Théophile Gautier, Un Vers de Wordsworth; translated by Olchar Lindsann (in progress)

This is a particularly rough one, not only because I'm working exclusively from Google Translate and a couple dictionaries, but because it involves a dense web of literary allusions that has necessitated a good deal of specific research. This research, like the filling out of the verses themselves, is in an incomplete state; the Wordsworth quote is indeed easily tracible (and included in Bartlet's Familiar Quotations, published a couple decades previous to the novels mentioned). The novel it is drawn from is Louisa, ou les doulours d'un fille de joie. I'm still tracking this book down, but expect little trouble in that direction. Google translates the title as 'Louisa- A Prostitute's Pain' but the last word is evidently the translation of a euphomism, I think 'daughter of joy/pleasure'...? And as Gautier informs us, this book's author draws his pseudonym (if I'm inferring correctly from Google's garbled transliteration) from a third book (Gautier does not quote the complete title), which turns out to be the 1829 book L'Ane Mort et la Femme guillotinée (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman) by one Jules Janin, a subversive novelist eventually forced into exile. I've obtained the text of this novel (in the French, of course) but haven't had an opportunity to peruse it yet.

(Of course, all of this is conveyed via inflexible units of vocabulary singularly ill-suited for easy versification, so that I get to ineptly grab at the shadow of Gautier's virtuosic rhythm and scansion.)

And I've not yet even begun to start addressing the reference to Shakespeare's Tempest...

I suspect this research is precisely the point of Gautier's writing this poem; especially when one considers that he implies that he is not only directing you toward these other texts, but has at the same time avoided other authors in response to similar textual embeddings, in this case the universal condemnation of Wordsworth's political and poetic apostasy by the second generation of Romantics--Byron, Shelley, Keats, Hazlitt, Hunt, etc.

This historiographic function is why this poem seems to me like a good candidate for the introductory volume of the project; not to mention of course that it partakes of the same tradition of excoriation continued not only by Gautier but by Fast Sedan Nellson and myself. To which is added the extent to which the poem is about translation and readership: Byron and Shakespeare were both being translated for the first time into French, the latter specifically by one of the Bouzingo group, translator/theorist/architect Jules Vabre (more on this fascinating character in a couple weeks--I'll be putting together a post focusing on the practice and role of translation within the group), and were defining influences on the Bouzingo both poetically and in self-presentation. And the ready availability of the line at hand in Bartlett's opens the possibility that the writer of the novel in which Gautier found the line had not read Wordsworth in his entirety either. AND, Gautier quotes the line in English as his own epigraph (doubly quoted), then repeats it in French in the poem's body, paraphrasing it again in the final line. This poses interesting questions to the translator rendering the poem back into English, especially as even the Google translation of Gautier's translation makes a smoother and more grammatically correct iambic pentameter line than Wordsworth's original (in which the plural subject and singular verb do not agree). I decided to add my bit to the ongoing intergenerational smearing of Wordsworth's face in the mud, and use the re-translated line (especially as the rhyme is easier as well, Wordsworth's requiring a double-rhyme; the original, of course, is in blank verse...)

la rime boite-- Google translates as 'the rhyme box' and my dictionaries bear this out. Eh? My current hypothesis is that this may be French technical terminology--or literary slang--for a poetic stanza... anyone know?

The translation so far is no doubt full of holes:

the French:

Un Vers de Wordsworth
Spires whose silent finger points to heaven.

Je n’ai jamais rien lu de Wordsworth, le poète
Dont parle lord Byron d’un ton si plein de fiel,
Qu’un seul vers ; le voici, car je l’ai dans la tête :
— Clochers silencieux montrant du doigt le ciel. —

Il servait d’épigraphe, et c’était bien étrange,
Au chapitre premier d’un roman : — Louisa, —
Les douleurs d’une fille, œuvre toute de fange
Qu’un pseudonyme auteur dans L’Ane mort puisa.

Ce vers frais et pieux, perdu dans ce volume
De lubriques amours, me fit du bien à voir :
C’était comme une fleur des champs, comme une plume
De colombe, tombée au cœur d’un bourbier noir.

Aussi depuis ce temps, lorsque la rime boite,
Que Prospéro n’est pas obéi d’Ariel,
Aux marges du papier je jette, à gauche, à droite,
Des dessins de clochers montrant du doigt le ciel.


...and the English so far:

A Line From Wordsworth

Spires whose silent finger points to heaven.¹

A I've never read the poet Wordsworth, he
B Against whom Byron let such venom fly,
A Except one line; its voice comes back to me:
B -The silent steeples pointing to the sky--

A It served as epigraph, a freakish ruse,
B For the initial chapter of -Louisa,-²
A A Hooker's Pain, a sludgy novel whose
B [ pseudonym drawn from] The Dead Ass XXX³

A This pious verse, abandoned in this book
B of lewd XXXXXX , was XXXXXX to my eyes:
A It was a XXXXXX bloom, XXXXXXXXX [took [shook [looked
B XXX fallen] XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX [lies

A And since that time, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
B
A Across the paper's margins, left and right,
B I XXXXXX steeples pointing to the sky.

1from The Excursion, Book VI, line 19.

2Louisa, ou les doulours d'un fille de joie (Louisa: or, the Pain of a Daughter of Pleasure[?]), by Abbé Tiberge [Regnier Destourbet].

3L'Ane Mort et la Femme guillotinée (The Dead Donkey and the Guillotined Woman), by Jules Janin, 1829.

Petrus Borel, Isolement--Anti-translation from the Kohoutenberg Institute

An initial exercise for the Kohoutenberg Institute's parallel Bouzingo translation project: Petrus Borel's Isolement, translated via google from French to Croatian to Catalan to Danish to French to English again, The dedication is to fellow Bouzingo Gérard Nerval:

Insulation

Gerard, poet

General forest restoration
Osama in the valleys
Clos d'Effroy all!

Ronsard

Under the scorching sun in beautiful rural Creole
How bamboo bow African English,
Towards Hurricane withers Palm
In the hands of wine in units of dense forest.

In our old tree, mistletoe, parasitic St.
The return of oaks and feel and dream;
The combination of grass suffer a kind of fragile and
Trunk monasteries in southerly winds.

GUI! Liane! cake! would my soul!
My heart, like ivy and the cover.
Ford spent a little of this life
Wonder Woman, the support friend!

- Angel on Earth? ... Flower, a woman? ...
Bard, and just chose this playful swarm
Rondo rounded meal instead. --
No, my heart to a heart that understands his soul.

This is not theater, festivals, daughter
Who can lay life is happiness:
This field at night, wrapped in shawl,
Werther hand fainting.

It is a brunette with dark eyelashes, air Moorish;
It is a lazy goose, blue-eyed Ondine
Also a large almond and death, anxiety,
As noted in Germanic coast.

When this magic? - When my voice call? --
Bring spring in my heart, I do.
But even he would be faithful to Cypress!
On the beach when I'm alone?

Sparrow in my ceiling of the room with his girlfriend;
My mare had a foal love.
Let me in this forum and others accompanying
The torrent of fire, I did spend my days.

Reconstructing the Bouzingo

Here's a massive update/overview of the proposed project to uncover and explore the Bouzingo, an almost entirely forgotten (and I suspect very important and certainly instructive) early French avant-garde group operating in the early 1830s. Very, very little of their work has been translated into English, and it is my hope that by working together, the extended community that mOnocle-Lash touches on can make this whole body of work, and the community from which it sprang and for which it was designed to function, available and comprehensible for the first time in over 150 years.

TRANSLATION BEGINS THIS WEEKEND. While the project itself is undoubtedly ambitious, I think that if gone about in the right way (and with patience) it can be accomplished without requiring a great deal of concentrated time from anybody. I hope you can be a part of it.

I have tried to make this post comprehensive, something that can provide a foundation for updates to come as the project develops over the coming months and years. That said, and granting my propensity for over-elucidation, I'll outline the project below.

If you'd like to be involved in the translation process, the practical info is at the bottom, if you want to go straight for that first. For any other ideas, question, or ways of being a part of it, leave a comment or email me at monoclelash@gmail.com or olindsann@gmail.com.

THE BOUZINGO
The Bouzingo insofar as we understand it so far has been described to most of you already, and I am attaching the passage from my Ecstatic Nerve relating to them, which contains the bulk of I know of them so far. Briefly, the group emerged from the constantly merging, splitting and name-changing that has apparently characterised avant-garde culture since at least the 1820s. It grew essentially out of the Petit-Cenacle and Jeunes France groups, this third name signaling a plunge into a kind of politically motivated group social-experiment: living collectively in voluntary destitution, their house devoid of furniture but the walls filled with Bouzingo murals of both Classical and erotic traditions, writing and spreading seditious drinking-songs at working-class pubs, plotting and carrying out various provocations of the bourgeoisie in the streets, experimenting with opium and hashish, orchestrating orgiastic parties involving dances requiring pistols fired into the ceiling, holding philosophical debates nude in their back yard, hurling fake corpses from their windows into the street, engaging in various occult and alchemical practices, and carefully cultivating an elaborate gothic mythology about themselves, in which they drank wine from their parents' skulls, stocked their otherwise bare rooms with exotic weaponry, and kept human foetuses in jars on their mantelpiece.
At the same time they were producing a very wide array of work in a number of different media, often collaboratively--from gothic horror novels to classical sculpture to politicized plays and operas to translations from French and German to erotic prints to buildings (I've yet to find any examples by the Bouzingo architect Jules Vabre) to history paintings to Byronic poetry to opaque prose poems. What seems to make the Bouzingos work cohere in sometimes unexpected ways (insofar, again, as I can tell via google translate) is that all seem to share a similar and very heterogeneous set of cultural contexts and resources--various forms of Post-Robespierre, pre-Marxist socialism, popular gothic fiction, the dark Romanticism personified first by Byron (to whom the group's main organiser, Borel, was often compared), both literary and graphic erotica and libertinism, an element of genuine alchemical and occult investigation, the adventure novels of Scott and Cooper, French comedy, and satirical and polemic song.
In all of the printed work that I have unearthed and scanned, it is evident that there are numerous conversations being played out in these poems, and that both writing and publishing (as well as not publishing) were being conceived of not only (or even primarily) as outward products for a public, but as gestures within the social context of the group, as well as its relationship to the broader communities that intersected with it and with its own history and future.
It is also quite clear that future (as well as past) avant-garde communities were considered part of this more intimate audience; frankly it's rather uncanny to dig up these texts (more than once) and find an exhortation or reference to the future reader who will have rediscovered one's existence after having been forgotten to history for generations. More uncanny yet when Aloysius Bertrand even relates to me fairly accurately what the historical trail was that I followed to his discovery. There is a whole social poetics of epigraphs to be read in the literary work of this group. (especially when they can be read.)
These inferences, again, are based on my quasi-readings of material as I find it, and on widely scattered and isolated atoms of information. If you want to know in more detail what it is that I'm looking at in cobbling together this reconstruction of their activity, or investigate beyond the links I'll include below, just email me.

A LIST OF BOUZINGO
Up to a few weeks ago I was still discovering new people so this may not be comprehensive. Nearly everyone used pseudonyms, most of them Anglicized and some of them brilliantly funny:

Aloysius Bertrand--writer
Petrus Borel--writer/organizer/translator/painter/architect
Joseph Bouchardy--playwright/engraver
Louis Boulanger--painter, scenographer
Alphonse Brot--playwright (no complete texts so far)
Achille Devéria--painter/lithographer/eroticist

Eugène Devéria--painter & possibly writer, Achille's brother
Xavier Forneret--writer
Théodor Gautier--writer/painter/organizer
Augustus MacKeat--writer (no texts yet)
Gerard de Nerval--writer/translator/organizer
Philothée O'Neddy--writer/organizer/publisher
Célestin Nanteuil--engraver/possibly writer
Jehan de Seigneur--sculptor & possibly painter
Napoléon Thom--painter
Jules Vabre--translator/architect/theorist
XXXX Vigneron--no first name or other information yet

Léon--I don't even have his full name; is this his first or last? What did he do...?

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING
I do not read or speak French; hence my insistence that this work be translated! In addition to working on the English-language side of the translation process (more on that below), my role is to locate texts and co-ordinate the translation and other elements of the project; to carry out the bulk of the historical research and make sense of it, eventually writing the grounding essay/s for the contextualizing material; to coordinate whatever other material is written by people in the community with regard to the project; researching and writing explanatory and contextual footnotes etc. for the texts; compiling the various appendices and bibliographies that will be called for as the project progresses; and of course editing, publishing, and distributing the books.
The past few months have been spent (among many other things...) gradually tracking down texts online and following or taking note of every possible lead that I can find to give us a broader historical picture of the milieu in which the group operated. Of course this is still in the early stages, and much of the material will only emerge as texts begin to be translated and speak to each other, as it were. Naturally, not only all of these texts, but most everything is in French, so I've become fairly adept at scanning the Google translation of a text to gain the general gist and cobble together some hypotheses about what was being done; it is through this process that I've come up with the specific texts that I'm attaching for provisional inclusion in the initial book, highlighting those aspects of what seems most intriguing about the group.

THE LONG-TERM PLAN
I do not have a definite time-table for the project; I, like most of you, am busy with far more things than I really ought to be doing, and consider it a given that things must move along at a pace that is manageable for everyone involved, and which does not require a definite commitment in terms of quantity or time. I hope to keep the chapbooks coming out at a steady enough pace to feel a momentum--at least one or two a year--but I doubt that that the project as a whole will see completion in less than five years (at the least). We'll see.
We start with this first chapbook, which opens the series with a kind of overview of the group--a bit of work by everyone involved (if I can find it...), and a general introduction/history of the group.
After this, one chapbook at a time, each dedicated to one member of the group. Each book will have up to 50 pages, depending on how much work has survived, and will include a critical biography, translations of texts / reproductions of images with both translators' and historical notes, bibliography, and possibly dedications/responses/illustrations by people working in the contemporary avant/PNA etc. community.
When everyone involved directly with the Bouzingo has been treated, work will begin (mostly my work...) on a massive, perfect-bound volume which will compile all of the translations, images, bios, etc and add more, with expanded histories, notes and bibliographies, a number of essays examining various aspects of the group's structure, dynamics, strategies, and legacy, and whatever responses, essays, transductions, etc. any of us living people want to add. By this time, after all, we ought to be pretty familiar with these dudes.

EDITORIAL ORIENTATION
The basic editorial position from which I am approaching the project, that is in fact at the root of why I (specifically) am attempting to make it happen and asking the mOnocle-Lash community (specifically) to be a part of it, can be conveniently expressed by an observation about the way that the group itself seems to have approached historiography (one of their major concerns, like many avant-gardes):

It appears that the shift in the Bouzingos' activity and deepening of their radicality (and name) coincided with the phenomenon of one of their circle of friends--Victor Hugo--becoming rather suddenly a household name, with a genuine chance to greatly affect the direction of culture, and the relationship of intellectual to mainstream culture as Democracy and Capitalism set the paths they would be following for centuries. They had themselves masterfully planned and executed this virtual coup (which ended, sadly, like most coups) of the on-and-off republic's cultural mechanism through a complex campaign of mythic and journalistic memes and the complex spectacular phenomenon that they mounted at the opening of Hugo's play Hernani. But in the wake of this victory, he (probably inevitably) drifted away from the group. (this would later recur as Gautier, who would become Baudelaire's mentor, gradually moved into a certain amount of public consciousness; Nerval would become canonized within the avant-garde shortly after his death and more widely by the end of the century.) Much of the Bouzingos' work (especially that which addresses Hugo, none with straightforward bitterness) address the obscurity to which they have willingly consigned themselves, and their adherence to a small and intense community and an obscure and disreputable tradition. They began to see radicalized poetics in terms of the cultivation of an experimental utopian community that is marginal on principle, rather than the struggle to become the dominant official ideology or cultural model.
It seems likely, in light of a number of declarations (especially by Borel, O'Neddy, and Bertrand) that much or most of the group would have preferred that the rediscovery they had so cunningly engineered take place in micropress, among the tiny and mingling radical communities that are their direct descendants, perpetrated collectively by people connected through direct human friendships, than that they appear in a university edition, translated by a bourgeois academic, professionally produced and appropriately de-fanged and made respectable for the Literature (or worse, art) departments and the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Thus the importance of this project being taken on in the current form before academia renders it 'merely literature'.
When a group or individual, like the Bouzingo, is active both in the realm of political subversion/psychosocial experimentation/public performance/intervention on the one hand, and in the production of texts, paintings, etc and the discourse surrounding them, there is a tendency for only one aspect (if that) to be seriously investigated. Either the texts are published and discussed as if created and disseminated in a social and personal vacuum, with only vague and secondary reference to their contexts ('oh, and when he was young he hung around with some forgotten bohemians'); or their exploits are told in conversational style and with complete disregard for the theoretical, political, and traditional underpinnings and corollaries to their behaviour. It is my hope not only to avoid both of these pitfalls, but to discover and tease out how these apparently disparate realms of activity related to and inhered within one another.
This has been my primary prerogative in selecting the texts for this first book; I am more than open to changing or adding to these selections however, if translators or others in the community find pieces that strike them as particularly interesting or engaging. The same will go for future chapbooks; I'll likely find a certain number that I would like to ensure are included, and otherwise encourage those translating to work on whatever they find most engaging.

BOOK #1
The plan is to begin with this first chapbook, which will at least give a general indication of what the group was and provide a groundwork for fuller understanding of the group as it emerges from the process of translation and research. It will include one or two texts or images from each member of the group, a fairly concise critical description and history of the group, possibly some bios, and a bibliography.

FOR PROSPECTIVE TRANSLATIONS
To the extent that it's possible (and of course that extent is limited), I think we ought to strive at least to approximate the rhythm, meter, and scansion of the poems; ideally, to preserve or translate the rhyme and sound as well. The physical form and linguistic constraints that these represent--the semiotic rhythms they appealed to, the subtle counter-communications playing out through them, and the force of effort required to confront and utilize them--were constitutive of what verse was, and therefore inevitably vital to why they were writing verse in the midst of all their other activity.
Easy for me to say, I know. And many of you have indicated that while you can transliterate meaning and basic grammatical structure, you might not be down for then attempting to rewrite that result in rhymed dactylic hexameter or whatever. Never fear. I spent most of my poetic apprenticeship writing closed-form verse, and would actively enjoy taking on this latter-task: translation by tag-team.
So if this is the case, simply make an accurate semantic translation, and send that to me, accompanied by notes that let me know about anything unusual, striking, or important that you were unable to translate: puns, plays with word gender or other word permutations that don't exist in English, noticeable concurrences of sound, onomatopoeia, archaic or formal vocabulary, odd syntax, etc. It may be worth looking out for intentional misspellings and grammatical errors--the very name of the group is reputedly an intentional misspelling. I'll take it up from there, working side by side with the French, and make as good an English poem out of it as is possible. If we run into problems, we'll figure it out.
I understand that due to differences in how the languages are structured, and their relationships to what is considered one 'breath's worth' of air, that the standard French alexandrine line (seven metric feet of two to three syllables each) is usually translated into the English pentameter line (five feet). However the Bouzingo do often seem to have preferred the shorter line.
If you too will enjoy the challenge of dealing with these kinds of things, carry on; please include a similar set of notes however, as I'd like each poem to be published with translators' notes as well as editorial notes (which I can do) tracking down various cultural and historical references. If you too would like to help with the English 'poeticization' of the texts, let me know.

WHAT YOU CAN DO (if you'd like)

1: Take a look at the 'bouzingo preview texts for translation' and see what you'd like to try your hand at. Let me know. Whomever tells me first that they want to work on a certain text gets it. (Tomislav Butkovic has already started work on Nerval's Gothic Song.) And/or if you'd like, follow the links below to find other work that you like.

2: Put together a working english transliteration in whatever way seems best to you.

3: Annotate anything unusual, striking, or potentially important that you were unable to translate: puns, plays with word gender or other word permutations that don't exist in English, noticeable concurrences of sound, onomatopoeia, archaic or in/formal vocabulary, odd syntax, intentional misspellings or variant forms, etc.

4: Either play around with it to shape it into an appropriate rhythmic pattern etc., OR simply go ahead and

5: send it along to me.

LINKS
These are the best sources I have found for Bouzingo texts (even project Gutenberg isn't particularly helpful); there are others but the material in them is very scattered and piecemeal. I am trying to concentrate on work of the Bouzingo period specifically, or shortly before and after, let's say 1825-1840 at the outside; particularly in the cases of Gautier and Nerval, who have not themselves been terribly neglected but whose social context and even early work itself has been to a large extent swept under the historical rug. I have yet to find complete usable material by MacKeat, Brot, or Bouchardy, though the latter has some stuff scanned online (i.e., no text files yet; one way or the other we can get him taken care of).

http://www.florilege.free.fr/florilege/
http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/liste_auteurs_a.html
http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Index_des_auteurs
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

As the project progresses, I'll expand this bibliography and post periodic updates on research and freshly translated texts.

A kind of Preview

Here are the prefaces to the books of two of the central writers and thinkers of the Bouzingos, Philothée O'Neddy and Petrus Borel, as translated by Google. Though our translations will hopefully be more faithful (in some ways), these have a nice ring to them as well. Interestingly, the O'Neddy text seems to have given the translator less trouble.

I'm currently attempting to track down at least one piece by every writer associated with the group, and will then (finally) contact all of the volunteer translators and begin work on a small anthology to kick off the project, with one poem or image from everyone involved with the group (if possible) and a basic historical and critical introduction. Then we'll get to work on a full chapbook of texts by O'Neddy, and onward.

Until then, entertain yourself with these:



Philothée O'Neddy
from Feu et flamme (Fire and Flame), 1833.

FOREWORD.

─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─

An author, head erect, proud in his preface,
In public he was fine insult exclaim Place! ...




Quite a long time, motionless, arms crossed over the threshold of my house pariah, I gazed in admiration of a lazy, teenage walls of Babel artistic and moral elite [vii] intellects of our age began to build.

Now, at this time, deeper, more compelling, more excited, my sympathy orders me to mix a little action to contemplation, to get me confused in the crowd of workers.

So here I am: I bring to a gigantic slabs puny handful of cement.

Workers muscular and strong, do not push my little cooperation, you'll never have enough arms for the erection of such great work! And perhaps I am not altogether unworthy to be called your brother. - Like you, I despise the whole height of my soul the social and especially political order which is the excrement - like you, I do not care [viii] of the old and the academy - as you, I ask myself incredulously cold front magniloquence the tinsel and religions of the earth - like you, I have piles of stitches towards the poetry, the twin sister of God, starting from the physical world of light, harmony and perfumes; the moral world, love, intelligence and willingness!

Certainly, though nascent, is already very impressive and miraculous, that Babel! His belt of walls encloses already myriad stages. The sublimity of his tricks already burst the clouds more distant. Alone has already more arabesques and statues that all the cathedrals of the Middle Ages together. Poetry has finally a city, a realm where it can deploy to ease his two natures - the nature [ix] human is an art - its nature is divine passion.

Undoubtedly, you remember the wondrous assurance with which, soon after the fall of the last king of France, some newspapers prophesied that it was all the young writers, she entered the coffin along with the old legitimacy. - The early literature has been so little danger, so it has developed its vital principle, that she not only managed to multiply his own strength, to complete its revolution, but it has yet to be rich enough, powerful enough to herald a glorious crusade against metaphysical society. Yes, now that it has completed all its beautiful reforms in the costume of the art, it is dedicated exclusively to [x] The ruin of what she calls the social lie - as the philosophy of the eighteenth century doomed to destruction of what she called the Christian lie.

Every day, many young people patriotic convictions come to realize that, if the work has a political nature of Caliban, he is directly to blame the social work, her mother - then they give birth Republican fanaticism, and rushed to enlist in the joints of our Babel.

What is incredible is that the hotheads fairs finance, sublime skills that make fun of chivalry and love the national guard, insist on denying even the existence of this great intellectual ferment. Because the outdoor life, material life and [xi] is positive, thanks to our civilization mathematically stingy, almost reduced to a state of petrification, - they rely on an eternity of calm - they do not see in contrast, the inner life, the metaphysical and romantic life is as turbulent as adventurous, as free as the Arab tribes in their solitudes.

Then they remember that the day before the famous eruption of Vesuvius that buried all alive two cities, Herculaneum and Pompeii, ignorant of naturalists, is to walk near the edge of the crater, one wondered at the other was real if the bowels of the mountain contained a volcano! ...

I hasten, before closing this prose, to say the honest people who are willing to [xii] leave their ivory knife Devirgination leaves of my book, I have not the slightest vanity to believe the subsequent poems, up to the solemn concerns touched on in these preliminary lines.

This book has no other ambition than to be the beam of my best schoolboy sketches, which consist simply passionate reveries and artistic studies.

It is true however that there is here and there some strong impressions Lycantrope few anathemas against the social lepers, but it should not be taken literally these events, which are for the most part, that fiery outbursts. - It would be wrong to regard them as the ultimate expression of my true feelings. If I gave to publish [xiii] A second book, it is more logical, more in line with my kind of thinker, I say my last word - so you can judge me.

What if the shops of civilization deigned to tell me angry that someone is allowed to post outside the company, I irreverence of them observed that two classes of men have the right to an inalienable way - those who are better than the company - and those that are worth less. - I agree in one of these two categories.

.

.

.

Petrus Borel
from Rhapsodies, 1831

Preface

November 1831.

There must be a child throws his dribble before Frankly, we need the poet throws his, I threw mine: here! ... requires that the hot metal in the crucible slag rejects her; poetry bubbling in my chest has rejected his own: here! ... - So, these are Rhapsodies of slime and slag? - Yes! - Why then, wisely, s'inculper vis-à-vis the crowd? why not shut up and destroy? - Because I always want to break with them is that I am released, I want to expose them, and turn the face, is that as we keep these things, we always comes back, we can not detach; that is seriously a new era dates back to the poet who takes a seriously long flight, the day when it falls on the day he is the painter 's exposure means the bard printing.
Those who read my book know me: perhaps he is below me, but it is really me, I did not made to do so, I did not disguise it is a whole a set, juxtaposed corollary, cries of pain and joy thrown in the middle of a childhood rarely dissipated, often abused and always miserable. If sometimes we find positive and common, so it rarely open the heavens, he must attack my position, which has nothing to Celestin. Reality always gives me his arm, the need is still there for terrifies me when I take my Escousse.
I am neither cynical nor prude I say what is true for tear a complaint, it must be my evil good cooking, I never got melancholy to use the ladies attacked with consumption. If I took pleasure in spreading my poverty, because our contemporary bards I stink with their so-called poems and luxuries Pachal, their shape aristocrat mummeries their church and their sonnets to headlines, to hear, you'd see a hair shirt or coat of arms on the side, a rosary or a swivel in hand. One would see the great ladies of their thoughts, viscountesses ... Their viscountesses! ... So rather tell their washerwoman!
If I remained obscure and unknown, if nobody ever tympanitic for me if I've never been called eagle or swan, however, I have never been any mattress I've ever banged the crowd to gather around a master, no one can tell me his apprentice.
Certainly, the bourgeoisie will not be frightened names dedication to meet it in this volume, only that they are all young people, like me, heart and courage with which I grew up, I like all! They are the ones that kill me for the dullness of life that they are all French friends, comrades all our comradeship, togetherness tight, not glue Henri Delatouche: ours he does not understand. If I were not afraid of seeming paragon of our small to big names, I would say that ours is that of Titian and Ariosto, that of Molière and Mignard. To you especially, comrades, I give this book! It has been done among you, you can claim. It is law, Jehan Duseigneur, the statuary, beautiful and good heart, bind and courageous in action, yet innocent as a girl. Courage! your place is beautiful: France for the first time would have a French sculptor. - To you, Thom Napoleon, painter, air, free, handshake soldier. Courage! you are in an atmosphere of genius. - Yours, Gerard good: when will directors excisemen literature leave they reach the public works committee, so do welcome their little committees. - To you, Vigneron, who have my deepest sympathy for you, which proves the coward that can perseverance if thou hast the trough Jamerai Duval was drover. - To you, Joseph Bouchardy, the recorder, the heart of saltpeter! - To you, Theophile Gautier. - To you, Alphonse Brot! - Yours, Augustus Keat-Mac! - To you, Vabre! to you, Leo! to you, O'Neddy, etc..; you all! I like.
Those who judge me by this book, and who despairs of me, deceive those who m'ajourneront a top talent, is also mistaken. I do not modesty, because for those who accuse me of métagraboliser, I do believe my poet, I laugh.
I have nothing to say except that I did to make a preliminary paranymph or my ETHOPéE, or even on the art, a long treatise professedly but I am reluctant to sell the preface and then, would it not ridiculous to say so much about so little? But I think I have some parts flawed policy: not going there not m'anathématiser and Jaspar to Republican? - To prevent any questioning, I will say frankly: Yes, I am a Republican! Let them ask the Duke of Orleans, the father, if he remembers when he went s'assermentcr August 9 at the former House of voice which pursued him throwing in the face cries Liberty and Republic, amid cheers of a mob pipe? Yes! I am a Republican, but not the July sun that brought forth on this high I thought, I am of childhood - but not Republican red or blue garter to my blouse, and delivered himself to shed planter poplar; I hear the Republican as a lynx; my republicanism is to lycanthropy! - If I speak Republic, because that word to me is the greater independence that could leave the association and civilization. I am a Republican because I can not be Caribbean, I need a huge amount of freedom: the Republic will give me the she? I have no experience for me. But when this hope will be disappointed like so many other illusions, I will Missouri! ... When you're down here shared with me when we are irritated by so many evils, we dreamed of equality, we call him the Agrarian Law, it would deserve even applaud.
Those who say: This volume is the work of a madman, one of these goats were given romantic soul and God in fashion, which, according to figarotiers, eat children and make grog in skulls. To those I can avoid them, I have to report their findings.
Front as depressed or strangled by forceps back hair filasseux each side of the cheeks a thong rind furry collar shirt do burying the plate and forming a double triangle of white canvas hat stovepipe, coat and umbrella in whistle .
To those who say: this is the work of a saint-simony! ... for those who will say: It is the work of a Republican, a basiléophage: he must be killed! ... For them, the shopkeepers will not Catchment: regratiers without the barges are tigers ... notaries who lose everything to reform: the lawyer is like a lace Philippist! ... This will be good people, seeing the Republic in the guillotine and paper money. The Republic for them is a pollard. They do not understand the lofty mission of Saint-Just: they accuse him some necessities, and then admire the carnage of Bonaparte - Bonaparte! - And its eight million people killed!
To those who say: This book has something suburban repugnant, the answer indeed is not mocking the king's bed.
Besides, is it not the height of an era when the rulers were to stupid discounters, dealers of guns and monarch, a man whose legend and motto: "God be praised, and my shopping too! "
Fortunately, as a consolation for all this, we still have adultery! Tobacco Maryland! and papel español por cigaritos.

BOUZINGOS BREAKTHROUGH!

This very half-hour, I have uncovered the entire French text of Philothée O'Neddy's 1833 book of verse, Feu et Flame online--meaning that the O'Neddy translation is only a week or so away from being ready to move forward! No more worries that I shan't be able to find enough material for a 20 page chapbook; we've got 130 pages worth to work with.

Too busy following this up to go into more detail, especially seeing as nobody really reads this.

onward!