Heaney & Baudelaire, a Majesterial Pairing

                                                                                

CIV

 

LE SQUELETTE LABOURER

 

I

 

 Dans les planches d’anatomie

Qui traînent sur ces quais poudreux

Oû maint livre cadavéreux

Dort comme une antique momie,

 

Dessins auxquels la gravité

Et le savoir d’un vieil artiste,

Bien que le sujet en soit triste,

Ont communiqué la Beauté,

 

On voit, ce qui rend plus complétes

Ces mystérieuses horreurs,

Bêchant comme de laboureurs,

Des Écorchés et des Squelettes.

 

 

 

 

 

II

 

De ce terrain que vous fouillez,

Manants résignés et funébres ,

De tout l’effort de vos vertèbres,

Ou de vos muscles dépoillés,

 

Dites, quelle moisson étrange,

Forçats arrachés au charnier,

Tirer-vous, et de quel fermier

Avez- vous à remplir la grange?

 

Voulez-vous ( d’un destin trop dur

Épouvantable et clair embléme !)

Montrer que dans la fosse même

Le sommeil promis n’est pas sûr;

 

Qu’envers nous le Néant est traïte;

Que tout, même le Mort, nous ment,

Et que sempiternellement,

Hélas! il nous faudra peut-être

 

 

 

 

 

Dans quelque pays inconnu

Écorcher la terre revêche

Et posser une lourde bêche

Sous notre pied sanglant et nu?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CIV

 

THE SKELETAL LABOURER

 

 

 

On the anatomical plates

Which pepper the bouquinistes

Where the textbook cadavers

Sleep like ancient mummies,   

 

Drawings which the gravity

And the knowledge of the artist,

Though the subject be grave,

Tend to communicate Beauty,  

 

We can see what makes them so complete

These mysterious horrors

Digging like labourers,

The flayed alive and the skeletal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

II

 

In this terrain where you excavate,

Spalpeens resigned and funerary,

With every effort of your vertebrae,

Or your remaining muscle,

 

Pray tell, from what strange bog,

Forceps ripped from the morgue,

Are you torn, for which farmer

Have you loaded the harvest?

 

Would you like to ( a destiny too rough

Appalling emblem that you signal!)

Expose the mass grave

Where the promised sleep is not at all assured;

 

And for us the abyss is treacherous;

Where everything, even Death, is a lie,

And perpetually,

Alas! we need to perhaps,

 

 

 

 

 

In some unknown country,

Flail alive the earth

And pass over it a great spade,

With a bloody naked foot?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bog Bodies

 

There is a room in the National Museum of Archaeology, on Kildare Street in Dublin, where there are

exhibits of bodies which have been preserved by the chemical properties in the waters of the bog and

which preserve almost perfectly the dismembered remains of former Irish princes who were

assassinated in the most Machiavellian way imaginable; inside this chamber of horrors we are, us

denizens of the 21^st century, given, thanks to the former State Pathologist, Marie Cassidy and the team

of archaeologists who worked with her – my understanding is that it is the first time that such a

project has been realised in the country. The reason why I am referencing this permanent exhibition in

relation to the poem Le Squelette Laboureur is because of the wonderful translation, or ‘impure

translation’, by Seamus Heaney and which was to appear in his, literally and metaphorically,

groundbreaking collection North ( 1975) and which I am going to give in its entirety here.

 

The Digging Skeleton

 

You find anatomical plates

Buried along these dusty quays

Among books yellowed like mummies

Slumbering in forgotten crates,

 

Drawings touched with an odd beauty

As if the illustrator had

Responded gravely to the sad

Mementoes of anatomy –

 

 

 

 

Mysterious candid studies

Of red slobland around the bones.

Like this one: flayed men and skeletons

Digging the earth like navvies.

 

These are the first three verses of the poem, and what I think is so commendable about Heaney’s

translation is that he manages to insert a rhyming pattern ( ABBA as opposed to ABAB, as in

Mahon’s version of Paysage ), this alternating rhyme is so much more natural as it is unforced, almost

conversational; Heaney learnt this from Yeats, and of course Kavanagh, the two old masters of 20^th

century Irish poetry. But this is but to talk of the form, as for the content, then we must refer back to

the room in the National Museum of Archaeology, as this is Heaney’s domain. The archaeological

referencing, the forensic detail to the choice of words. Notice the use of navvies as a term rather than

my own spalpeen, as I was aping Heaney to a large extent here, but Heaney’s choice was dependent

on the rhyme!

 

II

 

Sad gang of apparitions,

Your skinned muscles like plaited sedge

And your spines hooped toward a sunk edge

Of the spade, my patient ones,

 

Tell me, as you labour hard

To break my unrelenting soil,

What barns are there for you to fill?

What farmer dragged you from the boneyard?

 

 

Or, are you emblems of the truth,

Death’s lifers, hauled from the narrow cell

And stripped of night-shirt shrouds, to tell:

“This is the reward of faith

 

In rest eternal. Even death

Lies. The void deceives.

We do not fall like autumn leaves

To sleep in peace. Some traitor breath

 

Revives our clay, sends us abroad

And by the sweat of our stripped brows

We earn our deaths; our one repose

When the bleeding instep finds its spade.’[1]

 

 

There is just so much to commend here. To my mind it is the best translation I have read of a poem by

Baudelaire.  

---

[1] Heaney, Seamus: North, Faber & Faber, London, 1992, pp.17-18.

CI LES PETITES VIEILLES / CI THE LITTLE OLD BIDDIES ( TOUJOURS BAUDELAIRE)

                                           My paternal grandmother, Nancy, with my grandfather, Sean,

                                           in Free State uniform having just been released from gaol.  

                                                    

                       

 

CI

LES PETITES VIELLES

A Victor Hugo

 

Dans les plis sinueux des vielles capitals,

Où tout, même l’horreur, tourne aux enchantements,

Je guette, obeisant à mes humeurs fatales,

Des êtres singuliers, décrépits et charmants.

 

Ces monstres disloqués furent jadis des femmes,

Éponine ou Lais ! Monstres brisés, bossus,

Ou tordu, aimons-les! ce sont encore des âmes.

Sous des joupons troués et sous de froids tissus

 

Ils rampant, flagellés par les bises iniques,

Frémissant au fracas roulant des omnibus,

Et serrant sur leur flane, ainsi que des reliques,

Un petit sac brodé de fleurs ou de rebus;

 

Ils trottent, tout pareils à des marionnettes;

Se traînent, comme font les animaux blessés,

Ou dansent, sans vouloir danser, pauvre sonnettes

Ou se prendre un Démon sans pitié! Tout cassés.

 

 

 

Qu’ils sont, ils ont des yeux perçants comme un vrille,

Luisants comme ces trous où l’eau dort dans la nuit;

Ils ont les yeux divins de la petite fille

Qui s’étonne et qui rit à tout ce qui reluit.

 

Avez vous observé que maints cercueils des vieilles

Sont presque aussi petits que celui d’un enfant?

La Mort savante met dans ces bières pareilles

Un symbole d’un goût bizarre et captivant,

 

Et lorsque j’entrevois un fantôme débile

Traversant de Paris le fourmillant tableau,

Il me semble toujours que cet être fragile

S’en va tout doucement vers un nouveau berceau;

 

À moins que, méditant sur la géométrie,

Je ne cherche, à l’aspect de ces members discords,

Combien de fois il faut que l’ouvrier varie

La forme de la boîte où l’on met tous ces corps.

 

Ces yeuxs sont des puits faits d’un million de larmes,

Des creusets qu’un metal refroidi pailleta…

Ces yeux mystérieux ont d’invincibles charmes

Pour celui que l’austére Infortune allaita!

 

 

 

II

 

 

De l’ancien Frascati Vestale anamourée;

Prêtresse de Thalie, hélas ! dont le souffleur

Défunt, seul, sait le nom; célèbre évaporée

Que Tivoli jadis ombragea dans sa fleur,

 

Toutes m’enivrent! mais parm ices êtres frêles

Il en est qui, faisant, de la douleur un miel,

Ont dit au Dévouement qui leur prêtait ses ailes,

“Hippogriffe puissant, mène-moi jusqu’au ciel!”

 

L’une, par sa patrie au Malheur exercée,

L’autre, que son époux surchargea de douleurs,

L’autre, par son enfant Madone transpercée,

Toutes auraient pu faire un fleuve avec leurs pleurs!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III

 

Telles vous cheminez, stoïques et sans plaints,

A travers le chaos de vivantes cités,

Mères au cœur saignant, courtisanes ou saintes,

Don’t autrefois les noms par tous étaient cites.

 

Vous qui fûtes la grâce ou qui fûtes la gloire,

Nul ne vous reconnaît! Un ivrogne incivil

Vous insulte en passent d’un amour dérisoire;

Sur vos talons gambade un enfant lâche et vil.

 

Honteuses d’exister, ombres ratatinée,

Peureuses, le dos bas, vous côtoyer les murs;

Et nul ne vous salue, étranges destinées!

Débris d’Humanité pour l’éternité mûrs!

 

Mais moi, moi qui de loin tendrement vous surveil

L’oeil inquiet, fixé sur vos pas incertains,

Tout comme si j’étais votre père, ô merveille !

Je goute à votre insu des plaisirs clandestins :

 

Je vois s’épanouir vos passions novices;

Sombres ou lumineux, je vis vos jours perdus;

Mon cœur multiplié jouit de tous vos vices!

Mon âme resplendit de toutes vos vertues!

 

Ruines! ma famille ! ô cerveaux congénères !

Je vous fais chaque soir un solennel adieu !

Où serez – vous demain, Èves octogénaires,

Sur qui pèse la griffe efforyable de Dieu?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CI

 

THE LITTLE OLD BIDDIES[i]

 

A Victor Hugo

 

I

 

In the sinuous folds of the old capitals,

Where everything, even horror, becomes an enchantment,

Obeying my fatal moods, I appreciate the vision of

Some singular beings, decrepit and charming.

 

These dislocated monsters who were at one time women,

Grace or Marlene, both now are broken hunch-backed monsters,

Or twisted; let us love them! as they are still souls.

Underneath the torn dresses and the skimpy material 

 

They crawl flagellated by the unjust kisses,

Shivering with the fracas of the passing busses,

Tightening their flanks just like old relics,

An old braided bag handstitched with flowers or some such;

 

Just like marionettes, they trot about,

Trailing like wounded beasts,

Or dancing, without really wanting to dance, poor little

Bells, which a pitiless demon has under his spell!

 

All broken as they are, they have piercing eyes like screws,

Glistening like those wells which sleep at night;

They have divine eyes like little girls,

Which stun and which laugh and which glimmer.

 

Death the savant knows how to put into small beer

A symbol of the captivating taste for the bizarre;

Have you ever observed the squirrel like hands

Of elderly women that are as small as those of children?

 

 When I catch a glimpse of a silly old phantom

Traversing Paris, the teeming backdrop,

It always seems to me that these fragile creatures

Are going about their journey towards a new cradle;

 

Then Meditating on the geometry, unless

I do not look, at the aspect of the discordant limbs;

I must ask, How many times must the labourer vary

The form of the coffin, so as to accommodate the corpse?

 

Their eyes are the wells of a million tears

The crucible of the metal cools the flakes…

These mysterious eyes have invisible charms,

For those whom austere misfortune has blessed.

 

 

II

 

 

From the ancient vestals of enamoured Frascati;

Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose defunct prompter,

Alone, knows the name; all celebrity having evaporated

Into the shade of Tivoli with its flowers.

 

  Everything annoys me! But among these frail beings

There are some who distil an ambrosia from pain;

We say to the Devotion which lends them wings

“Powerful Hippogriffe, lift me to the sky!” 

 

One, because of her country, her sorrow is exerted,

Another, her husband supercharges her with pain,

Another, through her child has become an inflicted Madonna;

All could make rivers from their tears.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III

 

 

Whatever stoic path you take without grievance,

Through the chaos of  living cities,

Mothers with bleeding hearts, courtesan or saint,

In past times the names of all were cited, 

 

You who once embodied grace and glory,

Now none recognise you; an uncouth drunk

Insults you passing a derisory love;

At your heels trails a lazy, vile child.

 

Shameful existence, withered shades,

Fearful, backs stooped low, you hug the walls;

And nobody greets you, strange destinies,

Debris of humanity, for eternity alone…ripe! 

 

But I, I who watch you tenderly from afar

With an uneasy eye fixed on your uncertain steps,

Almost with a paternal eye, o marvel !

Unbeknownst to you, I feed upon these clandestine pleasures:

 

I see your novice passions fading;

Sombre and luminous, I live your lost days;

My heart multiplies playing to all your vices!

My resplendent soul to all your virtues! 

 

Ruin! my family! O mind of my peers!

Every night, I bid you a solemn adieu!

Who will you be tomorrow, octogenarian Eves,

On whom press the terrible claws of God?

---

[i]

 

This Mortal Coil

 

It is a sign of Baudelaire’s genius that a poem such as this can still halt one in one’s tracks, as the meditation on mortality is so profound, and after all, is not this singular quality all we ask for, really, from a poet? In an age when we bander about words like ‘inclusivity’ and ‘equity’ on a daily basis, taken from some masthead of an NGO, so often so that the ideas that they are supposed to embody just appear meaningless platitudes. Ideology, after all, is just that. Mere slogans do not poetry make, no matter how hard our trusted public servants try to make us believe.

 

When I was working on translating this poem over a number of days, I found myself thinking about my paternal grandmother who survived my grandfather, whose middle name I took, by quite a few years. I had the very good fortune of living with this old woman who could remember the fighting going on in the city during the civil war. She was working as a waitress in a popular café at the time and witnessed Free State soldiers setting up a machine gun in the place where she worked.

 

I spent over a year living with her in the quite neighbourhood of Sandymount where she spent most of her life with her beloved husband Sean, a great reader of Robert Service. I can still see the old PYE radio in the corner by his old leather armchair, and the old volume of verse evoking the Klondike. Those were some of the happiest memories of my childhood, sitting up, usually, late at night smoking a Sweet Afton and sipping from an old bottle of Guinness taken from the cool pantry at the bottom of the stairs.

 

Gran had chronic arthritis and rheumatism, so the images and descriptions of the ‘old biddies’ described above in the poet’s poem really resonated for me, as I could see my own grandmother in the verse. Baudelaire was a great observer of humanity, and in all of its many diverse forms. There is no ageism on show here, the poet is as inclusive as one can possibly be. I can’t remember reading a poem about the plight of the elderly which has rested with me as this poem by Baudelaire. As very rarely do the elderly figure in any discourse today. This poem, it seems to me, is a veritable antidote to the meaningless platitudes that we see and hear and read about us on every website, newspaper or magazine article or social media post. As it is not just promoting some vapid ideology which will be forgotten in twenty or so years, but rather is tapping deep into the core of who we truly are, or, will inevitably be if we live to even see it!