Translation of 'Désir' by Guillaume Apollinaire

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.

24^th 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

The Theatre's Enduring Hold Over Films

The film release earlier this year of the world’s longest running musical, ‘Les Miserables’, divided some fans into two distinctly opposing groups: the ‘nationalists’ of ‘Les Mis’, who were unimpressed by this adaption, and those who felt that the big screen enhanced the musical in a way that, due to its limitations, a stage can not. To some, this may have raised the question: which is superior, the cinema or the theatre? In a world of rapidly advancing technology, as demonstrated by the pioneering special effects in films released today, will the plays of tomorrow be surpassed by their counterparts in the motion picture industry?

The cinema may hold the simple appeal of an afternoon immersed in escapism, and always contains the extra allure of warm popcorn, but, in my opinion, the theatrical experience is unrivalled. Nothing is left to the subtle maturing of imagination in a film, for the cinema-goer is presented with a domain woven wholly from the fabric of others’ minds; in the theatre, as with literature, our own consciousness shades in that which is not shown. A play also has the appeal of different dimensions; it can be savoured both on the page and visually. A great play, however, is almost an embodiment of our own visions; tragedy and comedy acted live in front of the audience, the actors close enough to touch.

I have been fortunate to see several plays recently, encompassing a diverse range of plots and settings, from an apocalyptic Scotland in the future, to a staff-room in 1960s Cambridge with Rowan Atkinson playing the title character. Perennial plays never lose their relevance: take the example of Shakespeare’s extensive and enduring oeuvre, which has been performed for centuries, being adapted and interpreted on countless different levels. For the price of a cinema admission, one can purchase a ticket to stand in the yard of the Globe as a ‘groundling’ (seats are available for a higher price), and witness the finest of dramas. It was surreal to watch ‘Twelfth Night’, with one of the greatest Shakespearean actors, Mark Rylance, as Olivia, and Stephen Fry himself assuming the role of the puritanical antagonist, Malvolio. A visual, aural and intellectual feast, it transported the audience to a sumptuous, heady realm unobtainable by any other means; Shakespeare’s words are afforded a unique vivacity when performed, especially to such a high standard.

Acclaimed actor James McAvoy is currently in the West End playing the eponymous Macbeth, but in a reworking unlike those seen before, the audience is not taken to the 11^th century Scotland of the original, but to a ‘dystopian Scotland at some point in the near future’, with chilling, yet electrifying results. The three witches are nightmarishly depicted wearing gas masks, while the set is an industrial wasteland with flickering lights and water dripping from the ceiling. Macbeth enters skidding across the stage before thumping his machete violently on the floor, and those in the front row are provided with plastic ponchos to protect them from the volume of fake blood and water used. It is impossible to do justice to such a brutal and intense performance, but McAvoy was magnificent in the title role, delivering in his rich Scottish brogue a taut, raw depiction of a despotic monarch consumed by tyranny and greed. A flavour of concentrated anticipation infused the theatre as the audience waited for the play to begin, and this was heightened by the mutual nature of the emotion: one encounters theatre as part of a group, all subject to, in this instance, the same physical, harrowing production. This is an experience that cannot be captured and distilled; it is immediate and transient, but there is no drop of the curtain on memory, and true drama lingers ever after.

The theatre critic, Quentin Letts, regretted not asking theatre staff at the multi award-winning farce, ‘One Man Two Guvnors’ whether they had any ‘first-aid orderlies on the premises with a tank of oxygen’, so helpless with mirth was he and the rest of the audience by the interval; Charles Spencer of the Telegraph described it as achieving ‘delirious comic momentum.’ For an evening of blissfully unadulterated pleasure and entertainment, one need look no further than this play, which, whilst being the antithesis of the dark and macabre Macbeth, still elicits the same collective rapture from its audience. It leaves one in paroxysms of laughter; a film may add a different perspective to humour but comedy is meant to be experienced, and there is no more potent way to do this than to be present at the actual event. It is at occasions like these when a play truly succeeds, for the audience is utterly immersed in the world presented to them, and intoxicated by its tangibility.

The theatre also possesses the ability to illuminate a person’s life for an ardent audience. One such example of this is ‘The Dark Earth And The Light Sky’, which explored the final years leading up to poet Edward Thomas’ death, focusing on his turbulent relationship with his wife Helen, his uplifting friendship with Robert Frost, and his transition to verse. Thomas is resurrected through the actor, for this is as close as one can get to being in his presence, his mannerisms and personality vividly depicted in a way that simply cannot be paralleled on the screen. The film adaption of Susan Hill’s ‘The Woman In Black’ might have set pulses racing, but the sheer revulsion and terror that prickles along one’s back in the theatre production, as a woman in a black bonnet glides down the aisle, is incomparable.

The theatre is an invigorating enrichment of the mind, and has endured for centuries: the Romans revelled in it, the Tudors celebrated it, and it continues to entertain us today. The appeal of a mass audience watching a live event is unparalleled, and it has not lost its significance in English culture. Whilst not carving out a lucrative industry on the same scale as films, theatre is the sanctuary of fine drama. In a world where many films are debased by coarse plot lines, unwarranted violence and banal predictability, the importance of plays is perhaps greater than ever: as the oft-quoted playwright and poet Oscar Wilde said, ‘I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.’

The Winter's Tale - Act 4, Scene 4

An analysis of Act 4, Scene 4 of The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare:

Shakespeare weaves a mellow portrayal of a rustic festival in Act 4 Scene 4, contrasting greatly to the amplified pomp and tragedy of the previous act. The play progresses from prosperity to devastation and then to regeneration, and this scene exemplifies renewal born from the seeds of destruction; it depicts those standards banished in Leontes’ court through the pure romance of Florizel and Perdita, the liberal, tolerant attitude of the ordinary people around them, and the fresh, convivial comedy that ensues.

The passage in question commences with an exchange between Perdita and Polixenes, as she welcomes him to the sheep shearing festival. A metaphorical thread is established throughout this extract likening the stages of the year and their flowers with the ages of a man’s life. Polixenes believes that his age is matched with ‘flow’rs of winter’, especially compared to Perdita’s wholesome and youthful elegance. She goes on to talk of the ‘fairest flow’rs o’ th’season’, those ‘carnations and streaked gillyvors’ known by some as ‘Nature’s bastards’: this opinion is ambivalent, for whilst such two-tone flowers are created by the ‘art’ of cross-breeding, there are underlying connotations that bastards are simply part of the natural order of occurrences; a more accepting stance than that of Leontes, who cast Perdita as a baby from his court, believing her to be a bastard ‘none of mine.’ Such a description of the striking ‘piedness’ created by grafting is redolent of G.M. Hopkins’ celebrated poem, ‘Pied Beauty’, in which he praises God for ‘dappled things’, and even those that are ‘fickle’, ‘sour’ and ‘dim’; again conveying the impression that even these abstractions have a place in the inherent scheme of humanity and nature.

Polixenes continues to observe that there is nothing beyond nature: if it contradicts itself, then it is merely being contradictory, for although grafting changes nature, the ‘art itself is nature.’ Again, his words invoke a more profound perception: marrying ‘a gentler scion to the wildest stock’, and conceiving a ‘bark of baser kind by a bud of nobler race’ can be interpreted on a human level. It is a rejection of the contemporary conventions, deeming the degradations of hierarchy redundant: the lowly marrying the higher is natural, and this appears to be almost a unconscious blessing for the union between Perdita, who believes herself a shepherd’s daughter, and Florizel, the son of a king. There is a certain irony to be found in Polixenes’ defence of the very manner of elopement planned by his son and Perdita, which he vehemently opposes upon discovering it.

Surprisingly, it is Perdita who is less willing to accept these imperfections, seeing them as artifice rather than nature. However, she addresses Polixenes using directly physical language such as ‘desire to breed by me’, with no hint of puritanical austerity; all that her father loathes, she embraces. Perdita is a beacon of purity: she possesses spirit imbued with sweetness, and displays the qualities of her mother, wrought by her humble upbringing into a rustic, earthy charm. In his essay, ‘The Tragic Pattern’, E.M.W. Tillyard suggests that Shakespeare sought to picture ‘original virtue’, the antithesis of original sin, in Perdita; she is ‘the play’s main symbol of the powers of creation’, whose speech is ‘acutely contrasted to the tortured, arid and barren ravings of Leontes.’ Such is her nature that Camillo, disguised, is enthralled by her, exclaiming, ‘I should leave grazing, were I of your flock, and only live by gazing.’ This comment is made witty by the chime of ‘grazing’ and ‘gazing’, and succinctly encapsulates Perdita’s simple allure.

The metaphor of age represented by seasonal flowers is continued: Perdita longs for ‘flow’rs o’th’spring’ to fit Florizel’s ‘time of day’, as well as the maidens who surround her, to show their blossoming into maturity. In mythology, the Roman goddess, Proserpina, is the cause of spring: her tale is tragic, and is often used to convey sorrowful connotations, such as Keat’s, ‘ruby grape of Proserpine’, which bound her to the Underworld for half the year. However, Perdita instead appeals to her for the flowers that ‘thou let’st fall from Dis’s waggon’, as she was abducted. She calls for ‘daffodils that come before the swallow dares’, which enchant and command even the elements (‘winds of March’) with their beauty, as well as daringly appearing early in the year, and for ‘violets’ that are ‘sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes or Cytherea’s breath.’ The exquisiteness of these flowers is such to Perdita that they surpass even the fragrant breath of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. On the other hand, the primroses are lovelorn, for, as they bloom in spring, they never ‘behold bright Phoebus in his strength’: encounter the full strength of Apollo, the sun-god. The line, ‘a malady most incident to maids’ could be interpreted and dramatized as either a mention of those girls around her, or as a wistful aside refering to herself. In the final lines, ‘garlands’ and ‘crown imperial’ bestow royal qualities on nature, made more fitting by her own noble origins.

The gods, elements and imperial allusions in this floral-poetry are not only decorative: by employing them, the impression that nature is simple, yet heavenly and verging on transcendental, is invoked, whilst Perdita herself is elevated to an almost divine status. As the flowers that she praises are meant to befit Florizel’s state, so the audience also perceives how highly she treasures her lover, as she desires to ‘strew him o’er and o’er’ with ‘these I lack’. Florizel questions whether she means ‘like a corse’, but this notion of death is swiftly dismissed by Perdita with the candid, ‘No, like a bank, for love to lie and play on’. M. M. Mahood said of it: ‘Play here has the same connotation as ‘thy Mother playes’, but it is used with an innocent sexuality which represents that acceptance of the ways of nature that Perdita is to restore to her father.’ An antithesis is contained in the lines, ‘not like a corse; or if, not to be buried, but quick, and in mine arms’; this juxtaposition of a body swiftly becoming an embrace conveys the sense that the two lovers are so aglow with passion that they believe themselves to be beyond Time and ‘its winged chariot’, as so aptly described by Andrew Marvel.

Florizel reaches a state of mind above reason and rationality, and voices his adoration in lyrical prose. He wishes Perdita’s every action to be perpetuated: so valuable is her voice to him that ‘when you speak, sweet, I’d have you do it ever.’ Such a voice reminds one of Daisy Buchanan’s in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, ‘The Great Gatsby’: ‘the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again’, which is later described as a ‘deathless song’ for it can not ‘be over-dreamed’. However, Gatsby himself did over-dream Daisy's voice, and its mellifluous quality is as far as the similarity goes with Perdita.

Perdita gives ‘alms’ by her singing, implying that all else is impoverished in comparison; she dispenses charity merely by her mellifluous song. Florizel then glorifies her movements, telling her that ‘when you do dance, I wish you a wave o’th’sea, that you might ever do nothing but that’, as he so cherishes the sight of her. At the climax of his honour, he expresses that each of Perdita’s unique acts ‘are queens’ to him; ironically, unbeknown to them, she is truly royal.

Found within this shell of poetry is an inner prosodic kernel. The lines are both written in iambic pentameter, and so move gracefully, but are afforded a quality of stasis through their assonance and alliteration; in particular, sibilance, demonstrated by phrases such as, ‘speak, sweet’, ‘sell so; so give alms, pray so.’ In this way, the prose imitates the slow eternity so longed for by Florizel. Such words almost need no explanation, for after reading, their meaning subtly diffuses through the mind, filling it with their beauty. Florizel’s rapture is a celebration of life and vitality, made more poignant by the immediacy of time, which whisks all away. The Dutch critic, Georg Brandes, wrote that there were ‘certain peculiarities’ found in the relationships portrayed in Shakespeare’s final works: the lovers are ‘regarded with a father’s eye’, with a ‘certain tenderness for those who may still hope and yearn for happiness, a renunciation, as it were, by the author of all thought of happiness for himself.’