Sun At the World's Last Outpost The Great Days of the Poet
Robert Desnos: 22 Poems
Its 22 poems, some of which will also be posted at this website, include:
Apparition Devil Festival The Fugitive
The Landscape The Four Who Lacked All Neck
The Poetry of Surrealism
General Description Drawn
from back of book
jacket
This 375-page anthology is the first representative collection of Surrealist poetry in English. It focuses on 14 of the dominant figures, many of whom have not yet been widely translated. Among the poets are Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, Jean (Hans) Arp, Robert Desnos, Benjamin Peret, Pierre Reverdy, Antonin Artaud, and Aime Cesaire.
Each group of selections by an individual poet is preceded by a critical introduction and followed by a selective bibliography. The anthology includes poems translated by such prominent contemporary American poets as Louis Simpson, W. S. Merwin, Robert Bly, John Ashbery, Charles Simic, and Mark Strand, as well as Michael Benedikt himself. Poetry in their own right, the translations are exceptionally fresh, vivid, witty, and imbued with the kinds of textural quality and sensual nuance found in the originals. Because Surrealist conceptions of love, freedom, nature, and the occult anticipated in numerous ways current trends, this anthology is a valuable source for students of contemporary culture in general as well as of Surrealism in particular.
Michael Benedikt, currently (l974) poetry editor of The Paris Review and professor at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, is himself a distinguished poet and critic. His own books of poetry include The Body, Sky, and Mole Notes; his poems have appeared in more than twenty anthologies published here and abroad, and he has been over the past decade a contributing editor to both Art News and Art International. In addition to his translations in this collection, Mr. Benedikt has translated other works of French poetry; and edited and translated anthologies of plays from the French (*), German, and Spanish.
Jacket design by Char Lappan Little, Brown and Company • Boston-Toronto
(*)
Note: The
anthology of French plays referred to just above is Modern French
Theatre:
The Avant-Garde, Dada, and Surrealism (Dutton,
l964)--also published in the U.K., as Modern French Plays
(Faber & Faber, l964). It includes the first and--as far as we know--still
the only English-language translation
of Desnos' 9-Act play, "La Place de l'Etoile." We may bring a few acts
to
Desnos
2, our
new Desnos
page in progress.
AN EARLIER, IMPORTANT FRENCH POET
Aloysius
Bertrand: First French Prose Poet. Intro with
Translations of Prose Poems by a
highly original 19th-Century writer who's a forerunnner of Surrealism--as
well as The Prose Poem itself.
Includes Bertrand's brief Preface to his dark classic, Gaspard de la Nuit
, & the three poems on which composer Maurice Ravel
based his celebrated piano suite by the same name.
New: Site now has Ravel's haunting, sensuous
music, too.
ABOUT BENEDIKT
'The
Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the
Net'
Info. at About.com re Background of Benedikt Websites via a
feature article
(Page posted by About.com 4/99)
Academy of
American Poets
Pages at Academy include bio. & a poem from 4 of Benedikt's
5 poetry books + a later poem
(Pages posted by Academy 5/99)
OTHER BENEDIKT SITES & PAGES
Theatre, Film,
& TV Poems--& 20th Cent. Play Anthologies Ed. by MB,
with poems in verse & prose on showbiz
subjects.
New 3
Microfictions--Fantasies in Memory of Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini.
With descriptions of anthologies of Surrealist-influenced French, Spanish,
German plays, many translated by Benedikt.
Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism has
play by Desnos, "La Place de l'Etoile."
(Gives Agent Contact for obtaining performance rights).
The
Body and Sky, multi-paged site with poems
from Benedikt's first two, Surrealism-oriented
poetry books written in the l960's.Most, in Y2K-era updates.
With Selected
Poems , & a page of 'Dark Love Poems.'
Also, page of poetry in horror & fright genre:
Spooky Poems for Halloween & All Year 'Round.
Closing page is a
Thematic Index with notes on both books for
college term-paper writers, thesis writers & others.
Latter page illustrated with photos from Benedikt's 1960's
Archive.
Prose Poems:
Brief Prose Poems & Critical Prose
Prose Poems
& Microfictions
The
Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga
Choo-Choo,
selections from Benedikt's succinctly-titled 5th book of poetry, in
Y2K updates. Poems re tempestuous love affair.
MANUSCRIPTS-IN-PROGRESS
Poems from
Boston & Cambridge, narrative poems, mainly--from
mss.-in-progress entitled Transitions.
Site includes photos from Benedikt's later 1970's-l980 Boston
Archive. And a
Christmas
Edition
with Xmas music. Site also has a
new supplementary
page with a virtual
Mini-Hearth & Yule Log for cold wintry
nights
The
Thesaurus And Other New Verse, philosophical poems,
mainly--from mss.-in-progress entitled Of:
A linked page has
'3
Poems Praising Peace'
SINGLE-POEM MINI-SITES
'Of
Orson Welles' War of The Worlds'
poem-in-progress
about a daring 1938 early radio program which caused panic
& furor in USA,
& which may have inadvertently accelerated FCC censorship of airwaves
'Of The Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia,
l957' about an extraordinary episode
in the history of a daring, free-spirited,
officialdom-offending theater company popular in Russia today. Subtexts of
poem:
opposition to State Arts censorship. Also praise of universal human yearnings
for more bliss in life!
'American Vibrations'
about some of USA's little-known & hitherto unsung 19th-Century
Female Erotic Pioneers
overlooked by official history-books.
'The Kapos' about recruitment in 1938 via Nazi propaganda of voluntary prisoners for first Nazi concentration camps
'Of An Only Child's World' about growing up siblingless on a siblingless planet
'Of Living Alone But Not Brooding Too Much About It' about Living Independently & liking it
Desnos
2, our
new Desnos
page-in-progress. Poems beyond love poems, including
Fantomas.
Forthcoming in
'03: Other Poems + works in non-verse formats. In general, later Desnos writings
than those at this page.
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