Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 02/13/10

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Poem of the Day: Arthur Rimbaud

Voyelles

Vowels

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles
   A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:
     I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
   A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
   which buzz around cruel smells,

Golfes d'ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
   gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles;
   lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
   I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;
   in anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
   U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
   the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;
   which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
    O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges:
   silences crossed by Angels and by Worlds
-- O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux!
   -- O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!

L'étoile a pluré rose au coeur de tes oreilles,
   The star has wept rose-color in the heart of your ears,
L'infini roulé blanc de ta nuque à tes reins;
   the infinite rolled white from your nape to the small of your back;
La mer a perlé rousse à tes mammes vermeilles,
   the sea has broken russet at your vermilion nipples,
Et l'Homme saigné noir à ton flanc souverain.
   and Man bled black at your royal side.

-- Arthur Rimbaud (prose translation by Oliver Bernard)

What is poetry but sounds and images? Well, there's meaning, but for Rimbaud that's often a secondary consideration. He was 18 and in the middle of his affair with Verlaine when he wrote this sonnet-plus-envoi. Aside from "Le Bateau ivre," it's probably his best-known poem. But whether it's a serious account of the author's synaesthesia is doubtful. Notice that Rimbaud has altered the usual sequence of vowels -- AEIOU -- to put O at the end, just as omega is the final letter of the Greek alphabet. And that O is the one vowel associated not only with a color but also with a shape: the circle of a trumpet's bell and of the irises of "Her Eyes." And that blue is the only color missing from the envoi. Of course there are many interpretations, some hinging on Rimbaud's interest in alchemy, others on his indulgence in absinthe (aka "the green fairy"), still others examining his attachment to his blue-eyed mother. It's probably a bit of all of these, but none of them explains it fully. Which is why he's one of the greats.