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- Herausgeber: Arc Publications
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Serie: Arc Translations
- Sprache: Englisch
In her follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Cold Spring in Winter, Valérie Rouzeau presents a language that is a hybrid of liberty and constraint. There are omissions and contractions, colloquialisms and archaisms, alongside wordplay, child-speak, exploded cliché, and a heightened awareness of the poetic tradition. Also available in limited-edition hardback: ISBN 9781908376176 (£12.99) Valérie Rouzeau was born in 1967 in Burgundy. Her most recent collection, Cold Spring in Winter (Arc, 2009; ISBN 9781904614593), was shortlisted for the 2010 Griffin Prize, the world's largest poetry prize. She lives in Saint-Ouen, near Paris. Susan Wicks also translated Cold Spring in Winter. She is the author of three Faber and three Bloodaxe poetry collections, most recently House of Tongues (Bloodaxe, 2011; ISBN 9781852249069), and has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Forward Prizes. She lives in Tunbridge Wells. This title is also available from Amazon as an eBook.
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TALKING VROUZ
Published by Arc Publications
Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road,
Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK
www.arcpublications.co.uk Copyright in the poems © Valérie Rouzeau, 2013
Translation copyright © Susan Wicks, 2013
Copyright in the translator’s preface © Susan Wicks, 2013
Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2013 Design by Tony Ward 978 1908376 16 9 (pbk)
978 1908376 17 6 (hbk)
978 1908376 18 3 (ebk) Cover image: Ben Styles ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The publishers are grateful to the editors of the following magazines in which some of these translated poems have appeared: Modern Poetry in Translation; Poetry London; Poetry Review, and also to Poetry International in Rotterdam, who originally commissioned and published the translation of the first four poems.
The author has provided notes at the end of the book for the sources of her borrowed words where they are not explicit in the text, which is itself largely free of italics and quotation marks, and these notes are attributed and interspersed with the translator’s.
‘Arc Translations’
Series Editor: Jean Boase-Beier
Valérie Rouzeau
TALKING
VROUZ ~
Translated by
Susan Wicks
2013
CONTENTS
Translator’s Preface
PART I:
Poems from
QUAND JE ME DEUX / WHEN I AM TOO…
éden, deux, trois, émoi
•
Eden, Two, Three and Churned-up Me
“L’armoire est vide…”
•
“The cupboard’s bare…”
Trr…
•
Trr…
Je ne me tiens pas bien à carreaux
•
Not Keeping My Nose Clean
“Notre amitié même sous la pluie battante…”
•
“Our friendship in driving rain…”
“Quelque chose est tombé de moi dans l’herbe…”
•
Tenuous
“L’ami qui n’entend plus Purcell…”
•
“The friend who can’t hear Purcell any more…”
Répétition
•
Rehearsal
25 décembre
•
25 December
01 43 15 50 67
•
01 43 15 50 67
Seize the day (carpe diem)
•
Carpe Diem
18 vers quoi
•
18 Lines to What
Vain poème
•
Vain Poem
Le poème pour Jacques
•
The Poem for Jacques
Objection: a love pome pour 2 voix
•
Objection: Poème d’Amour for 2 Voices
Trente-deux dents
•
Thirty-two Teeth
Cœurs croisés
•
Cross My Heart
Gue digue don
•
Gue Digue Don
“Et je me demandais quel oiseau…”
•
“And I was wondering what bird…”
“J’ai dû rêver cela…”
•
“I must have dreamed it…”
PART II:
Poems from
VROUZ
“Bonne qu’à ça ou rien…”
•
“I’m good for this or nothing…”
“Et d’aventure ma main…”
•
“And if by chance my hand…”
“Aéroport mes chaussures vertes…”
•
“Airport my green boots…”
“Qui donc se rappellera moi…”
•
“Who on earth will remember me…”
“J’ai rêvé que mentais sur mon tour de poitrine…”
•
“I dreamed I lied about my bust-size…”
“Il est quelle heure je suis heureuse il y a un arbre…”
•
“What time is it I’m happy there’s a tree…”
“Tant de jours engloutis de temps à tout jamais…”
•
“So many swallowed days and so much time…”
“Mangeurs de pommes de terre…”
•
“Us eaters of potaters…”
“Rencontrez l’âme sœur sans payer justqu’à dimanche…”
•
“To meet your soulmate with-out paying afterwards…”
“Aujourd’hui seize juin deux mille onze…”
•
“Today sixteenth of June two thousand and eleven…”
“Je me fiche de perdre mémoire artificielle…”
•
“My artificial memory? I couldn’t give a toss…”
“Les mains des jeunes mères sentent l’huile de foie de poisson…”
•
“The fingers of young mothers smell of cod liver oil”
“J’ai chu dans la neige l’autre jour…”
•
“I measured my length the other day in snow…”
“Négatif je ne sais pas photographier non…”
•
“Negative I don’t know how to take a photo no…”
“Elle est inconnue remet sa boucle d’oreille…”
•
“She’s a stranger here she puts her earring in…”
“Avaler de tout clous vis à bois bouteilles d’encre…”
•
“Swallow anything like nails or wood-screws ink…”
“Voilà maintenant suis fixée…”
•
“I get the picture now I’m at the age…”
“À un moment on tombe dessus…”
•
“At a certain moment you trip over it…”
“Mozart il fallait que j’écrive…”
•
“Mozart I had to write…”
“Dans la multicolore foule de la gare…”
•
“In the multicoloured station crowd…”
“Propriétaire de rien…”
•
“Nothing’s rightful owner…”
“Le gosse claudique après son père qui marche vite…”
•
“The kid limps after his dad who’s walking fast…”
“Cavalière retrouvée pendue avec sa longe…”
•
“Horsewoman found hanged with leading-rein…”
“Téléphone sonne dans une poubelle…”
•
“Phone ringing in a waste-bin…”
“Apprivoisons la solitude sans fil…”
•
“Let’s tame our loneliness without a wire…”
“Je vous visiterai mes amis inconnus…”
•
“I’ll come and visit you my unknown friends…”
“Un grand juron jaillit quand je sors de ma chambre…”
•
“When I leave my room a hefty curse rings out…”
“Je voudrais conduire un corail jusqu’à la mer…”
•
“I’d like to drive a Coral train right to the sea…”
“Tout du long à la voie de chemin de fer…”
•
“Down the whole track-length of the railway-line…”
“Anniversaire jour que voilà…”
•
“Birthday this fine day and look…”
“Dans son camion express et logistique…”
•
“Driving his express logistic truck…”
“J’ai bien quatorze kilos à perdre…”
•
“I must lose fourteen pounds at least…”
“Parfois n’avion ni train ni bus on n’arrive pas…”
•
“Sometimes ex-planed un-trained gone bussed we don’t arrive…”
“Rester dedans à regarder dehors…”
•
“To stay in while looking out…”
“Encore un train bondé de culs de militaires…”
•
“Another train packed out with soldiers’ arses…”
“Il y a un gros vase noir vide rempli d’eau de pluie qui attend…”
•
“There’s a big black empty vase of rainwater which waits…”
“Arbre arbre plutôt que marbre…”
•
“A tree a growing tree and not a stone…”
“Mon avion est délayé…”
•
“My plane has been diluted…”
“Pour peu que j’entende bien quoi…”
•
“Not far from really understanding…”
“Encore un camion votre fuel sur un coup de fil…”
•
“Another truck with fill up on your phone…”
“Le temps ne passait plus ni la blanquette de veau…”
•
“When my father shuffled off this mortal coil…”
“On me demande de rédiger une note de frais…”
•
“I’m asked to put down my expenses in a note…”
“À la maîtresse offrent des noix…”
•
“They bring their teacher hearts…”
“Au BHV grand Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville…”
•
“At the big Bazar de l’Hôtel de Ville the BHV…”
“Sa petite tête dans la grosse cuillère…”
•
“His little head reflected in the great big spoon…”
“Quelque chose de joyeux en ce garçon pédale…”
•
“Something joyful in this boy is pedalling…”
“Aussi je est un hôte d’on ne sait qui ni quoi…”
•
“So I’s the host of who knows who or what…”
“Le garçon rend la mangue trop chère à la caissière…”
•
“The boy gives back the mango at the till too dear…”
“Longuement espérant le tram je ruminais…”
•
“I was ruminating in no hurry as I waited hoping for the tram…”
“Éclat de grosse perruche comme de cracher…”
•
“A great fat budgie-squawk as if on spitting up…”
“Quand je remplissais de cannettes le frigo…”
•
“When I’d fill up the fridge with cans of drink…”
“Dans les transports en commun communs…”
•
“On public transport that transports us most…”
“Je n’écris pas jour d’hui…”
•
“Won’t write a word today…”
“Ce vingt mars d’équinoxe et rien…”
•
“The twentieth of March the equinox and nothing gives…”
“Non je ne reviens pas vers vous je viens c’est tout…”
•
“No I’m not back with all of you I’ve come that’s all…”
“Asters astérisques en quoi vais-je recycler…”
•
“Asters or asterisks as what shall I recycle…”
“Tous les jours je traverse de parfaits inconnus…”
•
“Each day these perfect strangers cross my path…”
“Avant de descendre assurez-vous…”
•
“Before you leave the train make sure…”
Notes
Biographical Notes
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
In my introduction to Valérie Rouzeau’s first book of poems in English, Cold Spring in Winter (2009; originally Pas revoir (le dé bleu, 2003)) I have already explained how she and I met in Paris in June 2004 at an international poets’ translation workshop where we were set the hugely stimulating challenge of translating one another’s poems from French into English or English into French. Even then I think our affinity was perceptible, and when she gave me a copy of Pas revoir and I read straight through it the extraordinary – and extraordinarily poetically sophisticated – punch it delivered was impossible to ignore. Since then I have been asked to translate four of the longer poems in her fourteenth free-standing poetry publication and fifth full collection, Quand Je Me Deux, for Poetry International in Rotterdam, and I did my best. More recently, with two linked new collections to work from, I’ve felt less of a professional translator and more of the poet-enthusiast I always was, astonished by how well the laconic, often cryptic procedures of some of the shorter poems work in the original, and tantalised by the conundrum of how they might be translated into my own language. These poems are all about tone. And the relationship I feel very lucky to have with Valérie is about tone too – the tone of mutuality and affection set by that first workshop with its expectations of concentrated attention and respect.
The two new books bowled me over. Though their atmosphere is not so obviously one of emotional urgency and, in the case of Quand Je Me Deux, in particular, their conception apparently less unified, there was an energy in their language that belonged unmistakably to Valérie Rouzeau and no one else. Her language is a hybrid of liberties and constraints: omissions, grammatical contractions, colloquialisms and archaisms, wordplay, puns and repetitions, childspeak, exploded cliché, and, not least, the heightened awareness of a poetic tradition – French, English and American – in the knowledge of which she writes and against which she places herself. Quand Je Me Deux was hailed on its appearance by the actor Jacques Bonnaffé with the delighted words, ‘Voici du Vrouz!’ Unintimidated, Valérie chose to make Vrouz the title of the second volume of her diptych and, following her brave example, it’s the word I’ve chosen to use in my own selection from both books. As a poet, she is truly using language in a very individual way. Yet it seems to me that in translation this language is readily comprehensible to us, here in Britain and surely in other Anglophone countries too.
Preserving the essence of Rouzeau’s work in English isn’t easy. The challenge here was perhaps even greater than the one I faced when I decided to translate the whole of Pas revoir. For me these two newer books clearly asked for a faithful but not totally literal translation. In a poem there are so many meaningful things to be faithful to, and inevitably you have to choose. I chose, firstly, to try and imitate the laconic tone, which seemed to shrug its shoulders at life’s baffling juxtapositions in a way I recognized from reading the young Rimbaud, or Boris Vian or, especially, Apollinaire. To keep that in English I felt I needed a rhythm, and my words have been chosen often with rhythmic considerations in mind. Rouzeau’s own characteristic telegrammese makes that easier in some ways too: she often suppresses articles, particles, pronouns, auxiliaries, for the sake of fertile ambiguities or sound; she repeats words for pure pleasure, sometimes with a sleight-of-hand change of meaning. She occasionally sprinkles her text with a pinch of English or other foreign words. This gave me a certain flexibility: if I couldn’t find an appropriate word with the right syllable-count or stress I could cut a small word or add one – an article, an ‘and’, a qualifier – perhaps not exactly at the same points that Valérie cut or slipped in her own. Very occasionally in the Vrouz poems I’ve added longer, more significant words. Sometimes, as English, with its compound words, can be almost too succinct, I’ve needed simply to add metrical weight to a gratuitously short line. ‘Une cravate un fil de téléphone’ in ‘Avaler de tout…’, when read traditionally as poetry in French, naturally has ten syllables. ‘A tie a phone-flex’ has five. So I let myself embroider slightly, allowing the line to become ‘A knotted tie a spiral flex of phone’ – with Valérie’s approval.
While I was translating material from these two books, and especially from the diary-sequence of sonnet-length poems which makes up Vrouz, the deeper debate in my mind was about the role and status of the translator of poetry, his or her necessary humility, his or her necessary daring. This time I’ve stuck my neck out a bit further and begun to think of it not as potential arrogance but as courage. Sometimes perhaps I’ve stuck out my neck too far, but it was always judiciously, because I thought something more valuable than strict word-for-word accuracy might otherwise be lost. Sometimes it almost seemed that an unknown force had intervened: as I was typing the ‘Asters or asterisks’ poem, my clumsy finger on the keyboard produced ‘air-ghostess’ and in context it seemed such a felicitous mistake that I laughed aloud. I told Valérie and she laughed too and assured me we should keep this little unplanned child. My translations aren’t aiming to take every conceivable precaution! It probably isn’t possible – perhaps not even desirable – to be a faultless translator of this material.
That being said, I’ve been as punctilious and careful as I’ve been able to, trying for a voice that sounded natural while protecting both the playfulness and the verbal density as much as I could. Some ordinary words can be especially treacherous: sometimes I’ve translated them without a second thought only later to find myself suspicious that something indefinable has been missed. I look the familiar word up to discover that it does indeed have a second or even a third meaning, and that these obviously contribute to Valérie’s text. I can’t ignore the surface meaning I first recognised – it’s the poem’s ‘glue’. But the other meanings are both its ‘glitter’ and its subtext, and without them the poem is diminished. Clichés and idiomatic sayings, like the finally untranslatable ‘plancher des vaches’ of ‘Le temps ne passait plus ni la blanquette de veau…’ are ‘exploded’ into their separate components in a way that revives the dead metaphor, and in an ideal linguistic world the whole procedure would be possible in the target language too. In an ideal linguistic world, the overall meaning (dying) could be honoured, while the cliché’s ingredients (cows) were given new, half-humorous savour in the blanquette of veal. But in the real world you have to choose. I tried to change the metaphor entirely (a scrap-yard in the sky?) – but eventually I decided gratefully to call on Shakespeare for help.
These poems are so alive in French – and yet, because my first language is and always will be English, they are not, for me, completely transparent on the page in their French original. I have to work to come close to their cryptic, often many-layered messages, and the natural form of that work takes me back into my own language, where familiarity is freedom and I can be as ingenious and daring as I like. Valérie Rouzeau’s poems are not flat on the page. They are true poems, and rewarding. They don’t yield their meat readily as her namesake Paul Valéry claimed good prose did, and wither away: there’s a performative element, a small girl appearing from behind a curtain to do tricks that make one smile – and it’s only later that one realises they were profound. With the Vrouz
