Max Jacob

The beggar woman of naples

When I lived in Naples there was always a beggar woman at the gate of my palace, to whom I would toss some coins before climbing into my carriage. One day, surprised at never being thanked, I looked at the beggar woman. Now, as I looked at her, I saw that what I had taken for a beggar woman was a wooden case painted green which contained some red earth and a few half-rotten bananas …

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Happy bananas!

Jose

                                        translated by

Max Jacob

The Concarneau Regattas

Drowning people don’t always sink to the bottom. It is even enough for someone struggling in the water to remember that he knew how to swim and then he sees his trousers flap around like the legs of a jumping jack. That’s what happened to me at the Concarneau regattas. I was perfectly calm before sinking, or well those elegant people in their skiffs passing by will notice my efforts or well…in short, a certain optimism. The shore so close! With life-sized Israelite individuals of the most gracious sort. What surprised me in getting out of the water was that I was hardly damp, and that people looked at me not as a poodle, but as a man.

            translated by Sophia Lecker

Georges Perec

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. Question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live; true, we breathe; true; we walk, we open doors, we walk down the stairs, we sit at the table to eat, go to bed to sleep. How? Where? When? Why? 

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare them.
Make a list of what’s in your pockets, or your bag. Ask yourself where these things came from; what are they for and what will become of them?
Question your teaspoons.
What is under your wallpaper?

Perec, 1973 Cause Commune

        translation by Ian Butler?