French poetry 101 – Robert Desnos

[foudebassan]

Robert Desnos is born in 1900 in a family of Parisian bankers. He turns to surrealism very soon, and excels in ‘automatic writing’ (the act of writing under the influence of various drugs). His best-known work is a series of poems written for little children, among which


Une fourmi de dix-huit metres
Avec un chapeau sur la tête,
Ça n'existe pas, ça n'existe pas.
Une fourmi traînant un char
Plein de pingouins et de canards,
Ça n'existe pas, ça n'existe pas.
Une fourmi parlant français,
Parlant latin et javanais,
Ça n'existe pas, ça n'existe pas.
Eh ! Pourquoi pas ?



(An eighteen-meter long ant
With a hat on its head,
That doesn’t exist, that doesn’t exist.
An ant dragging a panzer
Full of penguins and ducks,
That doesn’t exist, that doesn’t exist.
An ant that speaks French,
That speaks Latin and Javanese,
That doesn’t exist, that doesn’t exist.
But eh! Why not?)

The subject matter is of course fantasist, but the versification isn’t all that transgressive. There are three identical groups, 2x8 syllables+10 syllables, with a last “conclusion” of half the normal verse, ie 4 syllables. Does this remind you of something? The link to the ballad (3x8 verses of 8 syllables / 3x10 verses of 10 syllables, + one stanza half that long) is pretty evident. Rimes are sloppy to non-existent, though – you need at least two identical phonems to have a rime, which we only have twice here (-ards and –pas). But note the perfect punctuation – this is no Apollinaire.


Surrealism is all well and fine for the idle days of the ‘entre-deux-guerres’, but when war arrives again Desnos’ writing takes a dramatic turn. He contributes to a collaborationist magazine, using the opportunity to criticise the regime’s official writers. It is also a good cover to mask his other activities, in the French resistance.

He gets wind that the Gestapo is going to arrest him in early 1944. His wife is too ill to flee with him, and the police have the habit to put some… pressure on the family members of escapees. He thinks this kind of “interrogation” would kill her, and so decides to stay.

He is deported first to Auschwitz and then to Flöha, in Bavaria. He survives the camps, but not to the typhus epidemic that follows the liberation. In Terezin (Theresienstadt), in Czecoslovakia, where the survivors too weak to travel further are kept, a young Czech recruit goes through the list of names. “Desnos?” he says in hesitant French, “like the poet?” “Not like the poet,” he answers from his deathbed, “I am the poet.”

Men die, but the written word survives even the worst of horrors.



Coming soon: er, I've run out of pre-written posts. We'll see.

Comments

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Poor sod.

Not sure I think he's that good as a poet though... I mean it's not even rhyming. He's not trying very hard.

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

I think the point in surrealism is that one shouldn't try too hard.

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

I think it is safe to say that 80% of those who went through French elementary school in the last 40 years still know this poem by heart. The other 20% have forgotten it.

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

Ecole primaire ou maternelle?

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

*tries to remember the classroom* I learned it in CP.

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

C'est marrant, je l'associe vraiment à la maternelle et aux niaiseries que l'on y fait.

[sylvanawood.livejournal.com]

Now, that's more my thing. I can read the French version, yay. And francais/javanais rhymes, too. So that'd be three. Heeh.

What a sad story, and what a brave man.

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

Nope, a rime is when the two last sounds (at least) are identical. "ais" is one single sound, so it's not a rime, it's only an "assonance" (I'm not sure of the term in English).

[sylvanawood.livejournal.com]

Ah, but çais is so different from nais, not? :p
I see what you mean.
Ah -- I mastered the circonflex. çççç

[foudebassan.livejournal.com]

It's a cédille, not a circonflexe :p (the circonflexe is "^")

[sylvanawood.livejournal.com]

Gah ... Did I forget everything? Now, how to do the circonflex ... uhm ... ^^^^ â - hâ! Cédille? Sounds vaguely familiar. Very, very vaguely ...