The entire sea, it has been said, but especially the sea of nocturnal reefs, the femme fatale, and not only the entire sea, but also the entire countryside in the most distant light, where with each step one rouses the myths that lie sleeping beneath the thorny plants, the apparitions at the base of thorny plants, the apparitions at the end of hollow roads, the paltry thousand-year-old gestures around animals and before stones roughly hewn in the image of those modestly endowed protectors who are the Breton saints: such is the palimpsest – not dissimilar to Jarry’s – covered by the writing in flashes and ellipses of Tristan Corbière. Baudelairean dandyism is here transposed into complete spiritual solitude, in the shadow of the charnel house in Roscoff, that the poet, afflicted with a terrible bodily malformation and nicknamed An Ankou (Death) by the local sailors, haunted in the company of his dog, named Tristan like himself. The contrast between physical deformity and sensitive gifts of the first order could not avoid, in Corbière’s work, taking humour as a defence reflex and predisposing him, in life, toward the systematic pursuit of ‘bad taste.’ He would deck himself out as a sailor, thighs bare and legs quaking in enormous boots. He nailed a dried toad to the mantel of his fireplace. ‘Here, take my heart!’ he said to one woman, handing her the bloody heart of a sheep. But for another – for the beautiful, fleeting creature with whom he fell in love in 1871, and whom he miraculously made fall in love with him – he deployed such admirable simplicity in the service of seduction! Without a doubt, it’s with Les Amours jaunes [Yellow Loves] that verbal automatism first entered French poetry. Corbière must be chronologically the first to have let himself be carried away by the tide of words that, subject to no conscious direction, expires on our ears each second, and against which most men set the dike of immediate sense. If there’s any doubt, we need only evoke his terrifying phrase, ‘I speak below myself.’ All the resources that combinations of words can offer are here exploited without a second thought, starting with puns, which are employed – as they would later be by Nouveau, Roussel, Duchamp, and Rigaut – for purposes wholly other than to ‘amuse,’ and even, if need be, toward contradictory ends: taken on the verge of death to the Dubois sanatorium, Corbière wrote to his mother: ‘I am at Dubois [the wood], from which coffins are made.’
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Les Amours jaunes, 1873.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: Les Amours jaunes (selections). Poems. The Centenary Corbière (selections).
SLEEP! Listen to me: I’ll speak very softly:
Sleep – For those who haven’t got one, a bed-canopy!
You hover with the Albatross of the tempest,
And sit on the night-caps of the honest!
SLEEP! – White pillow of virgins sufficiently silly!
And secret Safety-valve of virgins developed sufficiently!
– For the backbone like herring-bone, a soft Mattress!
Black sack where the hunted man runs to hide his head in distress!
Prowler along the outward avenue! Procuress!
Land where the mute awakens prophet!
Caesura of the long line, and Rhyme of the poet!
SLEEP! – Grey werewolf! Black Sleep fuming!
SLEEP! – Wolfish mask of scented lace for illicit meetings!
Kiss of the Unknown Woman, and Kiss of the Darling!
– SLEEP! Thief of night! Mad breeze swooning!
Fragrance from fumigated tombs to the sky rising!
Cinderella’s coach picking up the Street-walking!
Obscene Confessor of the still-borns’ revering!
You come, like a dog, to lick the old pain
Of the martyr on death’s execution-hurdle strained!
O forced smile of the crisis slain!
SLEEP! Trade-wind! Dawn steam on the window-pane!
Excess of existence, and clean Duster to chase
Trash in the CAFÉ OF LIFE, on each table’s greasy surface!
Squall of tedium raining on us from the tedium of space!
Thing that runs on, without wake or trace!
Drawbridge of moats! Way through a no-through place!
SLEEP! – Chameleon that many stars scale!
Phantom ship roving alone in full sail!
Covered by a net, the woman for sale!
SLEEP! – Sad Spider, stretch over me your web’s veil!
SLEEP! crowned with a halo! fairy Apotheosis,
Exalting the pallet of the posing misfit!
Patient Listener to the misunderstood who gossips!
Refuge of the sinner, of the innocent who doesn’t risk it!
Domino! Pink guardian-angel! Blue-devils!
Mortal voice that vibrates in immortal waters!
Awakening of dead echoes and deep matters,
– Evening paper: THE TIMES, EVERGREEN REVIEW and ENCOUNTER!
Fountain of Youth and longing’s Frontier!
– You come to satiate the insatiable hunger!
You come to madden the poor transported sensitivity,
To drown it with pure air in life’s open sea!
You come, when the curtain’s dropped, to the aid
Of Punch and the Policeman, untying their braid,
Of the Cat, and the cellist and his serenade,
And the lyre of those whose Muse is maid!
Great God, Master of all! Master of my Mistress
Who deceives me with you – loving Laziness –
O Bath of voluptuousness! Fan of caresses!
SLEEP! – Thieves’ integrity! Moonlight
Of the blind! – SLEEP! For all in an unfortunate plight
Roulette of fortune! Scavenger of spite!
O hangman’s rope by which the heavy Planet is suspended!
Aeolian harmony by which the deaf ear is haunted!
– Fine Story-teller of tall stories: telling your tommy rot? ...
SLEEP! – Hearth of those who’ve burnt their faggots!
SLEEP! – Hearth of those whose faggot has burnt out!
Skeleton key for those who are turned out!
Moonlight flit from the creditors and their band!
Screen against the strong woman for the husband!
Surface of the depths! Depth of imbeciles!
Nanny of the soldier and Soldier to nannies!
Force of the police force! Peace of J.P.s!
SLEEP! – Pretty-by-night half-opening her calyx!
Larva, Glow-worm and nocturnal Cilice!
For Peter crying wolf, the howl of peace!
Ventilator from above! Impalpable dust’s ray,
Coming to rub out the implacable lantern from the day!
SLEEP! – Listen to me, I’ll speak very softly:
Floating twilight of to Be or not to Be! ...
– from Yellow Loves
(translated by Val Warner)