La jolie rousse - The pretty redhead

About a month ago I came across a book by Umberto Eco: Opera Aperta : Forma e indeterminazione nelle poetiche contemporanee. Although the phonological experiments on Joyce's Ulysses translations being read concurrently (or rather, consecutively in fugue) are not my bag, I knew that I would be fascinated once more by Eco's ability to put names to faces (i.e. to be able to illustrate a point with definitive and authoritative examples). Plus it had excited my interest by an extensive reference to Norbert Wiener's Information Theory.

These are points, however, that I would like to explore in future posts.

The introduction to the First Edition (Bompiani, Milano, 1962) had a few lines by Guillaume Apollinaire as a header. These were from the poem "La Jolie Rousse" (The Pretty Redhead), written for his beloved Jacqueline Kolb. I can find no better day to post this excellent and wonderfully fitting poem that I found by pure chance (or just by looking at the right places...)



LA JOLIE ROUSSE (1918, Calligrammes)

Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens
Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu’un vivant peut connaître
Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l’amour
Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées
Connaissant plusieurs langages
Ayant pas mal voyagé
Ayant vu la guerre dans l’Artillerie et l’Infanterie
Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme
Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l’effroyable lutte
Je sais d’ancien et de nouveau autant qu’un homme seul pourrait des deux savoir
Et sans m’inquiéter aujourd’hui de cette guerre
Entre nous et pour nous mes amis
Je juge cette longue querelle de la tradition et de l’invention
De l’Ordre et de l’Aventure

Vous dont la bouche est faite à l’image de celle de Dieu
Bouche qui est l’ordre même
Soyez indulgents quand vous nous comparez
À ceux qui furent la perfection de l’ordre
Nous qui quêtons partout l’aventure

Nous ne sommes pas vos ennemis
Nous voulons vous donner de vastes et d’étranges domaines
Où le mystère en fleurs s’offre à qui veut le cueillir
Il y a là des feux nouveaux des couleurs jamais vues
Mille phantasmes impondérables
Auxquels il faut donner de la réalité

Nous voulons explorer la bonté contrée énorme où tout se tait
Il y a aussi le temps qu’on peut chasser ou faire revenir
Pitié pour nous qui combattons toujours aux frontières
De l’illimité et de l’avenir
Pitié pour nos erreurs pitié pour nos péchés

Voici que vient l’été la saison violente
Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps
Ô Soleil c’est le temps de la Raison ardente
Et j’attends
Pour la suivre toujours la forme noble et douce
Qu’elle prend afin que je l’aime seulement
Elle vient et m’attire ainsi qu’un fer l’aimant
Elle a l’aspect charmant
D’une adorable rousse

Ses cheveux sont d’or on dirait
Un bel éclair qui durerait
Ou ces flammes qui se pavanent
Dans les roses-thé qui se fanent

Mais riez riez de moi
Hommes de partout surtout gens d’ici
Car il y a tant de choses que je n’ose vous dire
Tant de choses que vous ne me laisseriez pas dire
Ayez pitié de moi

THE PRETTY REDHEAD

Here I am before all, a man full of meaning
Learned on life and death about anything a living man could know
Having tried the pains and the joys of love
Having at some point or the other imposed his ideas
Learned on many languages
Having travelled not a little
Having seen the war through both Artillery and Infantry
Wounded in the head, trephined under chloroforme
Having lost his best friends in that fearful struggle
I know of the old and the new as much as any man by himself can know of these two
And without worrying myself much about that war today
Between you and for you my friends
I arbitrate that long quarrel between tradition and innovation
Between Order and the Adventure

You whose mouth has been made in the image of God's
Mouth which is order itself
Be indulgent when you compare us
To those who were the perfection of order
Us who go questing for the adventure in all places

We are not your enemies
We want to give you vast and strange domains
Where the blossoming mystery offers itself to those who would pluck it
There they are New fires Colours unseen before
A thousand unimaginable phantoms
Which must be given reality

We want to explore the bounty enormous country where everything is hushed
There is also time, which can be driven away or made to return
Pity for us who continually fight at the frontiers
Of infinity and of the future
Pity for our errors pity for our sins

Here comes summer the violent season
And my youth is dead along with springtime
O Sun it is the time of blazing Reason
And I wait

To always follow the noble and gentle form
That she dons to make me love her solely
She comes and she attracts me like a magnet does to iron
She has the charming aspect
Of an adorable redhead

Her hair are made of gold one would say
A beautiful shining that stays
Or those flames that prance about
In the fading tea-rose

But laugh at me laugh
Men from everywhere but above all people from here
Because there are many things that I dare not tell you
Many things that you would not let me say
Have pity on me

(Awkward literal translation by me, highlights by me as well)

It was a year ago, and five years ago... Exactly.