Don Quixote

 

Julio Cortazar

 

 ‘Letter to a Young Lady in Paris’ by Julio Cortázar, translated by Paul Blackburn (First published in English in Blow-Up and Other Stories, Pantheon 1967; also in Bestiary, Vintage Classics, 2020. 

“Andrea, I didn’t want to come live in your apartment on Suipacha. Not so much because of the bunnies, but rather that it offends me to intrude on a compact order, built even to the finest nets of air, networks that in your environment conserve the music in the lavender, the heavy fluff of the powder puff in the talcum, the play between the violin and the viola in Ravel’s quartet.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Imaginary Biography

                                        Translated by Robert Bly

First Childhood, no limits, no renunciations,
no goals. Such unthinking joy.
Then abruptly terror, schoolrooms, boundaries,
. . captivity,
and a plunge into temptation and deep loss.

Defiance. The one crushed will be the crusher
. . now,
and he avenges his defeats, wrestles, wins, 
and overpowers others, slowly, act by act. 

And then all alone in space, in lightness, in cold.
But deep in the shape he has made to stand erect
he takes a breath, as if reaching for the First, 
. . Primitive....

Then God explodes from his hiding place.

Andre du Bouchet

 

Everything becomes words
earth
pebbles

in my mouth and under my feet

man given back
redeemed
in stones
in coins
of gold

currency of words and steps

what I say makes you laugh

nameless
gold that barters me
alive.

 

Andre du Bouchet

SANG

…sang

tel qu’
est
pour le dire
de surcroît
accouru sourdre
un mot

le mot est là

pas moi.

© 1987, André du Bouchet

André Du Bouchet

                                           portrait by Giacometti (1965)

 Painting

 

     all things look as if

they are waiting, as soon as we see them.                                      is it by their

   proven resemblance

that we will know they are, at the same time that we are,

here.

 

  itself, it is

reality                         —                        other, and resembling nothing, that we

desire.                                         already, in the doorway, it flowers.               in

the halo flush with bloom, which cuts through all

appearance.                                                                                  almost unmoved.

 

the tile.                                                                                                        the vines

  of the façade.                                        in

the branchings, the breakage of the sky.               this is how the given world’s

fatigue, its freshness, cracks and flowers.

 

    it happens

that, once we’ve reached the thing we have desired,

it may slip away into an infinite otherness.                                                        no

illusion if the window returning the color of its light to the

blue we do not see is forever merged with

that blue.                           who, then, will say the name of recognized things?

already, through our waiting, they have flowered.

                                                                                                            (tr. Hoyt Rogers)

 

André Du Bouchet

Dawn without sun

white straightaway.
From the cliff : an immense trampling of clouds suspended above the flow of the Seine. This white chain cracks open above the island like a needle’s eye.
Magical fields, like a beach of cuttlefish and kelp newly abandoned by the sea. Colors still preserved — sharp fishbones, lace of thistles bright as window-panes — awakening of yellow and purple dots before they’ve stirred.
At dawn : everything that’s worn becomes both new and worn. Worn objects — brand-new — not yet tired out by day — like the stones of the path that glow.

Here is the unending spring we’re steeped in as we sleep — that we can glimpse when we’re awakened toward the end of night : we catch sight of night’s mists.

The body of mist spreads underfoot like the trampling of clouds. The sun rises in our chest even before it appears on the room’s horizon; between the black casements, the black knoll standing out against the light, dawn plows us.
The head shoots up in its field, its tethers suddenly cut— it wouldn’t take much for us to crow like roosters.