Du Courage?

I have posted several poems on this blog from Francis Jammes, the French poet writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are mostly pastoral, wistful, gently jocular, nostalgic or celebratory of the poet’s surroundings. You get a sense of a man at peace with himself and with the world. This poem has a very different tone, even more shocking when compared with his other poems (at least those I know). It seems to be an extended cry of pan and suffering, in which the courage of the title has no use nor even a palliative effect.

Du Courage?

Du courage ?

Mon âme éclate de douleur.

Cette vie me déchire.

Je ne puis plus pleurer.

Qu’y a-t-il, qu’y a-t-il, qu’y a-t-il, dans mon cœur

Il est silencieux, terrible et déchiré.

Pourtant qu’avais-je fait que de fumer ma pipe devant les doux enfants qui jouaient dans la rue ?

Un serrement affreux me casse la poitrine.

Je ne puis plus railler…

C’est trop noir, trop aigu.

ô toi que j’ai aimée, conduis-moi par la main vers ce que les hommes ont appelé la mort, et laisse, à tout jamais, sur le mortel chemin, ton sourire clair comme un ciel

d’azur dans l’eau.

L’espoir n’existe plus.

C’était un mot d’enfance.

Souviens-toi de ta triste enfance et des oiseaux

qui te faisaient pleurer, tristes dans les barreaux de la cage où ils piaillaient de souffrance.

Aimer.

Aimer.

Aimer.

Abîmez-moi encore.

Je crève de pitié.

C’est plus fort que la vie.

Je voudrais pleurer seul comme une mère douce qui essuie avec son châle la tombe de son fils.

:

Francis Jammes

From <http://www.poemes.co/du-courage.html>

The title echoes the words often said to those in pain, or those facing some difficult circumstance – “Be brave”, but the sense is changed by the poet’s addition of a question mark, as if he recognises that this admonition is likely to be rather useless.

The whole poem which follows, with its irregular, staccato lines seems like an extended cry of agony in which declarations of despair are interwoven with images of comfort and hope (smoking his pipe while watching children play in the street; being in love) are immediately dismissed as ultimately comfortless as the poet returns to his dark place of despair, which consists either of an inevitable progression towards death, in the middle of the poem, or, which might be even worse, to the position of a mother crying over the grave over her son, ie a living death.

There is a straight line from a poem such as this to the most desolate works of someone like Samuel Beckett, but fortunately we have plenty of examples of more joyful and positive poems from Jammes.

The Poetry Dude

Quand verrai-je les îles où furent des parents ?

This poem by Francis Jammes has a Baudelairean feel to it, because of the evocation of a tropical island, and the sentiment of nostalgia for a paradise lost. Both poets were clearly smitten by the sights and sounds of an island in the sun – in Baudelaire’s case because of his travels to such islands, and in Jammes’s case, or at least so we learn from this poem, that his forebears lived on such an island.

The title and first line of Jammes poem brings this home right away – he is expressing a longing to see the islands, the islands where his parents, or ancestors lived.

Francis Jammes

Quand verrai-je les îles…

Quand verrai-je les îles où furent des parents ?
Le soir, devant la porte et devant l’océan
on fumait des cigares en habit bleu barbeau.
Une guitare de nègre ronflait, et l’eau
de pluie dormait dans les cuves de la cour.
L’océan était comme des bouquets en tulle
et le soir triste comme l’été et une flûte.
On fumait des cigares noirs et leurs points rouges
s’allumaient comme ces oiseaux aux nids de mousse
dont parlent certains poètes de grand talent.
Ô Père de mon Père, tu étais là, devant
mon âme qui n’était pas née, et sous le vent
les avisos glissaient dans la nuit coloniale.
Quand tu pensais en fumant ton cigare,
et qu’un nègre jouait d’une triste guitare,
mon âme qui n’était pas née existait-elle ?
Était-elle la guitare ou l’aile de l’aviso ?
Était-elle le mouvement d’une tête d’oiseau
caché lors au fond des plantations,
ou le vol d’un insecte lourd dans la maison ?

 
Choü, mai 1895
From <http://www.florilege.free.fr/florilege/jammes/quandver.htm&gt;

Following the initial question, full of longing and sadness, we find the poet standing outside at the edge of the ocean, presumably in France, smoking cigars, wearing a blue fisherman’s smock, listening to the sound of a guitar and looking at the rainwater lying in the tubs in the yard. It is evening, the ocean looks like an artificial flower bouquet and the moment is sad like the plaintive notes of a flute. The poet is looking out over the ocean, thinking of the islands where his parents and grandparents lived, warm, vibrant, sunny and exotic. He goes on smoking cigars with an unidentified companion, comparing the lighted cigar ends to birds described by certain talented poets. I don’t know which poets he was referring to here.

The poet then gets to pondering about his father and grandfather, in a time before he was born, watching the dispatch boats depart from the colonial waters of the island – and he gets to pondering whether he was already there in some latent form – in the sound of the guitar or the sail of the dispatch boat, the head of a bird hidden in the plantation, or the flight of an insect. The questioning here represents a deepening of the sense of loss and longing.

But this is a gentle melancholy, not deep anguish or distress. We feel that the poet can go on smoking his cigar, watching the ocean, and finding consolation n his own surroundings and circumstances.

The Poetry Dude

Une goutte de pluie frappe une feuille sèche

Francis Jammes’ poem on a raindrop falling on a leaf, just as he poet’s lover’s tears fall on his heart. This is one of the reasons I read and appreciate poetry – it makes the connection between the seemingly insignificant, the tiny fragment of existence which would normally pass unnoticed and connects it to a deeper experience, to our human condition. This type of poem is a reminder that we should take the time to notice and appreciate the tiny details in our field of consciousness and realise everything is connected.

And apart from all that, this is a quite beautiful poem.

Une goutte de pluie …

Francis JAMMES
Recueil : “Clairières dans le ciel”
Une goutte de pluie frappe une feuille sèche,
lentement, longuement, et c’est toujours la même
goutte, et au même endroit, qui frappe et s’y entête…
Une larme de toi frappe mon pauvre cœur,
lentement, longuement, et la même douleur
résonne, au même endroit, obstinée comme l’heure.
La feuille aura raison de la goutte de pluie.
Le cœur aura raison de ta larme qui vrille :
car sous la feuille et sous le cœur, il y a le vide.

From <http://www.unjourunpoeme.fr/poeme/une-goutte-de-pluie&gt;

I love the repetition of words “goutte”, “frappe”, “lentement, longuement”, “meme”, “aura raison” which mirrors and reinforces the repetitive, relentless drip-drip of the raindrop and the teardrop. It takes a poet to find this kind of happy marriage between form, vocabulary and content.

The last line is a little surprising, particularly for Jammes who was known to be a practicing Catholic and who wrote some religious poetry. Did he really mean to say that there is nothing underlying the leaf, the heart and life itself?

The Poetry Dude

Je t’aime et je ne sais ce que je voudrais.

Other poems we have posted here by Francis Jammes tend to have been bucolic, gentle, perhaps slightly melancholy pieces, but this is quite a passionate love poem. Perhaps it was written when the poet was young and in the first throes of a love affair. In any event, it almost seems like a precursor of Neruda’s more extravagant love poems; you feel that the poet is impatient to take his hand off the pen and onto his lover’s body.

The title sums it up, really (and signals the poem could also be a distant antecedent of that famous “song” by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin).

JE T’AIME…
PAR FRANCIS JAMMES

Je t’aime et je ne sais ce que je voudrais.
Hier mes jambes douces et claires ont tremblé quand ma gorge t’a touché, lorsque je courais.
Moi, le sang a coulé plus fort comme une roue, jusqu’à ma gorge, en sentant tes bras ronds et doux luire à travers ta robe comme des feuilles de houx.
Je t’aime et je ne sais pas ce que je voudrais.
Je voudrais me coucher et je m’endormirais…
La gentiane est bleue et noire à la forêt.
Les troupeaux de l’Automne vont aux feuilles jaunes, la tanche d’or à l’eau et la beauté aux femmes et le corps va au corps et l’âme va à l’âme.

From <http://www.poemes.co/je-t039aime.html&gt;

The poem begins with the statement of the poet’s complete immersion in his love. He is so much in lover he doesn’t know what to do. He remembers his physical sensations from yesterday, when he last touched his lover – trembling legs, his blood rising to his throat, as he touches her, as he feels her arms through her dress.

The poem rapidly reaches its climax with a kind of fusion of sensations and images – the poets wants to lie down and sleep in the forest, among the wild flowers, the autumn herds and the yellow leaves, where all is beauty, all beauty becomes part of the beauty of a woman and bodies and souls fuse together.

Oh, to be young and in love….

The Poetry Dude

Il y a une armoire à peine luisante

This is a heart-warming poem from Francis Jammes, about the everyday, ordinary experience of being so completely at ease with one’s surroundings that they become an extension of oneself. The poem is about the poet’s dining-room and all that is in it. When you have lived in a place for enough time, maybe a childhood home or a home that has been in the family for generations, everything about it is completely familiar; you could close your eyes and find your way around with no problem. The smells, sounds and feel of every object, piece of furniture, wall, door or window are almost extensions of yourself. This is the comforting picture which Jammes paints in this poem.

 
LA SALLE À MANGER

 
Il y a une armoire à peine luisante
qui a entendu les voix de mes grand-tantes
qui a entendu la voix de mon grand-père,
qui a entendu la voix de mon père.
À ces souvenirs l’armoire est fidèle.
On a tort de croire qu’elle ne sait que se taire,
car je cause avec elle.

Il y a aussi un coucou en bois.
Je ne sais pourquoi il n’a plus de voix.
Je ne peux pas le lui demander.
Peut-être bien qu’elle est cassée,
la voix qui était dans son ressort,
tout bonnement comme celle des morts.

Il y a aussi un vieux buffet
qui sent la cire, la confiture,
la viande, le pain et les poires mûres.
C’est un serviteur fidèle qui sait
qu’il ne doit rien nous voler.

Il est venu chez moi bien des hommes et des femmes
qui n’ont pas cru à ces petites âmes.
Et je souris que l’on me pense seul vivant
quand un visiteur me dit en entrant :
— comment allez-vous, monsieur Jammes ?

From <http://www.paradis-des-albatros.fr/?poeme=jammes/la-salle-a-manger&gt;

The cupboard which has been part of the lives of the poets forbears and ancestors talks to him; the wooden cuckoo which he feels should be talking to him; the old sideboard with its evocative smells of wax, meat, bread and pears, accumulated over the years, is like a faithful servant. Visitors think the poet must be lonely to live alone in such a place, but his companions are the familiar objects which have been part of his life for many years.

This is not a poem written by a young man, it is a man who has learnt to appreciate what life has brought gim and who finds happiness and fulfilment in the ordinary things of everyday life. A wise man, indeed.

The Poetry Dude

J’ai fumé ma pipe en terre et j’ai vu les bœufs,

Here is a poem from Francis Jammes depicting a gentle countryside scene which the poet seems to be appreciating even more because he is smoking his clay pipe while watching the pastoral activity of the cattle and sheep, the herdsmen and the dogs. Timeless, ageless and quite charming…

J’ai fumé ma pipe en terre…

Francis JAMMES

 
J’ai fumé ma pipe en terre et j’ai vu les bœufs,
avec la barre au front et le museau morveux,
résister aux paysans qui leur piquaient la croupe
par-dessus les cornes — et j’ai vu, douce troupe,
défiler les brebis touffues aux jambes faibles.
Le bon chien faisait semblant d’être en colère.
Et le berger lui criait : Loup ! Viens ! Loup ! Ici !
Alors le chien joyeux gambadait jusqu’à lui
et mordait son bâton d’un air facétieux
sous la tranquillité du chaud ciel pluvieux.

From <http://www.unjourunpoeme.fr/poeme/jai-fume-ma-pipe-en-terre&gt;

Think I will go and take a walk in the country.

The Poetry Dude

Lorsqu’il faudra allers vers vous, O mon Dieu faites

This is a nice gentle kind of poem from Francis Jammes, who I believe was a devout Catholic. A prayer to go to heaven with donkeys is whimsical, charming and admirably light-hearted. Robert Louis Stevenson also published a notable work involving donkeys, his “Travels with a Donkey” recounting a trip across France with a donkey. I seem to remember Stevenson’s donkey being rather ill-tempered and difficult to manage, unlike Jammes’ paragons of patience and good nature. I wonder who was right and whether Jammes had real-life experience of handling donkeys?

Prière pour aller au paradis avec les ânes

Lorsqu’il faudra aller vers vous, Ô mon Dieu faites
que ce soit par un jour où la campagne en fête
poudroiera. Je désire ainsi que je fis ici-bas,
choisir un chemin pour aller, comme il me plaira,
au Paradis, où sont en plein jour les étoiles.
Je prendrai mon bâton et sur la grand route
j’irai, et je dirai aux ânes, mes amis :
Je suis Francis Jammes et je vais au Paradis,
car il n’y a pas d’enfer au pays du Bon Dieu.
Je leur dirai : Venez, doux amis du ciel bleu,
pauvres bêtes chéries qui, d’un brusque mouvement d’oreilles
chassez les mouches plates, les coups et les abeilles…
Que je vous apparaisse au milieu de ces bêtes
que j’aime tant parce qu’elles baissent la tête
doucement, et s’arrêtent en joignant leurs petits pieds
d’une façon bien douce et qui vous fait pitié.
J’arriverai suivi de leurs milliers d’oreilles,
suivi de ceux qui portaient au flanc des corbeilles,
de ceux traînant des voitures de saltimbanques
ou des voitures de plumeaux et de fer blanc,
de ceux qui ont au dos des bidons bosselés,
des ânesses pleines comme des outres, aux pas cassés,
de ceux à qui l’on met de petits pantalons,
à cause des plaies bleues et suintantes que font
les mouches entêtées qui s’y groupent en ronds.
Mon Dieu, qu’avec ces ânes je vous vienne.
Faites que dans la paix, des anges nous conduisent
vers des ruisseaux touffus où tremblent des cerises
lisses comme la chair qui rit des jeunes filles,
et faites que, penché dans ce séjour des âmes,
sur vos divines eaux, je sois pareil aux ânes
qui mireront leur humble et douce pauvreté
à la limpidité de l’amour éternel

 Francis Jammes

From <http://www.bourricot.com/Poetes/PriereParadis.html&gt;

The poem is in the form of a prayer to God, asking that when the poet dies, he can choose the day and the manner in which he goes to heaven. And he will choose to be accompanied by his friends the donkeys, whose qualities he praises throughout the rest of the poem in an idyllic vision of the pre-eminence of the humble donkey.

For non-French speakers reading this out loud, I challenge you not to stumble on the third line – “poudroiera”.

The Poetry Dude

J’aime dans le temps Clara d’Ellebeuse

Spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Francis Jammes wrote allusive, nostalgic poems with surprising juxtapositions of words and ideas. This poem is about the poet’s love for a girl called Clara d’Ellebeuse, a somewhat unusual name which probably places her in the upper classes. The love is probably unrequited and the poem seems to be looking back on a bygone age, although there is a contradiction woith the use of the present tense in the first line.

How does the poet Francis Jammes love Clara d’Ellebeuse? Read on…

 
J’aime dans les temps Clara d’Ellébeuse

J’aime dans les temps Clara d’Ellébeuse,
l’écolière des anciens pensionnats,
qui allaint, les soirs chauds, sous les tilleuls
lire les magazines d’autrefois.

Je n’aime qu’elle, et je sens sur mon coeur
la lumière bleue de sa gorge blanche.
Ou est-elle? Où donc était ce bonheur?
Dans sa chambre claire il entrait des branches.

Elle n’est peut-être pas encore morte
— ou peut-être que nous l’étions tous deux.
La grande cour vait des feuilles mortes
dans le vent froid des fins d’été très vieux.

Te souviens-tu ces plumes de paon,
dans un grand vase, auprès des coquillages? . . .
on apprenait qu’on avait fait naufrage,
on appelait Terre-Neuve: le Banc.

Viens, viens, ma chère Clara d’Ellébeuse:
aimons-nous encore si tu existes.
Le vieux jardin a des vieilles tulipes.
Viens toute nue, ô Clara d’Ellébeuse.

From <http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-jammes-1.html&gt;

The first stanza recalls Clara as a schoolgirl, attracting the poet’s attention by sneaking out in the evening to read old-style magazines under the lemon-blossom, uniting images of the girl with other sensory sensations – heat and smell. The second stanza confirms the poet’s enduring love for this girl, and poses the question, where is she and where is happiness. The third stanza wonders whether she is dead, or whether they both are and pairs this idea with dead leaves in the courtyard at the end of summer, again the poet combines sensory images with the idea of nostalgic love that he sets out to convey

The fourth stanza again invokes memory, with mysterious and atmospheric references to peacock feathers, Newfoundland and the Grand Banks fishing grounds. The sense of mystery and nostalgia is reinforced here.

The final stanza call on Clara to come and renew their love, if she still exists. She should come to an old tulip garden and come naked (ready for love).

The poem is a beautiful evocation of lost love and nostalgia for a world where nature and love were in harmony. Is it real or a fantasy? Who knows, but I like to think Clara stands for the impossible ideal of love which we can strive for but never achieve. Real life does not get in the way in this type of love poem.

 
The Poetry Dude