9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur

On Thursday, I made my way to 9 Rue Gît-le-Cœur. I had read that this was an important address for some of the poets of the Beat Generation. What stands there now is a small, 4.5 star hotel that has single rooms, complete with massage showers, starting at 190 euros (approximately $258) per night.

 

The original “Beat Hotel” was opened in 1933 by a Parisian couple named the Rachous. It lacked any sort of proper name, and has been referred to “the cheapest and most dirty hotel in Paris” by Jean-Jacques Lebel, an artist and writer who lived in Paris at the time. When Alan Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky first stayed there in 1957, it was a “class 13” hotel, which meant that it was required to meet only the lowest level of health and safety regulations. The rooms were dimly lit and hot water was available only three days out of the week. The curtains and bedspreads were washed once every year, and the bed linens were changed only once a month. As Madame Rachou had previously worked at an inn that hosted prominent artists, she encouraged artists and writers to stay at this accommodation. Sometimes, she even allowed these clients to pay for room and board with a piece of their artwork, or writing. 

After Ginsberg and Orlovsky began staying there, they were joined by other writers, including William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin and others. It was at this hotel that Burroughs completed the manuscript of Naked Lunch and where he first experimented with different styles of writing, including the cutting up of larger manuscripts and rearranging them to create random, different texts.

It was here that Ginsberg began his poem Kaddish (link: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/kaddish-part-i/), about his mother’s mental illness. It was also at the Beat Hotel that Gregory Corso wrote many of the poems for his book Gasoline, including his poem “Bomb”.

I had read works by Ginsberg and Burroughs before seeing the hotel, and I had heard of Corso’s “Bomb”, but I’d never read it, so after wandering for a while in the Latin Quarter, I found a coffee shop and sat down to read the poem near the place it had been written. Here is a link to a copy of the poem. I’m not sure it accurately represents all of the line breaks, but the reader can get the idea about its layout. 

“Bomb” was originally published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights as part of a collection of poems called The Happy Birthday of Death. Considered the most noteworthy poem in the book, it was written on 2 pages that folded out of the book to show off the new form and the hefty subject matter. Written in the midst of the Cold War, it is itself a bomb—from the shape in which it appears, to the sentiment it conveys is menacing, honest, and explosive. He repeats the word “BOOM” several times, adding an onomatopoeia element towards the bottom, where the poem itself would have detonated to create the mushroom cloud above. 

Corso infuses the poem with references to characters and places both fictional and real, reminding his audience, with a great deal of irony, that no one is safe, and that no one can escape the ramifications. his poem becomes an ode to something very powerful right from teh start, and even references Whitman when he writes "I sing thee Bomb." The poem starts with the narrator admitting that "You Bomb / Toy of universe / Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you." He goes on to list other things that he cannot make himself hate. He begins by stating things from nature, such as a thunderbold, but goes on to also say he cannot hate "the sad desperate gun of Verlaine." He seems to be hinting that while nature needs violent acts like a storm, humans also need weapons, and at times acts of violence. And despite the fact that "All man hates you they'd rather die by car-crash lightning drowning", he also says "you're no crueler than cancer. Towards the end of the poem, he even says "O Bomb I love you", as the work culminates in an explosion that is violently and sexually charged. The "BOOMs" directly follow the line "I want to kiss your clank eat your boom."

The bomb becomes revered in the poem--something almost holy at the end when it is "not enough to say a  bomb will fall / or even contend celestial fire goes out / I know that the earth will Madonna the Bomb."

For me, it is hard not to wonder at how different things are now. I am sitting in the same city, in a world that is still violent, just steps from where this poem was written. Yet, the Beat Hotel looks anything but grubby this afternoon, with its four stars and pristine lobby warmly lit up from within.

Barbizon

The town of Fontainebleau, where I live, is nestled in the middle of the Fontainebleau Forest, a 108 square mile area full of fir trees, rocks to climb, trails to hike, and the occasional wild boar. Compared to many of the surrounding towns that are scattered around the edge of the forest, Fontainebleau is a small city.

On Tuesday, a friend and I decided to head to the neighboring town of Barbizon to go for a hike and to explore the town.

Barbizon has only one main street with a few shops and hotels, but it is has a history steeped in the arts. Beginning in the mid-1800s, it became a popular vacation spot. But in addition to tourists, the town attracted quite a few painters, who would later be dubbed “The Barbizon School”. Among others, this group included Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet, Narcisse-Virgile Diaz, and Charles- François Daubigny. In the second half of the century, the town also lured the younger Impressionist painters, like Monet and Renoir, who were interested in nature and the landscape of the area.

As Barbizon attracted artists, writers were drawn to the area as well. Well-known French poets, like Verlaine, Beaudelaire, and Guillaume Appolinaire all made the trek to the town and spent time writing there. Entering the town and the trails of the forest, it’s easy to see how so many writers and artists were captivated and inspired by the town. It’s hard to believe that Paris is less than an hour away by train.

After leaving Barbizon, I decided to read some of the poets who had written there. I especially enjoyed one of Verlaine’s poems that I came across, entitled “The Young Fools”. Below is the original French text, as well as an English translation (Poets, Copyright © 1997 - 2010 by Academy of American Poets.):

The Young Fools

By Paul Verlaine
Translated by Louis Simpson

High-heels were struggling with a full-length dress

So that, between the wind and the terrain,

At times a shining stocking would be seen,

And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness.

Also, at times a jealous insect's dart

Bothered out beauties. Suddenly a white

Nape flashed beneath the branches, and this sight

Was a delicate feast for a young fool's heart.

Evening fell, equivocal, dissembling,

The women who hung dreaming on our arms

Spoke in low voices, words that had such charms

That ever since our stunned soul has been trembling.

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Les Ingénus

Les hauts talons luttaient avec les longues jupes,

En sorte que, selon le terrain et le vent,

Parfois luisaient des bas de jambes, trop souvent

Interceptés--et nous aimions ce jeu de dupes.

Parfois aussi le dard d'un insecte jaloux

Inquiétait le col des belles sous les branches,

Et c'était des éclairs soudains de nuques blanches,

Et ce régal comblait nos jeunes yeux de fous.

Le soir tombait, un soir équivoque d'automne:

Les belles, se pendant rêveuses à nos bras,

Dirent alors des mots si spécieux, tout bas,

Que notre âme depuis ce temps tremble et s'étonne.

Source: www.Poets.org

Verlaine was one of the leaders of the symbolist movement in France, which also included poets such as Arthur Rimbaud (who Verlaine lived with for a time), Charles Baudelaire, and Stéphane Mallarmé. The aim of many of the poems that they wrote was to convey a mood or emotion rather than a straight-forward meaning. While this particular poem adheres to the form of a sonnet, many of the poems by the symbolist poets turned away from conventional methods, form, and values in their poems. Verlaine wrote this particular poem around the time he met his wife (whom he later divorced).He wrote this love poem around the time that he met her, and in it he expertly pairs imagery with rhyme.

 “The Young Fools”, is quite a sexy poem. It begins by acknowledging the physical attraction that young people, or “fools” have for one another, but also how the emotions are based on things as simple as a woman struggling with high-heels and a long dress over rugged terrain. The men in the poem enjoy watching the struggle because it often allowed them to catch a glimpse of the stocking beneath the dress. Verlaine groups himself in with the fools, as he says “We liked that foolishness”. 

The poem progresses from an image of a woman struggling with a long dress, to the more romantic and whimsical picture of women who hang “hung dreaming on our arms…That ever since our stunned soul has been trembling.” This movement adds a personal and dreamlike quality to the poem that initially seems quite grounded in the present. The start of the third stanza that places the reader in the evening suggests a sexual progression, as women are suddenly “hanging” and “dreaming” and the men end up with a “stunned soul” that “trembles”.

In an ongoing effort to improve my French, it was difficult not to notice some of the differences between the English and the French versions. The English version aims to keep the rhyme and meter that the French version has, but at times the translation is affected by this. For example, in the first line, “jupe” is a skirt, not a dress, which is a “robe”. And “Les Ingénus” literally translates into “The Innocents”.

Barbizon is a town that is full of beauty and nature. With museums commemorating the artists and authors who spent time there, it’s still easy to imagine a woman struggling in her heels and a long skirt as she walks along the cobblestone streets at the edge of the forest.

A Reading in Paris

Shakespeare and Company is an institution in Paris. A cozy English-speaking bookshop just south of the Marais, it's the kind of independent bookstore you hope can take the heat from all those online devices. Since its opening in 1951, it's become a haven for English-speaking writers and book lovers. It offers writing workshops, a quiet reading room, a typewriter for traveling authors, and readings most Monday nights.   

Last Monday, a few of us made the trek from Fontainebleau to Paris to hear a few poets / songwriters perform. I have always been interested in the fine line that separates the singers from the poets, and especially interested in those who can bridge the gap. Crammed into a corner, a book pressing against the back of my knee, I peered over the tops of books on a shelf to try to catch a glimpse of the performers, who included Kate Stables, Erica Buettner, and Colin Mahar.

I found Colin Mahar’s performance to be particularly appealing, especially as I am struggling to learn French. Mahar frequently works with translations; his method is unique in that he chooses a poem (or poems) that have been translated into French, and then he translates them back into English, and often sets them to music—a sort of poetic mash-up.

I wrote to Colin to find out more about his process of re-translating and writing, and he graciously emailed me back with details about the creative process for his poem (and song) "Morning to Night", complete with references and page numbers. Mahar created this poem by using five different poems from different points of Dickinson's life that he read in the bilingual edition of Emily Dickinson's Quatrains et autres poems brefs[1]. The first poem that Mahar uses is (Dickinson, 30):

A darting year—a pomp—a tear—

a waking on a morn

to find that what one waked for

inhales the different dawn.

The French translation of this reads:

Un an éclair—de la pompe—un larme—

L’éveil pour découvrir un matin

Que ce pour quoi l’on s’éveillait

Inhale l’aube différente.

(Lettre à Mary Haven)

From this, Mahar re-translates part of the letter back into English to read “one clear year, from the pump, there falls a tear”, and opens his song with this line. At first, I wondered how pomp, which is also clearly “pompe” in the French edition morphs into pump, but when I inserted the first line into google translate, which I usually find to be pretty accurate, the literal translation becomes: “A flash-year pump—a tear”.   

Another of his lines was taken from #56 in the book, which reads (Dicksinson, 88): 

 It rises—it passes-on our South

Inscribes a simple Noon

Cajoles a Moment with the Spires

And infinite is gone—

The French translation reads:

Il se lève—passe—sur notre Sud—

Inscrit un simple Midi—

Cajole un Instant les Clocers

Et disparaît infini—

 

This French quatrain is re-translated and condensed to become “It rises and flies to reach high noon.” While the translations are loose, the idea of playing with the words in such a way was new to me. His writing plays upon the flexibility within languages. A line that begins “Look back on Time with kindly Eyes” becomes “Jette sur le Temps en OEil indulgent” (Dickinson, 122) in French, and then morphs into “so look on Time with indulgent Eye”. The translation back into English is fairly accurate, as the French translation of the quatrain takes the liberty of changing Dickinson’s “Eyes” to the singular “eye”. For the most part, Mahar changes the lines just as much as the original translator into French. In both of the translations shown here, subtle word choices change ideas. But unlike the original translator, he's made the poems his own.

Mahar has also experimented with other poets whose works have been translated into French, including Sappho and Nabakov. His performance gave me new ideas about translation, my own work, and living in a new language. 

 

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[1] Dickinson, Emily. Quatrains et autres poems brefs (bilingual edition). Trans. Claire Malroux. Paris: Gallimard, 2000.

Leda and the Swan

Today I took the train into Paris and went to the Louvre. The museum is a bit like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in that you might need a good month, or two, to explore the whole museum. It feels almost like a city within a city. Usually, to avoid becoming overwhelmed, I choose a specific section of a museum to explore. In New York, I always loved the pyramid room at the Met. No matter how crowded it got, the wide open space, with light streaming in, and the sound of water and footsteps on linoleum always had a lulling effect on me. Often I would go and sit for an hour or so, reading, writing or people-watching.

I haven’t quite found my favorite place in the Louvre yet, but today, I was struck by a sculpture called “Leda and the Swan” by Jean Thierry.

The subject matter is a popular one. Taken from Greek Mythology, it is the story of Zeus (or Jupiter in Roman mythology) falling in lust with the Leda, a mortal Queen. To seduce her, he turns himself into a swan and approaches her as she bathes in a river.Here is Thierry’s sculpture that was done in 1717: 

 

Jean THIERRY (1669-1739)Leda and the Swan1717

© Musée du Louvre/P. Philibert 

Leda’s image has been depicted by several painters from the Italian Renaissance era, including Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Correggio. The story has also served as the subject of a poem by Yeats, which is below:

Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats

 A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

    Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    How can those terrified vague fingers push

    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

    And how can body, laid in that white rush,

    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    A shudder in the loins engenders there

    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]

    And Agamemnon dead.

                        Being so caught up,

    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,

    Did she put on his knowledge with his power

    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

Source: http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/865/ 

What I found interesting about the poem and the sculpture is how different the mood of one is from the other. When I looked up other paintings of Leda and the Swan, many of them were graceful and relaxed, whereas Thierry’s depiction of the scene is livelier. The Louvre website describes the swan enveloping Leda with its wings, “its webbed foot on her left thigh; she is turning to the swan, her right hand on its shoulder, her left caressing its neck. The protagonists are gazing into each other's eyes with obvious desire. The spiraling forms intertwine in a swirling shape that confers a multitude of viewpoints to the group. The sculptor played with textures too, using the ridges on the swan's feathers, Leda's braided hair, and the grooves on the plinth, to highlight the smooth sheen of the queen's body.”     

Yeats, on the other hand, describes a violent rape scene. At the start, Leda is dealt “a sudden blow” and she “staggers”, “helpless”, with “terrified vague fingers” trying to push the god away. Ultimately, she is “mastered by the brute blood of the air” and Zeus lets her drop with a suddenly “indifferent beak”.

Having written the poem as a sonnet, Yeats’ strict meter and rhyme scheme serve as a sharp contrast to the utter lack of control that Leda has in the poem. Further, it veers away from the topic of love, which often a traditional theme of a sonnet. 

The other way in which this differs from a traditional sonnet is the spacing and line breaks, specifically in the last seven lines when there is a shift from a description of the scene, to “the burning roof and tower / and Agamemnon dead” which foreshadows what will happen as a result of the affair.

Yeats gives “Being so caught up” its own indented line which is then followed by the question: “did she put on his knowledge with his power / Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?”

While I have always liked Yeats’ poem, it was hard not to be captivated by Thierry’s pure, white sculpture that almost convinced me that Leda and the Swan were truly in love. As I left the Louvre in search of a cup of coffee, it was hard to forget Leda’s face as she gazed adoringly at the swan, one arm outstretched.

For a more light-hearted take on the myth, The Sun has an excerpt from a short story written by a former MFA student who also takes on the subject. Here is an excerpt that is worth reading.