Robert Desnos : A Unique French Surrealist Poet

Introductory Notes and Translations by Michael Benedikt

[Last Modified 10/03]

New in '02:  Opening of Desnos' Fantômas  & 4 New Translations

About This Desnos Page

SITE CONTENTS THUS FAR

(1)   Brief Introduction to Life & Work of Robert Desnos. Based on Intro. to Desnos in Benedikt's anthology The Poetry of Surrealism
(Little, Brown & Co., l974) and Intro. to Desnos from Benedikt's earlier, small-press chapbook,
22 Poems of Robert 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 early, Surrealist-period 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
(3)  Other early poems: Despair Of The Sun, Identity of Imagery, Remarks From The Rocks & Suicided by Night
& New in '03:  a middle-period Desnos poem: Mid-Way
(4)   List of Principal Desnos works.  New in '02: Additional Bibliographical listings.   
(5)   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 Suurealist anthology
as well as titles of those poems in 22 Poems of Robert Desnos which were omitted from POS--some of which will reappear at this Website.
("No, Love Is Not Dead" is a new translation not in either volume).

Note: This page has Translator's Notes with textual explication re 7 of the 11 poems above.  A few revisions in this '03 edition.  

Note: This page includes at end-of-site, a link to a Web Premiere--the first site in English dedicated to works by
19th-century French poet & forerunner of Surrealism Aloysius Bertrand

FORTHCOMING  TO  THIS  PAGE  IN  '04

Other Selected Translations from both the Kayak and Little, Brown & Co. volumes, many in new versions.
  (Note: Many poems from Kayak/ '71 appeared in revised versions--together with additional Desnos poems--
in the Little, Brown & Co. antho./ '74.  Both collections include in all, 24 Desnos poems).

Intro to Desnos

"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"
Despair Of The Sun
Identity of Imagery
Remarks From The Rocks
Suicided by Night
new  Mid-Way

Info on The Poetry of Surrealism

Desnos in 1922

ROBERT DESNOS

(1900-1945)

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE & WORK

Robert Desnos, a key figure in 20th-Century French Literature, 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. (Governments, it would seem, seldom

legislate pleasure--yet are all too often zealous and even virtuosic, when it comes to interfering with it).

*

During the later 1920's Desnos' interest in personal & other 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 poem "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 rose 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 more 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 the
poems already here.  ("From The Marble Rose To The Rose Of Iron" for example, 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, including advertising copy--perhaps

most startlingly from the point-of-view of bringing his own work still closer to popular culture, "Complainte

de Fantomas" ("Complaint of Fantomas"), a strictly rhymed & relatively strictly metered 26-stanza poem

based on the adventures of Fantomas, a character in popular French detective fiction & a long-time favoriite

of Surrealist poets even prior to the start of the movement. Fantomas was also the subject, in the mid 'teens

of the century, of a series of films by Louis Feuillade. Set to music by Kurt Weill--composer of The Threepenny

Opera--Desnos' Fantomas was broadcast in 1934. In the title role: Antonin Artaud, actor, Surrealist poet and

leading theatre theoretician. No recording of the occasion survives and alas, the score's apparently been lost.

Here's how "Fantomas," in our translation, begins:

Attention, please!--let's have some silence
For this shocking enumeration
Of the unspeakable transgressions
Outrages & acts of violence
All thus far unpunished alas
By that terrible criminal--Fantomas!

Lady Beltham, his mistress,
Witnessed her husband slain
After he caught the twain
In a much too passionate embrace.
It was he, who sank the steamship Lancaster finally
Down to the bottom of the sea.

A lighthouse beset by a stormy blow
Keels over & hapless ships sink to the floor of the ocean
But then with a sudden motion
Four heads bob up from below
It’s Fantomas, Juve and Fandor ( 1 )
And Lady Beltham with golden eyes aglow...

The monster had a daughter
As pretty a flower as ever was
But Sweet Helene with her generous ways
Bore no family resemblance to her father
For once, when he was in a deathly scrape
She helped Fandor himself to escape.

In the baggage-room of a station
A bloodstained suitcase is found
A miscreant's caught red-handed
But the corpse itself is still missing.
The corpse is among the living
--It's Fantomas my children!

Notes: ( 1 ) Juve & Fandor are Fantomas' detective nemeses. ( 2 ) We're working on a tr. of the complete poem..( 3 ) Top

Desnos' 1930's poetry--while continuing to be imagistically adventurous and original (Desnos had

an uncanny way with imagery which is unique even in the Surrealist context!)--became

increasingly more musical and more direct. And for the most part more poised and masterful; and even

somewhat serene.  (Note the yearning for serenity in several senses, in the 1934  "Mid-Way", a poem

taking stock of life at its mid-point). 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" 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 increasingly be exploring at this

Site.  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 sooner or later. As will, perhaps, the acridly disdainful

co-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 written 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.

10 POEMS FROM

 À LA MYSTÉRIEUSE  (l926)   &   LES TÉNÈBRES  (l927)

BY ROBERT DESNOS

THE VOICE OF ROBERT DESNOS

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)    

I'VE DREAMED OF YOU SO MUCH

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)    

NO, LOVE IS NOT DEAD

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)    

FROM THE MARBLE ROSE

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)

OTHERS FROM

LES TÉNÈBRES (l927)

BY ROBERT DESNOS

DESPAIR OF THE SUN

Translated by Michael Benedikt

What strange sound was that gliding down the length of the staircase at the foot of which dreamt the radiant apple?

Orchards lay cloaked in shadows and far off the sphinx stretched out in sands crackling with heat amidst the

         fragile veils of evening.

Would that sound persist until it woke up every single tenant in the neighborhood or would it vanish once

        again into the shadows of early misty morning? The sound persisted. The sphinx with his watchful eyes

        had been listening to it for centuries and was yearning at long last encounter it . No need to be

        surprised then  by the sight of the sphinx's supple silhouette  suddenly lurking there among the shadows

        of the staircase. The creature kept leaving its clawmarks upon the well-polished wax of the stair-treads.

        Lights above doorbells threw shadows though the elevator cage grillework and the persistent sound

      sensing the approach of the one shadow long-awaited amidst thousands upon thousands

      of other, merely passing shadows seized the sphinx firmly and hard by the scruff of its neck

      at which point the sphinx's shadow suddenly faded.

It's the poem of the morning beginning while in her humid bed with hair undone and coming down over her

        eyes and with her bedsheets even more wrinkled than her eyelids the restless would-be adventuress

        awaits the moment when her doorway shut so tightly against the torrents of the skies and against even

        evening itself yawns open wide again this time to give onto vast vistas of agate and gum.

It's the poem of the dawning day in which the sphinx lies down in bed beside the restless would-be

        adventuress and despite the persistent sound swears to her a faithful and eternal love.

It's the poem of the dawning day beginning with fragrant fumes of chocolate and the monotonous clickety-

        clack of the footsteps of the floor-polisher astonished to see there upon the staircase-treads

        assorted clawmarks left by the night-wanderer.

It's the poem of the dawning day starting with the striking of countless matches to the immense horror

        of the pyramids greatly astonished and saddened too not to find their majestic companion still

        crouching at their feet.

Just what was that sound, anyway? Pronounce its name then while the poem of the dawning day begins

        and while our would-be wandering vagabond and her beloved sphinx dream on and on

        amidst landscapes thrown into utter chaos.

It wasn't the sound of the clock nor that of passing footsteps nor even the sound of some grinding coffee-mill.

What then was that sound? What was it then anyway?

Will the staircase plunge ever deeper? Will it climb ever higher?

Dream accept dreaming it's the poem of the day dawning now.

*

                                                                                      --Les Ténèbres (l927)

IDENTITY OF IMAGERY

Translated by Michael Benedikt

Furiously I battle against animals & bottles

In a short time perhaps 10 hours in a row have swiftly passed

The beautiful swimmer lately so fearful of coral awakens to the morning

Coral crowned with sea-weed knocks upon her door

Agh! carbon again--again and again it's always carbon

I implore you carbon O guardian genius of my dreams and solitude let me O please let me

        speak once again of the beautiful swimmer lately so fearful of coral

Cease to oppress this seductive subject of my dreams

The beautiful swimmer was reposing on a bed made of lacework and birds

Her garments draped on a chair at the foot of the bed were aglow with flickerings from coals

        from the final flickerings of that carbon

And the creature come from the furthermost reaches of the sky the earth and the sea

        was proud of his coral beak and great crepe wings

All night long he'd followed funeral processions converging on various suburban cemeteries

He'd attended numerous formal embassy-balls and left the mark of his tell-tale fernleaf emblem

         upon countless white satin ball-gowns

He'd reared up horribly before fleets whose vessels had totally disappeared

Crouched low now in the fireplace he awaits the re-awakening of the foam in the song of boiling kettles

His resonant footsteps had disturbed night's silence in streets with echoing pavements

Carbon sonorous carbon master of dreaming too carbon

O tell me where is she now that beautiful swimmer that swimmer only lately so fearful of coral?

The swimmer herself has just fallen sleep

Leaving me alone here standing face to face with fire where I'll continue to stand all night long questioning

        carbon with its shadowy wings carbon which persists in casting upon the monotonous path of my life

        its smoky shadows and the terrible reflections of its embers

Carbon resonant reverberating carbon merciless implacable carbon.

*

                                                                                      --Les Ténèbres (l927)

REMARKS FROM THE ROCKS

Translated by Michael Benedikt

The queen of the azure and the fool of the void flash past in a taxicab.

Heads of hair are leaning out of every window

And the heads of hair call down "See you later!"

"See you later!" say shout the jellyfish

"See you later!" shout the shining silks

Shouts the mother-of-pearl shout the pearls shout the diamonds

 Soon there's a night to end all nights a night both moonless and starless

A night filled with forests and  distant deserted shores

A night made of Love and all Eternity

A pane of glass shatters in a window being watched intently

A rag flag flaps above a tragic landscape

You'll be alone

Among fragments of mother-of-pearl and diamonds once again turned back into carbon

Reverted pearls

Alone among silks which which became mere empty shells of dresses as you drew near

Perhaps only those heads of hair won't run away from you

Will what's more obey you

Will still coil in curls between your fingertips like irrevocable condemnations

Short hair of girls who loved me once

Long hair of women who loved me too

But whom I did not love back

O remain there at those windows for a long long time

A night to end all nights a night made of distant deserted shores

Night luminous and filled with funerals

A staircase unfolds beneath my feet but night & daytime too show shadowiness and disaster as my sole destiny

Only the colossal marble column of lingering doubt holds up the sky above my head

Empty bottles whose glass I smash into into glittering smithereens

Odor of cork thrown back by the sea

Ship-riggings and nets of fishing boats as imagined by very young girls

Fragments of mother-of-pearl being gradually ground down into powder

A night to end all nights made of Love and all Eternity

Infinite depths profound regretfulness deep desire poetry love revelation miracles revolution love

The infinite depths surround me with all these chattering shadows

Then eternal infinitudes are smashed into fragments too O heads of hair!

It was it will be a night to end all nights

A night with neither moonlight nor any pearly glow

Without bits of broken bottles, even.

*

                                                                                      --Les Ténèbres (l927)

SUICIDED BY NIGHT

Translated by Michael Benedikt

Green boughs bow down low when the dragonfly appears at the turning in the footpath

I'm traveling toward a tombstone more translucent than snow white as milk whiter than whitewash

        white as recently whitewashed walls

The dragonfly splashes around in milk-puddles

The glassware suit of armor shudders shakes and starts to walk away

Rainbows tie each other up into knots resembling ornaments on Louis XVth furniture

And what’s this? Already the ground trampled by our passage dares to raise its hand

Whacks the glass armor

Bangs on doorways

Sails through the air

Moans Groans oh! oh! oh! oh! Pathway you’re dying away amidst all this cacophony O blue boulder

Gigantic sponge fragments falling from on high are burying entire cemeteries

Everywhere wine’s flowing with a sound like thunder

Milk and trampled ground and armor are all battling it out on grass flashing by turns from white to red

Thunderclaps lightning-bolts and then a rainbow

Ah! Pathway you crack wide open to crevasse-depth now and now you too start to sing!
 

The little girl on her way to school goes off reciting her lessons.

*

                                                                                      --Les Ténèbres (l927)

1 FROM

LES SANS COU (l934)

BY ROBERT DESNOS

MID-WAY

Translated by Michael Benedikt

There’s a precise moment in time

When a man arrives at the exact mid-point of his life

A fractional section of a second

A fugitive fragment of time more fleeting than a darted glance

More sudden than a fit of passion briefer even than the peak of love

Faster than the speed of light

And a man’s sensitive to a moment like that

Long avenues stretching out  between tall walls of foliage

Lead towards a distant tower where a lady lies sleeping

Whose beauty resists kisses remains as untouched by passing seasons

As stars by the wind or a rock by waves.

Shaking and shuddering a ship sinks to the bottom, shrieking

A flag flaps at the top of a tree.

A well-groomed woman, except for stocking-tops falling down to her shoetops, appears on a street corner

Trembling with excitement

Hand shielding a lantern antiquated yet still smoking

And once again a drunken dockworker sings at the far end of a bridge

And once again a girl nibbles at the lips of her lover,

And once again a rose-petal drifts down into an empty bed,

And once again a trio of grandfather clocks chime out the same hour except at intervals of several minutes apart,

And once again a passerby in the street turns around after hearing someone calling out his name

Except it turns out he wasn't the one the woman was calling out to

And once again a government official clad in formal state garb

Irked by the tension of his shirt-tail caught between his pants & his shorts

Inaugurates an orphanage,

And once again after bouncing out of the back of a delivery-truck barreling through night’s empty streets

A marvelous tomato rolls around in the gutter,

To be swept up again just shortly afterwards

And once again a fire breaks out somewhere on the seventh floor of a building

And burns at the heart of a silent, indifferent city,

And once again a man suddenly recalls a song

Long forgotten, and promptly forgets it again

And once again lots of other things

Many, many other things that a man notices suddenly in this moment at the exact mid-point of his life

Many, many other things unfolding at some length during this briefest of earth's brief moments.

And a man pauses to savor the mystery of this moment, of this fractional section of a second,

After which he says "Hey, it’s time to get rid of all these dark thoughts!"

And so he gets rid of all those dark thoughts.

And could he say anything

Or do anything

Better than that?

*

                                                                                      --Les Sans Cou (l934)

Original Desnos texts, © various dates, Éditions Gallimard.
Translations, © various dates, Michael Benedikt

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

 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 image in line 5 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 satisfied with the original, either.

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 beneath closed eyelids, come 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's 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 by mapping out the levels of consciousness this poem reflects. At the conclusion of "Spaces Inside Sleep," 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."

Re "I've Dreamed Of You So Much," various lines: In translating this classic modern French love 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 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 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....

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. In our translation we've opted--in a translational & 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 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 gentler & more introspective & also more 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. And even, of regarding Art as potentially superior to Life. And, what's more, he dared to forthrightly announce that! 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 French love poetry. 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 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 which 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 Desnos' interest in electronic technologies such as Radio--that the poet would have welcomed their advent.

Re "Identity of Imagery" ("Identitè des Images") : Most people complain about the inevitabilty of  'Death & Taxes,' and similarly specific interruptions of life and related annoyances. Desnos' complaint about the chemical element Carbon is more far-reaching. Desnos bemoans Carbon because--since almost everything on earth and elsewhere in the known universe is Carbon-based (humans, as chemists & sci-fi tales tell us, are also a 'Carbon-based life form'), there are echoes of Carbon everywhere. There are more carbon compounds than there are compounds of all the other elements combined. Thus, Carbon's ubiquitous & inescapable! Because of that, Desnos--who's a poet of transcendent phenomena--complains that Carbon hampers him. Carbon cramps his style & deprives him of freedom. Of the freedom to dream, even--Desnos' dreams being evoked in this poem in the form of the "beautiful swimmer" who's so fearful of coral (a hard, jagged form of Carbon which for swimmers & other navigators--such as the captains of the fleets referred to in line 13 can be particularly nasty & theatening). Later on in the poem about chemistry this figure discards her bathing suit--and, one surmises, might be the beneficiary of Desnos' further attention via reverie, were it not for intrusions into his thought by that nasty, omnipresent Carbon--embodied in this poem via the highly sinister figure with the aggressively Carbon-based and somewhat sexual "coral beak" & "great crepe wings" who appears suddenly in the narrator's fireplace. He's a figure made out of fire--the substance of which is of course also carbon-based. In sum, Desnos' complaint about the reverberant omnipresence of Carbon is nothing less than a complaint about--indeed, almost a tantrum against--the existence of all material things! Whether solid, liquid, or even (fireplace-emitted) gas. General Note re poetic "Complaints": Poets have of course written many "Complaints." The Complaint is a traditional poetic genre, dating back many centuries--to the complaint literature of the troubadours and others before them. "Identity of Imagery" is a complaint with both humorous and tragic overtones--a complaint which intends to end all complaints--some of Desnos' own protestations too, as various of his other later poems also suggest. Notwithstanding somewhat ironical later Desnos titles such as "Complaint of Fantomas" (Complainte de Fantomas," 1933--more excerpts from which we plan to bring to this website. Desnos' definitive break with the complaint genre occurs, we think, in a l934 poem called "Mid-Way" ("Mi-route"), a poem also forthcoming to this page.

Re "Despair Of The Sun" ("Désespoir du Soleil") & others: Textual Explications to Come. In the meantime, these informal thoughts re the lst of the 4 free verse poems from Les Ténèbres (1927) , "Despair Of The Sun": Please notice how, compared to visions of the waking day by other, more conventional writers--and which radiate a delight in the matter-of-factness of dawn and which reflect pleasure in soothingly familiar morning routines--Desnos' vision violates expectations. Desnos surprises us in "Despair of The Sun"  (which is actually poetry about shadows), by incorporating into a picture of a dawning urban day--replete with mundane urban phenomena--totally dream-like phenomena. Including outrageous associations such as the mixture of events from two different hemispheres (in this case the Pyramid and Sphinx region of Egyptian desert just outside of Cairo and the hallways of a Paris apartment-house). That's of course the kind of phantasmagoric juxtaposition which most people--including most poets too--identify with sleeping, not waking.  A key characteristic of Surrealism is that it seeks to bring together the everyday and the dreamlike, the commonplace and the magical--and after rubbing the two together, set poems afire by igniting them with the resulting sparks. Breton speaks for most Surrealist poets when he says in his First Manifesto of Surrealism (1924) that he believes  "in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, into a kind of absolute reality, a Surreality...".  To some extent, the convulsiveness of these four 1927 poems reflects Desnos' over-riding sense that things which are incongruous can never quite mix--but that the resulting, quasi-Apocalyptic confrontations, can be astonishing. Not to mention highly entertaining & hilarious to a degree which almost strains the boundaries of sanity. We've duplicated the order in which Desnos presents these 4 poems in Les Ténèbres,  also presenting them in order of increasing convulsiveness. Except that in our sequencing "Suicided by Night" ("Le Suicidé de Nuit")--which is perhaps the ultimate vision of Apocalypse of the 4--comes not before but after "Identity of Imagery" and "Remarks From The Rocks." Note: "The little girl on her way to school"  who briefly appears at the close of "Suicided by Night," & who "goes off reciting her lessons" despite being somewhat threatened by the Apocalyptic upheavals in that relatively brief 1927 poem, reappears almost larger than life in Desnos' next major book after Ténèbres--the coolly masterful  Les Sans Cou (1934). There, she serenely and triumphantly dominates a sparkling poem of some length called "Cuckoo-Clock," which we also plan to bring to this page.  Stay tuned. However, the centerpiece poem of  Les Sans Cou is we believe Mid-Way ("Mi-Route"). "Mid-Way," we think, also represents the crossroads poem of Desnos' entire poetic oeuvre. --M.B.

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new  Mid-Way  (last poem of 11 at this site so far)
Suicided by Night
Remarks From The Rocks
Identity of Imagery  
Despair Of The Sun
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

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Related Benedikt Sites & Other Pages. With new links & info

About This Desnos Page--& Where This Website Is Going: In tune with Desnos passion for metamorphoses, this page will continue to transform itself into the new Desnos page we've been referring to at our main Desnos page (URL-suffix of orginal Desnos page will remain as is: index.html; URL-suffix of this page:desnos2.html ). For purposes of orderliness, we'll keep the love poems together at index.html. Eventually, for reasons of file-size & to decrease download-time. we'll probably omit the love poems from this page, while retaining them at our original site. In addition to adding middle-period Desnos poems to this page, plus further excerpts from "Complaint of Fantomas," we also plan in '03 or '04 to bring to this page opening act, or acts, of Desnos' play, La Place de L'Etoile (l927-1944). (A complete version of Desnos's sole theatre-piece appears in our anthology Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism). Eventually, we may even get around to registering this page with The Search-Engines. (We're pleased that it's already been picked up by a few).--M.B. '02

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OTHER PRINCIPAL DESNOS WORKS:

A Brief Core Bibliography Updated from The Poetry of Surrealism

Additional new entries in '02 edition, including at close of Bibiliography,
info re Éditions Gallimard's splendid 1999 3-volume pocket edition of Desnos's poetry.
(Typography of this 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.

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The Poetry of Surrealism

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' sole play, "La Place de l'Etoile."

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RELATED LINKS

AN EARLIER IMPORTANT, PRE-SURREALIST FRENCH POET

Aloysius Bertrand: First French Prose Poet. Intro to Bertrand, with Translations of Prose Poems by a
highly original 19th-Century Symbolist writer who's also a forerunnner of Surrealism--as well as The Prose Poem, too.
Includes Bertrand's brief Preface to his dark classic, Gaspard de la Nuit, which contains the poems on which composer Maurice Ravel
based his piano suite of the same name. Site has Ravel's sensuous, haunting music, too.

ABOUT BENEDIKT

Pages at Academy of American Poets
Info at Academy includes bio. & a poem from 4 of Benedikt's 5 published poetry books; & a newer poem
(Pages posted by Academy 5/99)

'The Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net' 
 Info. at About.com re Background of Benedikt Websites via an article
(Page posted by About.com 4/99)

ABOUT FANTOMAS

New Link Friends of Fantômas
With Fantômas & other music by talented Marc Ellis
The Fantômas Website
Particularly enlightening re the Fantômas films of Louis Feuillade

BENEDIKT SITES & PAGES

Theatre, Film, & TV Poems--& 20th Cent. Play Anthologies Edited by MB,  with poems in verse & prose on showbiz subjects.
New in '03  3 Microfictions--Fantasies in Memory of 20th cent. Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini.
With descriptions of anthologies of Surrealist-influenced French, Spanish, German & US plays, many translated by Benedikt.
Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism has play by Robert Desnos, "La Place de l'Etoile."
Gives Agent Contact for securing performance rights.

The Body and Sky, multi-paged site with gen'l info on Benedikt's first 2, Surrealist-influenced poetry books written in the l960's.
From The Body:  Selected Poems from Body in Y2K-era updates, & a page of 'Dark Love Poems.'
Also a Horror n' Fright poetry page, Spooky Poems for Halloween & All Year 'Round.  New in '03  Page devoted entirely to poems from Sky.
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 print format. Love poems-sort of. 1980 poems in Y2K updates.

Poems from Boston & Cambridge, poems from mss.-in-progress entitled Transitions.
Site includes photos from author's 1970's-l980 Boston Archive. And links to--of all things--a tuneful Xmas Edition

The Thesaurus And Other New Verse, from mss.-in-progress entitled Of:
A linked page has '3 Poems Praising Peace'

SINGLE-POEM MINI-SITES

'American Vibrations' about some of USA's little-known & hitherto unsung 19th-Century Female Erotic Pioneers
overlooked by official history-books.

'Of Orson Welles' War of The Worlds' poem-in-progress about a daring 1938 early radio program which caused furor & panic in USA,
& which may have inadvertently accelerated FCC censorship of the airwaves

'Of The Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia, l957' about an extraordinary episode in the early history of a daring, free-spirited,
officialdom-offending theater company still extant & popular in Russia today. Subtexts of poem:
Opposition to State Arts Censorship. Also: Praise for universal human yearnings for more bliss in life!

'The Kapos' about recruitment in 1938 via Nazi propaganda of voluntary prisoners for first German 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 Independenly & liking it

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