It took – the reason I’m weighing my words will soon become clear – it took an unfailing detachment, of which I surely know no other example, to emancipate language as far as Benjamin Péret was able to, and this from the start. He alone fully performed on the word the operation corresponding to alchemical ‘sublimation,’ which consists in provoking the ‘ascension of the subtle’ via its ‘separation from the dense.’ The dense, in this regard, is the crust of exclusive meaning that has covered all words, and that leaves their juxtapositions practically no flexibility outside of the compartments in which immediate or conventional usefulness, solidly bolstered by routine, has narrowly confined them. The tight compartment that prevents signifying elements, now frozen in words, from entering into new relations constantly widens the zone of opacity that alienates humanity from nature and from itself. This is where Benjamin Péret steps in as a liberator.
Before him, in fact, the greatest poets had basically excused themselves for having ‘very frankly’ seen ‘a mosque in lieu of a factory,’ or had adopted a defiant attitude to report that they had witnessed ‘a fig eat a donkey.’1 In uttering these words, they seem to have the feeling that they’re committing a violation, or profaning human consciousness, or transgressing the most sacred of taboos. With Benjamin Péret, on the contrary, this kind of ‘bad conscience’ has come to an end; censorship no longer obtains, and one takes it as a given that ‘everything is permitted.’ Never had words and what they designate, finally freed from domestication, shown such glee. It’s not only that natural objects succeed in dragging even manufactured objects into the hullabaloo; each side vies with the other for availability. We have finished once and for all with old-fashionedness, with dust. Frantic joy has returned. It’s all the magic in a glass of white wine:
this wine is white only at sunrise
because the sun runs a hand through its hair
Everything is set free, everything is poetically saved by the reactivation of a generalized principle of mutation and metamorphosis. We are no longer forced to celebrate ‘correspondences’ merely as great but unfortunately intermittent glimmers. Now we are oriented and moved by an uninterrupted series of passionate chords.
I speak of this from too close up, as if describing a light that, day after day for thirty years, has made my life more beautiful. Humour gushes here as if from the source.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Le Passager du Transatlantique, 1921. Au 125 du boulevard Saint-Germain, 1923. Immortelle Maladie, 1924. 152 Proverbes mis au goût du jour (with Paul Eluard), 1925. Il était une boulangère, 1925. Dormir, dormir dans les pierres, 1927. Le Grand jeu, 1928 … Et les seins mouraient, 1928. De derrière les fagots, 1934. Je ne mange pas de ce pain-là, 1936. Je sublime, 1936. Trois cerises et une Sardine, 1936. Au paradis des Fantômes, 1938. La parole est à Péret, 1943. Le Déshonneur des poètes, 1945. Dernier malheur, dernière chance, 1945. Main forte, 1946. Feu central, 1947. La Brebis galante, 1949.
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH: 152 Proverbs Adapted to the Taste of the Day. From the Hidden Storehouse (selections). Remove Your Hat, or, A Bunch of Carrots (selections). Death to the Pigs and Other Writings (selections). Four Years After the Dog and Other Poems (selections). A Marvellous World (selections).
This is how it happened:
‘I had gotten a ferrous2 on the round3 and was sliding into white4 when I felt my stems being squeezed.5
‘I thought: “It’s getting dry!”6 but I was too far to express myself.7 When there was some air,8 I found myself with the flutterers,9 at least fifteen pipes10 above the dung,11 but you know, I never did like to play with smoke;12 I had only one wish: to find myself back on the dung. I said to myself: “This isn’t deaf,13 all I have to do is glide down the shootings.”14 But it was easier said than done. As I made the attempt I saw that the shootings and I were but one. It isn’t funny to find oneself all of a sudden on the black payroll,15 particularly as there was no reason for it to end. I tried once more to leave the shooting, but it was all wind!16
‘I was shooting, and very shooting. I felt the knocker17 going crazy in my suitcase.18 I thought I had reached the last line of my chapter,19 I was biting20 myself: a chatter21 positioned itself on my occ,22 rolled onto my cornute,23 from there to my suitcase, descended to my perker24 and burnt one of my stems.
‘I cried like a Siren, unaware that, since my stem had been burned, I was no longer affixed to the shooting. I made a bowl25 and fell on a flasht26 which, instead of being tussed,27 plunged into my suitcase. It was not love!28 He, especially, exploded29 and I didn’t know how to make him leed.30
‘I had a blow31 – I must have been a real balooka32 not to have thought of this earlier. I set myself to making flowers,33 and after a few big tulips,34 the flasht’s round emerged from my piston.35 And he sang, how he sang, it was worse than La Chenal.
‘I kept pulling on the flasht’s round, and after about ten rattles36 of effort, I succeeded in disencumbering myself of the flasht. Free, he had nothing better to do than to play the sap.37 As for me, I was in the floating woods,38 and yet, I take the geezer39 as my witness, I hadn’t had anything in my pouch40 for two sets.41 I had air stems,42 no doubt because I hadn’t sacked43 in such a long time; after ten pipes I melted44 and didn’t waste any time in balancing45 myself. I came back to the air46 smelling strawberries47 falling on my round.
‘– Good God, here’s the discharge!48
‘This slap49 had a magical effect, and the burner50 reappeared. It could have been salty51 and, as it was summer, the burner should have been above me. It was on my left and was approaching at full speed. Five or six rattles later, it was between my legs and my radish52 was ready.
‘Ah! What sweetness my pape!53 It was like a new blast54 and everything blasted55 inside me. I never would have socketed56 this. And now I assure you it’s all finished with bloomers.57 You don’t know! You don’t know.
‘After this the bloomer disappeared in a shooting.
‘I felt that I had galled58 a blast, and I blasted alone, and I blasted alone for straws59 and straws. I left in the direction of the burner which had returned to its place in the hat,60 but after a few rattles I felt that I could never get there. I fell again on the dung and plunged myself in entirely; but it was therm61 and it thermed62 more and more.
‘Finally, I surfaced from the dung, but I noticed that I had galled a swan on a portfolio,63 and I had my buckles64 to the wind. On the dung was a gilded fatty65 in complete misery.66 He made me a little sign with the dish67 and yelled to me:
‘– Hey Lohengrin! Proceed to the rallying-point!’
– from Death to the Pigs and the Field of Battle
(translated by Rachel Stella)
* * *
What rises from a field of wheat does not necessarily look like a water jug
any more than what eats thrones looks like a sleeper-car
where from brains on fire
gush rains of sensitive plants
that sometimes imitate dancers pulling up their garters
which allows the spectator hidden behind a glass artichoke smiling
like a secret uprooted tree
that floods the countryside
where only fire alarms now grow
shaped like women’s slacks
which allows I say
the spectator with his stockade head covered in nasturtiums
to tear up his street
a brothel sign in hand
but if he had a child’s umbrella hanging from his ear
and ribs shaped like Ophelia
he would sigh as easily as a breaded baritone
guarding a field of cherry trees that died
when the bud burst its bra
and its transparent sap
in the penumbra of movie theatres
flew away with the passing of trolleys that will never become chamois
like the smoking ruins smiling like a blocked-off street
whose sap
dark in mood like a stabbed tire
or joyful like a church turned slaughterhouse
reads the evening paper where they tell
how the beard of a veteran from the great war
serves as a pen-holder for his grandchildren
who irresistibly make me think
of an ad for chocolate offering bonus coupons to every buyer.
Meanwhile the great battle between the coal and the coal-trimmers
will end only in the victory of starfish
who brush their teeth with a gooseberry taper
eyes closed
like a volcano pondering its sperm
as it heads toward the sea
and despite the scorpions who kill themselves in its flames
doesn’t hesitate to massacre several dozen grandmothers’ breasts or railroad signals
which gladly become clinkers for quilts
shaken with convulsive jolts like hawthorn blossoms
And eyes reddened by watermelon will see in a cloud of moustaches great soft locks swaying like elephants’ trunks with breasts of mid-Lent
with feet of smiles
with legs of frenetic oscillations
resembling
distantly it’s true
the nervous trembling of the sources of the Nile
where St Vitus’s dance was born
in a nutshell
bitter as a kick in the ass
expected since the appearance beyond the fields of turnips and tulips
crossed like swords swearing solemn oaths
to the moon in a jam jar worn out like a grasshopper
that could replace a gondola
propelled by the oarsmen’s sneezes
as easily as a flycatcher tattooed like a pope in a thermal spring where they treat
the luminous warts that grow inside famous old skulls
swallows the deepest sighs
that are sometimes camouflaged as milk baths
stormy as sheep
or sometimes as a thick brute
who dreams of lace
like a stringbean in the moonlight
1. The quotes come respectively from Rimbaud and Lautréamont. [trans.]
2. Ferrous: shell shard.
3. Round: head.
4. To slide into white: to faint.
5. To squeeze the stems: to take by the limbs.
6. It’s getting dry: things are turning out badly.
7. To be too far to express oneself: to be too giddy to defend oneself.
8. When there was some air: when I came to.
9. The flutterers: the birds.
10. Pipe: metre.
11. Dung: soil.
12. To play with smoke: to find oneself up in the air in an unstable position.
13. Deaf: difficult.
14. To glide down the shootings: to slide along the branches, or a tree.
15. To be on the black payroll: to be the leaves which create shade.
16. Wind: impossible.
17. Knocker: heart.
18. Suitcase: chest.
19. The last line of my chapter: my last moments to live.
20. To bite oneself: to deceive oneself.
21. Chatter: mouth.
22. Occ: forehead.
23. Cornute: nose.
24. Perker: stomach.
25. Bowl: movement.
26. Flasht: cat.
27. To tuss: to crush.
28. It was not love: it was not pleasant.
29. To explode: to be furious.
30. To leed: to leave rapidly.
31. Blow: idea.
32. Balooka: fool.
33. To make flowers: to excrete.
34. Tulip: excrement.
35. Piston: anus.
36. Rattle: minute.
37. Play the sap: to flee.
38. To be in the floating woods: to be drunk.
39. Geezer: God.
40. Pouch: the stomach.
41. Set: day.
42. To have air stems: to tremble on one’s legs.
43. To sack: to eat.
44. To melt: to fall, to cave in.
45. To balance: to sleep.
46. To come back to the air: to awaken.
47. Strawberries: large drops of rain.
48. Discharge: downpour.
49. Slap: word.
50. Burner: sun.
51. Salty: noon.
52. Radish: sexual organ.
53. Pape: friend, comrade.
54. Blast: dance.
55. To blast: to imagine.
56. To socket: to imagine.
57. Bloomer: woman.
58. To gall: to become.
59. Straw: hour.
60. Hat: sky.
61. Therm: warmth.
62. To therm: to heat.
63. Portfolio: pond covered with lily pads.
64. Buckles: feathers.
65. Gilded fatty: general.
66. In complete misery: in formal dress.
67. Dish: hand.