The French poet Jules Supervielle was much preoccupied with the idea of an imagined afterlife, a kind of limbo where human beings continue to exist in a disembodied, impotent state along with a strangely random selection of artefacts and other creatures from the earth they have lost: in one of his poems on this theme, ‘Prophétie’, we have a magical flying fish that knows nothing of the sea, a vintage car with four wheels but no road to use them on, and a goldfinch. I suspect that these somewhat fey imaginings have their roots in Supervielle’s permanent state of ill health, that sometimes caused him to doubt his own physical existence to the extent of holding his hand over a candle flame to reassure himself that he was still alive. It’s all a bit odd, and a long way from my own idea of an afterlife, which would be more like Valhalla but with a lot of long runs in place of all the fighting, but I do find the poems have a certain haunting quality.

Pilar was the poet’s wife.

The translation that follows is my own.

Sonnet à Pilar

Pour ne pas être seul durant l’éternité,
Je cherche auprès de toi future compagnie
Pour quand, larmes sans yeux, nous jouerons à la vie
Et voudrons y loger notre fidélité.

Pour ne plus aspirer à l’hiver et l’été,
Ni mourir à nouveau de tant de nostalgie,
Il faut dès à présent labourer l’autre vie,
Y pousser nos grands boeufs enclins à s’arrêter,

Voir comment l’on pourrait remplacer les amis,
La France, le soleil, les enfants et les fruits,
Et se faire un beau jour d’une nuit coriace,

Regarder sans regard et toucher sans les doigts,
Se parler sans avoir de paroles ni voix,
Immobiles, changer un petit peu de place.

Jules Supervielle

Sonnet for Pilar

Lest we should be alone throughout eternity
I look to you for future company
For when we play at life, like eyeless tears,
Still wishing to keep faith with those lost years.

Lest we should long too much for change of season
Or from too much nostalgia die again,
We must from now on plough another way
With our great oxen, so inclined to stay,

Must think how to replace, when all this ends,
Our country, children, sunlight, fruit, our friends,
Conjure a fair day from night’s carapace,

Look though we have no gaze, touch without fingers,
Talk to each other without words or voice,
Immobile, move a little from one place.

This week one of my favourite French poems, in which the ageing poet looks back over his life, in language that is simple yet idiosyncratic, lucid yet profound.

The translation that follows is my own. I offer it merely as a crib – I decided that any attempt to force a match with Supervielle’s rhyme scheme would sacrifice too much of the original’s simplicity, or at least must wait for a better talent than mine.

Hommage à la vie

C’est beau d’avoir élu
Domicile vivant
Et de loger le temps
Dans un cœur continu,
Et d’avoir vu ses mains
Se poser sur le monde
Comme sur une pomme
Dans un petit jardin,
 
D’avoir aimé la terre,
La lune et le soleil
Comme des familiers
Qui n’ont pas leurs pareils,
Et d’avoir confié
Le monde à sa mémoire
Comme un clair cavalier
À sa monture noire,
 
D’avoir donné visage
À ces mots: femme, enfants,
Et servi de rivage
À d’errants continents,
Et d’avoir atteint l’âme
À petits coups de rame
Pour ne l’effaroucher
D’une brusque approchée.
 
C’est beau d’avoir connu
L’ombre sous le feuillage
Et d’avoir senti l’âge
Ramper sur le corps nu,
Accompagné la peine
Du sang noir dans les veines
Et doré son silence
De l’étoile Patience,
 
Et d’avoir tous ces mots
Qui bougent dans la tête
De choisir les moins beaux
Pour leur faire un peu fête,
D’avoir senti la vie
Hâtive et mal aimée
De l’avoir enfermée
Dans cette poésie.

Jules Supervielle

Homage to Life

A fine thing, to have lived
In a house of flesh,
And given time a home
In a steadfast heart,
To have looked on as one’s hands
Take hold of the world
Cupping it like an apple
In a little garden,

A fine thing, to have loved
The earth, the moon and sun
As familiar friends
Whose like you have not known,
And to have entrusted
The world to memory
Like a bright cavalier
Riding his black steed,

To have given a human face
To these words: children, wife,
And to have served as shore
To wandering continents,
To have come upon the soul
With small strokes of the oars
Lest it be scared away
By an approach too brusque.

A fine thing, to have known
The shade beneath the boughs
And to have felt old age
Creep on the naked body,
Kept company with pain
Like black blood in the veins
And to have gilded silence
With the star, Patience.

And to have all these words
Bustling in one’s head,
To choose the least beautiful
To let them live a little,
To have felt this life
So hurried, so ill loved,
And to have secured it
In this poetry.

The French poet Jules Supervielle (1884-1960) wrote many tender love poems to his wife Pilar, whom he married in Montevideo in 1907, Uruguay (the country ‘fort au sud’ referred to in the poem) being the country of his birth. This is one of them. 

The translation that follows is my own. I confess to not quite understanding the words in the fourth line ‘lui donne son nom’ – did Supervielle think that the French words ‘coeur’ and ‘carrefour’ were etymologically connected? This does not in fact seem to be the case. 

Je me souviens

Je me souviens – lorsque je parle ainsi
Ah saura-t-on jamais qui se souvient
Dans tout ce chaud murmurant carrefour
Qui fait le coeur et lui donne son nom –
Je me souviens, c’était dans un pays
Qu’on aperçoit fort au sud sur les cartes,
Le ciel mouillait à tort et à travers
Le grand matin noir et plein d’innocence.
Je me souviens – cette fois je suis sûr
Qu c’est bien moi qui hume ce temps-là –
Je vous trouvai durant une accalmie
Vous qui deviez devenir mon amie
Pendant vingt ans, et c’est encor vrai.

Jules Supervielle

I Remember 

I remember – ah, but when I speak this way
Can we ever know for sure what memories
Meet at that warm murmuring crossroads within
We call the heart, which gives it its name? –
I remember, it was in another country
You see on maps a long way to the south.
It rained as if the rain would never cease
That great dark morning full of innocence.
I remember – and for once I am quite sure
That it is I who breathe in that time’s air –
I found you as the sky began to clear
You who would become my wife, my friend
These twenty years gone by, and are still here.

I confess that I find much of twentieth-century French poetry rather impenetrable – it could of course just be that my French isn’t up to it, though I suspect that the same could be said for many native Frenchmen. But I do find many of the poems of Jules Supervielle (1884-1960) both appealing and accessible. Here’s one of my favourites. I have attempted my own translation, which I append, but of course it’s no substitute for the French.

Ce Pur Enfant

Ce pur enfant, rose de chasteté,
Qu’a-t-il à voir avec la volupté?
Et fallait-il qu’en luxe d’innocence
Allât finir la fureur de nos sens?

Dorénavant en cette neuve chair
Se débattra notre amoureux mystère?
Après nous avoir pris le coeur d’assaut
L’amour se change en l’hôte d’un berceau,

En petits poings fermés, en courtes cuisses,
En ventre rond sans aucune malice
Et nous restons tous deux à regarder
Notre secret si mal, si bien gardé.

Jules Supervielle

This spotless child, this rose of chastity,
What’s he to do with our carnality?
And was our senses’ fury always meant
To find its end in such an innocent?

Henceforth in this new flesh, all turned about,
Shall our love’s mystery be acted out?
The passion that once took our hearts by storm
Finds in this cradled guest another form,

In tiny limbs, in little hands, so curled,
In belly, round and innocent of world,
While side by side we watch, for him to tell
Our secret, kept so badly, kept so well.