LA TRADUCTION
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Born in Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier in 1912, just west of Quebec City, Garneau is considered to be the first French-Canadian poet to have written in free-verse, though several of his poems do include rhyme and meter. He has influenced many Canadian writers, foremost of those was his close cousin, Anne Hébert, one of the greatest Canadian novelists and poets of the twentieth century.
Garneau spent his childhood and adolescence as a painter, giving showings in many galleries in Québec and Montréal. He attended the colleges of the Jesuit Fathers in Montréal for a short time, began winning many smaller writing prizes, and in 1934 co-founded the literary journal Relief, a haven for the avant-garde free verse poetry of which Garneau was now spear-heading. In 1937, with the financial help of his parents—and specifically his mother to whom he was emotionally and dependently attached—he published his first and only collection while alive, Glances and Plays in Space. During this time he was physically fragile, a result of learning that at the age of 16 an attack of rheumatism had brought on a heart lesion which severely restricted his travels to Paris, and even within Québec.
After negative reviews of his collection, most notably by that of the Catholic church which dominated all aspects of society at the time, Garneau retired permanently from public life. His book was considered to undermine the Catholic church by casting an unfavorable light on the institution. Garneau wrote on such themes as sexual repression, physical communion and identification with nature, and created a more earthly reliance in his treatment of the human condition versus a more divine and heavenly influence. This accessibility to the body, and to the inherit identification with an earth that is perhaps more prone to sin, is what led critics to dismiss Garneau although he was only just beginning to explore the prison he found himself in, and perhaps would have found an earth-shattering way out of in a new linguistic mode.
Garneau’s self-hatred and hidden desire stems from the confusion of less then godly acts, and the difference between acting on these desires and only thinking about them. Poems like Bird Cage exemplify this condition reflected in spiritual and physical entrapment, with some part of him escaping and coming back with new knowledge—the image of the dove and fig leaf in the Bible’s story of Noah comes to mind. Poems like The Elms and River of My Eyes are also images of escape, communion, and spiritual growth within nature. The tone of much of his poetry is melancholic, the lines short and direct, the images precise and metaphorical, something which actually makes the art of translation more difficult—what precise metaphor is at work in the image, and what miniscule clues are there in the rest of the poem?
It is as if Garneau knew his time was limited, and that his intensity was not created by the physical and societal entrapment he found himself in, but by a desire to reach beyond what he had been taught to see, a sort of navigation around the object which stood in his way—the church, his body, and the standard of metrical language. Garneau died at the age of 31 in 1943, found adrift in a dingy on the river near his childhood home, having apparently fainted and gone into an irretrievable coma due to the physical exertion.
Bibliography
Le
Malheur Total d’Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau. Réginald
Martel. 10/10/01.
Hector
de Saint-Denys Garneau.
Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier City Website.
The Elms
In static fields
like slender umbrellas,
in tranquil elegance,
the elms are alone
or among small families.
Composed, they give shade
to cattle and horses
who surround them at noon;
they do not speak,
I did not hear them call.
The elms are insensible,
giving thin shade
simply
to the beasts.
Les Ormes
Dans les champsCalmes et parasols
Sveltes, dans une tranquille élégance
Les ormes sont seauls ou par petites familles
Les ormes calmes font de l’ombre
Pour les vaches et les chavaux
Qui les entourent à midi.
Ils ne parlent pas
Je ne les ai pas entendus chanter.
Ils sont simple
Ils font de l’ombre légère
Bonnement
Pour les bêtes.
___________
River of My Eyes
Oh, this morning my eyes are wide like rivers,
the wave of my ready eyes reflects everything,
this coolness under my eyelids is
extraordinary,
encircling all the images I see--
as a stream that cools an island,
or as flowing waves surround
a sunlit swimmer.
Rivière de Mes Yeux
Ô mes yeux ce matin grands comme des rivières
Ô l’onde de mes yeux prets à tout reflèter
Et cette fraicheur sous mes paupières
Extraordinaire
Tout alentour des images que je vois
Comme un ruisseau rafraichit l’Île
Et comme l’onde fluente entoure
La baigneuse ensoleillé.
__________
Bird Cage
I am a bird cage,
a cage of bone
with a bird inside.
This bird is mortality which makes
his nest in my bone cage.
When nothing transpires
one hears the creasing of his wings,
and when one laughs loudly
then suddenly stops,
he can hear it call
like a small bell.
It is a bird held captive,
inevitable death in my bone cage.
Wouldn't he like to escape,
and is it you that would return
or is it me,
what is it that
it couldn't leave
after it's eaten away
my heart,
the wellspring of blood
with life inside--
It will always hold my soul in its beak
Cage d’Oiseau
Je suis une cage d’oiseau
Une cage d’os
Avec un oiseau
L’oiseau dans ma cage d’os
C’est la mort qui fait son nid
Lorsque rien n’arrive
On entend froisser ses ailes
Et quand on a ri beaucoup
Si l’on cesse tout à coup
On l’entend qui recoule
Au fond
Comme un grelot
C’est un oiseau tenu captif
La mort dans ma cage d’os
Voudrait-il pas s’envoler
Est-ce vous qui le retiendrez
Est-ce moi
Qu’est-ce que c’est
Il ne pourra s’en aller
Qu’aprés avoir tout mangé
Mon coeur
La source du sang
Avec la vie dedans
Il aura mon âme au bec.
__________
Accompaniment
I walk beside a joy
A joy that is not mine
and that I cannot hold.
I walk beside my joyful self.
I hear the steps that walk beside me,
But I cannot change places on the sidewalk,
I cannot put my feet on those steps and say this is me.
I'm briefly content in this company,
But in secret I devise exchanges
In all sorts of operations, alchemies,
In blood transfusions,
atoms moving in some balancing act
So that one day, transfigured,
I may be borne by the dance of these joyful steps
With the fading sound of my own beside me,
Their exilic loss diminishing to my left
Beneath a stranger who takes a side-street.
Accompagnement
Je marche à côté d'une joie
D'une joie qui n'est pas à moi
D'une joie à moi que je ne puis pas prendre
Je marche à côté de moi en joie
J'entends mon pas en joie qui marche à côté de moi
Mais je ne puis changer de place sur le trottoir
Je ne puis pas mettre mes pieds dans ces pas-là et dire voilà
c'est moi
Je me contente pour le moment de cette compagnie
Mais je machine en secret des échanges
Par toutes sortes d'opérations, des alchimies,
Par des transfusions de sang
Des déménagements d'atomes par des jeux d'équilibre
Afin qu'un jour, transposé,
Je sois porté par la danse de ces pas de joie
Avec le bruit décroissant de mon pas à côté de moi
Avec la perte do mon pas perdu s'étiolant a ma gauche
Sous les pieds d'un étranger qui prend une rue transversale.
© Copyright 2002 Benjamin Vogt
The original French poems, except River, can be found in Poémes Choisi, published by Éditions du Noroît (Québec) 1993, selected and edited by Hélène Dorion