Gertrude Stein said that, “One of the things that is a very interesting thing to know is how you are feeling inside you to the words that are coming out to be outside of you.” Poet Donald Revell captures that very feeling—a feeling which became a catalyst for the blazing onset of French Modernism—in his translation of surrealist poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Le brasier” in Columbia Journal’s twenty-second issue, from the winter of 1994. I thoroughly enjoy the first two lines of the translation, which Revell ingeniously flipped. “What I adore and transport/ I’ve thrown into the fire” (1-2). Revell makes it more palatable for an English-speaking reader without losing its flair. He does an outstanding job capturing the slant rhymes Apollinaire uses, such as with the rhyme of “testicles” and “vegetables.” At times he gets creative and writes a rhyme where one didn’t exist in the original.
Revell also makes excellent sense of the fantastical elements of the poem and brings out the beauty of the imagery. Thus: “Our hearts are hung in lemon branches/unblooded constellation” (17-18). The titular brazier is felt throughout the poem. Revell unfolds and folds Apollinaire’s cubist work and untangles the various strings intertwined to unwind and wind up a picture that, in less capable hands, would be a poor shadow of a great poem.
The Brazier
Guillaume Apollinaire
Translated by Donald Revell
What I adore and transport
I've thrown into the fire
Living hands and equally the dead
Disfigured Past those severed heads
Flame Flame I do what you desire
The sudden gallop of the stars
Future and nothing but future
Neighs with the noisy testicles
Of centaurs at their studs
Enormous complaining vegetables
Where are the heads of yesteryear
Where is the God of my childhood
Cupid is rotten
In the brazier the fire wakes
My soul undresses in the sun
Fires push across the plains
Our hearts are hung in lemon branches
Unblooded constellation
The acclamation of a severed head
Is nothing but a woman's head
The river pinned onto the town
Secures you like a woman's gown
Obedient to Amphion
You endure the sound
That sets the stones to leaping from the ground
*
I blaze in the adorable fervour of the brazier
Hands of the faithful toss me there
Limbs and bits of martyrs burn beside me
Banish their bones from the brazier
I alone eternally suffice to feed the fire
The wingspan of firebirds shelters my face and the sun
O Memory How many breeds degenerate
From Gemini down to vipers of prosperity
And snakes are nothing but the necks of swans
Immortal once and once unmusical
Behold my renovated life
Ocean-going ships encircle me
I temper the metal of my hands in Ocean
Here is the steam engine here my life
Its fires are enormous
I've nothing in common anymore
With those afraid of fire
*
Down from the heights where light is pensive
Gardens wheeling higher than all of heaven
Masked in fire the future streaks the sky
We await your pleasure my beloved
I dare not see the godly masquerade
When will Desirade indigo the skyline
Beyond our atmosphere a theatre rises
Erected by Zamir the temple maggot
And then the sun broke through and brightened the plazas
Of a coastal city apparitioned by mountains
Exhausted pigeons doze upon its roofs
And the herd of sphinxes returns to the sphinxery
Slowly always they hear the herdsman's song
Up there the theatre is solid fire
Constellations feeding oblivion
And now the performance
I am in a theatre box forever
my elbows knees and head an empty pentangle
Fires shoot from me like leaves
Inhuman actors luminous neobeasts
Command tamed men
Earth
O lacerated Earth the rivers mended you
I prefer night and day in the sphinxeries
To know at least I am devoured there
