French leave

Sort of . . . taking a little holiday pause this week

Hello Readers,

I’m writing from France, where I have been travelling for the past fortnight. With apologies, I am going to take a break today in part because I am separated from my books, touchstones for these newsletters, and in part because my head is full of images rather than words after three days at the photography festival in Arles. Mind you, most of the photographers whose work is displayed there provide long written explanations of their work, its inspiration and their intentions for it. Whether they are experimenting with new technology or finding new ways to represent people, places and communities they all want to tell stories.

As this year marks the centenary of the first Surrealist manifesto, by French poet André Breton, there is much in the media about this event – even in a recent TV debate about the current state of French politics – so I decided that, instead of writing an essay this week, I would share a couple of Surrealist poems for you to enjoy, mull over, and respond to if they  amuse, inspire or provoke you.

Frank Gehry’s LUMA Tower in Arles

                                                   Freedom of Love

                                                   by André Breton

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing
With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest
My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof
And of steam on the panes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrentWith breasts of night
My wife with breasts of a marine molehill
My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible
With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans' backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to be drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire

(Translated by Edouard Rodti) 

Two short poems by Breton’s friend and collaborator, Paul Eluard, (my translations)

Dog

                         Warm dog,
   Everything is in the voice, the signals
                      Of your owner,
               Take life like the wind,
                      With your nose.

                           Relax.

Magnus on holiday

                                                       To Grow Old

                                                     
                                                   Shadow of snow

                                   White heart, thin blood, childish heart.

                                                         The day.

                              There are always days of sunlight and days of

                                                           clouds.

                                    The sky, arms open, hearty welcome

                                                         To the sky.

And finally this, because it felt timely, although written in 1975, by John Ashbery

                              
                            The One Thing That Can Save America


Is anything central?

Orchards flung out on the land,

Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?

Are place names central?

Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Book Farm?

As they concur with a rush at eye level

Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough

Thank you, no more thank you.

And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness

The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,

Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.


These are connected to my version of America

But the juice is elsewhere.

This morning as I walked out of your room

After breakfast crosshatched with

Backward and forward glances, backward into light,

Forward into unfamiliar light,

Was it our doing, and was it

The material, the lumber of life, or of lives

We were measuring, counting?

A mood soon to be forgotten

In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow

In this morning that has seized us again?


I know that I braid too much on my own

Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.

They are private and always will be.

Where then are the private turns of event

Destined to bloom later like golden chimes

Released over a city from a highest tower?

The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,

And you know instantly what I mean?

What remote orchard reached by winding roads

Hides them? Where are these roots?


It is the lumps and trials

That tell us whether we shall be known

And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

All the rest is waiting

For a letter that never arrives,

Day after day, the exasperation

Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,

The two envelope halves lying on a plate.

The message was wise, and seemingly

Dictated a long time ago.

Its truth is timeless, but its time has still

Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited

Steps that can be taken against danger

Now and in the future, in cool yards,

In quiet small houses in the country,

Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

That’s all for now, folks! Normal service will resume next time.

---

Let me know what you think of these poems and if you’d enjoy a deeper dive into Surrealist writing.