My love of English war poetry, particularly the vitriolic
verse of Sassoon and Owen, and the patriotic prose of Brooke, led me to explore
French writings from the same period. I was interested to compare the two
genres, and to observe the poets’ perception of the war.
For one who is not fluent in French, I did not anticipate
the satisfaction and surprise of translating from one language to another. The
linguistic barriers serve as speed-bumps: when reading poetry in one’s native
language, the images are laid out before one’s eyes; when reading it in a
foreign language, one scrapes away carefully at each line, as though on an
archaeological dig, until the gems of certain images are revealed in all their
glory. I found the comparison of the night to a woman giving birth a
particularly immediate and startling simile. It shows that, despite his male-dominated
environment, Apollinaire did not lose touch with his feminine side, perhaps due
to the constant presence of his lover, Lou, on the periphery of his consciousness.
I translated the imperfect verbs in the final stanza into the present, both to avoid
any awkwardness of phrase and to preserve a sense of continuity.
There is no obvious prosodic pattern contained in the original
poem, and an absence of punctuation allows the reader their own moments of
stasis and enjambement. I decided to separate the first line of the closing
stanza into blunt sentences of only a few words for emphasis, thereby mirroring
the gunfire surrounding the poet.
Longing
I long for the land in the distance,
Behind the lines of the Boche.
I long also for that which is in my wake
Beyond the grip of war.
I long for the mound of Mesnil
And the very thing I am shooting.
It is past the war zone:
I don’t speak of it now, but I imagine it.
Mound of Mesnil, I dream of you in vain.
The enemy’s barbed wire and brazen machine gun
Already embedded too deep underground.
Crack-crack-crack of dying shots.
Watching there, late into the night
The spluttering Decauville railway,
The corrugated iron in the rain
And raindrops drumming on my helmet.
Listen to the impassioned land;
See the glimmers before hearing the shots,
And the shells whistling dementedly,
Or the staccato ‘tac tac tacs’, bristling with contempt.
I long
To embrace you in my hand, Main de Massiges,
So gaunt on the map.
The trench where I shot Goethe
I even blasted Nietzsche there:
I have not a shred of respect for fame.
Violent, violet night, dark and sometimes drenched in gold:
A night for men only.
24th September: night.
Tomorrow: the assault.
Violent night, oh night with ghastly howls
Becoming more intense with every minute.
The night wails like a woman in labour:
A night for men only.
Guillaume Apollinaire
Désir
Mon
désir est la région qui est devant moi
Derrière
les lignes boches
Mon
désir est aussi derrière moi
Après
la zone des armées
Mon
désir c’est la butte du Mesnil
Mon
désir est là sur quoi je tire
De
mon désir qui est au-delà de la zone des armées
Je
n’en parle pas aujourd’hui mais j’y pense
Butte
du Mesnil je t’imagine en vain
Des
fils de fer des mitrailleuses des ennemis trop sûrs d’eux
Trop
enfoncés sous terre déjà enterrés
Ca
ta clac des coups qui meurent en s’éloignant
En y
veillant tard dans la nuit
Le
Decauville qui toussote
La
tôle ondulée sous la pluie
Et
sous la pluie ma bourguignotte
Entends
la terre véhémente
Vois
les lueurs avant d’entendre les coups
Et
tel obus siffler de la démence
Ou
le tac tac tac monotone et bref plein de dégoût
Je
désire
Te
serrer dans ma main Main de Massiges
Si
décharnée sur la carte
Le
boyau Goethe où j’ai tiré
J’ai
tiré même sur le boyau Nietzsche
Décidément
je ne respecte aucune gloire
Nuit
violente et violette et sombre et pleine d’or par moments
Nuits
des hommes seulement
Nuit
du 24 septembre
Demain
l’assaut
Nuit
violente ô nuit dont l’épouvantable cri profond devenait
plus
intense de minute en minute
Nuit
qui criait comme une femme qui accouche
Nuit
des hommes seulement
Guillaume
Apollinaire
