Citizens of Beauty: Poems of Jean Sénac

by Jean Sénac, Jack Hirschman (Translator)

Overview

Now available in English for the first time, translated by the poet Jack Hirschman, this beautiful collection of poems by the Algerian poet Jean Sénac (1926-1973) was originally published when he was forty-one. Sénac represented the hope of the new generation of Algerians who were celebrating their independence from France after 130 years of colonialism, and in the tradition of René Char and the early Albert Camus, he portrayed an Algeria whose land and people would finally sing with their own voice. Sénac celebrates revolution, love, and the body, beginning with the resonant verses: “And now we’ll sing love / for there’s no Revolution without love.” He sang, as well, of beauty: “No morning without smiling. / Beauty on our lips is one continuous fruit.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611861990
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2016
Series:	African Humanities and the Arts
Edition description:	1
Pages:	82
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jean Sénac is considered one of the most important poets from Algeria.

Read an Excerpt

Citizens of Beauty

Poems of Jean Sénac

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By Jack Hirschman

Michigan State University Press

Copyright © 2016 Michigan State University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61186-199-0

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CHAPTER 1

Citizens of Beauty

For Ahmed Hounaci

    And now we'll sing love
    for there's no Revolution without love,
    no morning without smiling.
    Beauty on our lips is one continuous fruit:
    it has the precise taste of sea urchins one gathers at dawn
    and relishes when the Golden Sea Urchin breaks away from the
      mists and warbles its song on the waves.
    Because everything's song — except death!
    I love you!
    Revolution, you've got to sing the endless body renewed by Woman,
    the hand of a Lover,
    the graceful curve, like a writing on space,
    of all those passersby and all those travelers
    who give our march its genuine light,
    our heart its impulse.
    O all of you who establish serene or violent beauty,
    pure bodies in the tireless alchemy of Revolution,
    incorruptible gazes, kisses, desires in the groping of our struggle,
    points of support, real points punctuating our hope,
    O you brothers and sisters, citizens of beauty, come into the Poem!
    Here's the sea. The bay (because it's a fruit of light and our gaze).
    Young bodies are full of traces from the sea.
    (I repeat myself because beauty is infinite recognition on our page
      ...)
    All is light and sings while Revolution fashions its instruments.
    Here's the sea. Your body, salt marsh where, thirsty, I hold sway.
    Let's drink the sea. I'll drink your soul.
    Salt-drunk. Thirst-drunk. In little gulps I drink your soul.
    What space in our most sealed-off connections!
    What mutations in that plundered still!
    You radiate, a carrier of planets,
    from the depths of abysms of linen.
    Over the other slope of ourselves
    we're seesawing. Here's the sea.

    Here, the fields. The vine-shoots scowl. But the buds, the trimmed
      grass, the earth
    big as your hips! And palms the length
    of wide tarred roads. Let's sing love
    for Revolution on this earth is the component of essential fertility.
    What glory in the simple look of an infant under that veil!
    What promise! May the afternoons here be disrupted,
    perpetually new in their modulations
    — Who can sing the same song twice here?
    And now love has no more power to speak.
    New grenades are bursting in our teeth,
    the pomegranates of popular conscience, the fruits!

    Your body was almost impalpable, and I all but read through it with
      my lips,
    so immense was the multitude of sunlight upon you
    and the sand around.
    (The words — tell me, O my love, the words we're going to make over,
    make them spick-and-span so they're no longer ashamed in the vein
      in the stone where misfortune's put them,
    so they can cut loose, winging through the streets, onto the Pier, into
      fields
    like you, so that they wear a smile becalmed. In
    the mouth of words, the density of the sea, the density of your lips!)
    Beauty on your lips is one continuous flame,
    the bird of sunlight who's bent on its miraculous laying of eggs
    — and succeeds!
    O I'm never done greeting the day, putting my delight
    in daily order, arranging it on your body,
    giving life to the alphabet of the dream!
    I love you. The Revolution rises
    through the sheer symphony of young bodies fronting the sea.

    And we're brought near. What a marvel, faithful earth,
    What goodness!
    Beauty was there, for the firstcomer, in the opening of his hand,
    vulnerable and wild, a fruit balanced
    between gaze and hunger. In me
    many birds, many birds
    fluttering, the words are putting on
    marching sandals. Revolution,
    what an afternoon it was!
    I've seen the most beautiful people on earth
    smiling at the fruit and the fruit giving itself.

    For the fruit, should you invite it to the banquets of men,
    will rush up.
    Exploding like a pupil.
    You think he's chaotic, he swims with ordered strokes.
    Listen to the urchin, the medusa
    who unfolds in order to defend itself:
    a melody of space — and the cosmonaut responds.
    Your heart doesn't burst with joy; it's rounded-off, composed.
    Peace is sweet on our skin.
    I love you. You're strong as a government committee
          A farm cooperative
          A nationalized saloon
        The afternoon rose
          The unity of the people
        A literacy cell
          A professional center
        A word from meddah
      The fragrance of jasmine in the rue de Tayeb
        A gouache by Benanteur
    The song of walls and the metamorphoses of slogans
          The soleá of my mother
            The blues, the browns of Zerati
        The swimmers at Pointe Pescade
          The Timgad Black
          The Venus of Cherchell
          My heart, my graffiti.
    I love you. You're my positive lunacy.
          Like a very red watermelon
      The smile of Ahmed
        A Chinese kimono
          A djebbah of Jasmina
    A beautiful political discussion
      A wagon full of laughs
    A girl taking off her veil
        Another putting it on
      A butcher posting a sale
        A successful performance
          The applauding crowd
      Jean who lays another
      On a rock and names the land
    The spurt of water in the yard
      As on the night of bouqala
        A priest from Djelal
          An elegy by Anna Greki
        A mathematical formula
      The history of Medjnoun
            And his Leila
    The procession of November 1st
          The certainty of Bachir
          The steps of Odessa
        The olives of Tilioua
      A dancer of the hadaoui
          El Anka and his dove
      Yahia who peels the noun
          Natalie who spells
    One Orange.
    You're my action poetry. I love you.
    Yes, you're strong, you're beautiful
    like words that find their place
            on the sheet.
        Our healed sorrow,
        Our miracle of pardon,
          like the walkways on terraces,
            The satellite that answers
    like a pebble between your hand
            and mine,
    bearing witness to summer.
    Together we've confronted ridicule,
    acquired habits, the current images,
    the steelworks of capital.
    The harvests were good this summer.
    The sea true blue. Almost green. I love you.
    And now for our kids I speak the color of Tolga,
    that blue that's come rapping at the window,
    not a sea-blue but a deeper bed
    for the simple leisure of the soul.
    And our heart so like a bedsheet, in that blue we've crossed
    (look, it's burning!),
    the blue smile of Tolga among its ruins and palms!
    And the dignity of El Hamel!
    M'Chouneche, which crackles with audacity at the bottom of gorges!
    I'll never be done rousing our ironworks,
    I'll never be finished naming the infinite
    prolegomena on your body ...
            O patient and headstrong
    Revolution!
        O those teeth that are the white page
    where my poem is constructed!
            O mellowest night
    in the absinthes of your arms!
    Yes, don't be afraid, tell them
    that you're beautiful like a government committee
          A farm cooperative
          Like a nationalized mine
    O my love, let's risk dressing the body
    of the new poem in new flowers!

    And even if the horror confronts us now
    (for nothing's easy, no, everything's in endless suspense).
    If our bloated monkeys on café terraces
    nibble at the future along with the peanuts
    and speak of Ben M'Hidi as of an object of harmless consumption
    (O brother-dynamite! O naked brother-flame!
    O active brother-wind who roots out the gangrene!),
    even if discouragement and derision attack us,
    we know now that we're saved
    in the great socialist motion
    for Revolution and Love have renewed our flesh
    (Salut! Salut, tzaghrit and grains, a hundred times over!)
    I love you. Near the sea
    the children of the alphabet are rising in joy like reeds.
    We sit ourselves down in the shadow,
    and you're astonished
    because an animal for god's sake has come and plopped itself down
      on my knee.
    Yes, those who've perished have not deceived us.
    That's why we're singing love now.

        Algiers, January 1963
        Pointe Pescade, October 1963

CHAPTER 2

Arbatache

For Kayasse

    1.

    This evening you draw near me more confident than usual.
    You've planted your tree.
    Its stock's replanted along the walkways in sweat,
    in smiles.
    Yesterday's tensions no longer make sense,
    nor do those tensions we tear out of ourselves
    one by one.
    Let's speak of Arbatache the way one speaks of
    Soummam or the Sierra Maestra,
    the way one speaks of Odessa or the Paris Commune,
    the way one says, You're beautiful, You're grown-up, You can read.
    Our flag is green: the crowd that replants
    and the heart that bounds toward the sea in August.
    So many nights have passed and so much night gnaws at us:
    it was the land that screwed the party.
    Today you repeat: "Look, Yahia, we've held back the land, we've kept
      life back."
    Where's the poem now
    save in the hand that rises to affirm our harvest,
    save on our lips where the tree's
    already fruited and the bird's
    brought a bit of the sky back?
    I'm dreaming, we're dreaming
        to the rhythm of passing trucks.
    And I hug you, my child,
    more confident this evening for having planted your tree.


    2.

    Then he sinks into the opacity.
    My shadow's rotten, he thinks.
    I'm a tree all scarred,
    a mess of nerves where birds get drunk
    and fall into the mud tearing their feathers.
    It was an autumn nightmare.
    The untouched mob around him constructed a dam
    against death.
    Am I a traveler from another world?
    A residue of many mistakes?
    Once again the Child leaps up onto its heart:
    I've planted my tree!


    3.

    He knew that Revolution
    makes a brick of a smear,
    a quarry stone of a cinder.

    He knew that night is short
    despite long, long hours
    for him who puts a sun in the corners of the house.

    He knew that the Child's trust
    is more fertile than our dramas
    and dominates our lack of good sense.

    He knew that our flesh
    decked out to be corrupted
    is quick to recoup its brilliance.
    One day our mountains will turn green again.


    4.

    But on this arid day, happiness itself
    is crossing our body and not stopping.
    The sea can come pounding, and our vertebrae
    will open to an infinite overflow,
    all around there being only weariness and disorder.
    To be asked even if friendship, love sprouting over this land,
    hungry only for bread, justice and an impetuous enjoyment like
      oblivion.
    The jaunty enemy — uncalled-for! — has battered us for so long
    and the vineyard has clutched its shards to this heart
    so that there's no longer place for a welcome word
    or a flower in a window.
    Look at those mountains: not a single rose!
    No woman's hand for a rose!
    Only worldly emaciation and barking dogs!


    5.

    A tree and some bread, that's what they're asking for,
    and a little fun in town,
    a little night-towning: alcohol, the twist after the war!
    And a little female saliva on wounds that are still raw.
    But where's the rose? Where's the tree, the bread?
    The gilded word that isn't a politesse, a frill?
    Where's respect? Honor?
    A chill from way up north is passing over this land.


    6.

    But the tree comes on. Always, even if you remain aloof, it comes on.
    It shakes your sick old body and aims its bird at the sky.
    Between vineyard and charnel house, it mumbles a word
    that leads the sun to your lips, and you're singing!
    Arbatache, because the people are on the rise!
    Arbatache, because your shadow is possible,
    even holey, even black!
    Arbatache, because our very tears
    are going to irrigate the soil
    so fleeced, so smutted!
    Arbatache, because life is stronger
    in the tiny fist of a Child
    than in a bureaucrat's hand!
    Arbatache, because you'll stumble 40 times
    on the road and still scrape together your tools!
    Arbatache, because at the end of the sadness
    there'll be a planted tree!
    And tomorrow, the Rose!


    7.

    The earth is crumbly, welcoming, but your soul's a rock
    of solitude.
    The tzagrit of women, the hands
    of kids on your chest
    are only passing cart tracks.
    Nightingales of exile.
    It's because night has built its bridges in splendor,
    and because the darkness is rich,
    and you watch over that gritty treasure with pride. How many
      centuries
    are scattered in your bones?
    What torrents swirl in you, carrying the taste of the dead
    to your heart? For it is death
    that's taken you by the waist and is dancing, and you know it.
    Come back! Come back to us! Hold on to the land!
    Hold on to what's left of clarity in you!


    8.

    Yé mmâ! Yé! Like a well
    stuffed with rotten barley, I resound.
    At the rim, barely a drop of rain.
    And the sun, the sea? That was yesterday. Yé mmâ!
    I hook myself to a blade of grass, to a smile, to the sound
    — Roots! — to any sign more violent
    than this nightmare where I'm biting
    the earth!
    Yé mmâ, the earth my accomplice
    and not a eulogy to happiness!
    There's got to be time for the pickaxe
    to arrive at the heart, to split the marble
    and for the grain to blossom.
    (You know it, my farm boy!)
    The sun that drives everyone nuts is now and not forever!
    Look, I'm calling for you like a child that's erupti ...
    Yé mmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaâ!


    9.

    A hugged body is never a dam
    against the night but contrariwise
    is a shift of restlessness that burns
    till dawn and recalls you to the center
    of sorrows. If you build
    a citadel of muscles
    the worm will get to you and you'll stagger
    drunk with your corruption.
    But sometimes the earth opens outward.
    You plunge in, swim
    toward the root, you struggle
    surrounded by mirrors, you reach
    a clear space vaster than the sea.
    It's there the trees that you haven't planted,
    the burst-open fruits, and the smell of the ancient
    darkness are waiting for you. You bite into the fruit
    faithful to your obstinacy. What mocking
    fidelity! Death
    resumes its dance on every hugged body.

    (What root have you been looking for for 16 years,
    or what splinter to take out of your body?)


    10.

    If you bite into earth, you can
    always keep its taste nestled in a tooth.
    You've wanted to cry out: They're all rotten!
    Lemme hear Rameau, El Anka, Djamila,
    lemme hear my mother — her naggings in poor taste,
    lemme lose myself in these drawings the kids are scribbling with
      chalk on the Pointe Pescade streets,
    lemme, lemme — deck out your boats,
    fatten you up at the bashes!
    What do your brawls and your works mean
    when my people are dying of hunger?
    O young ones! O high schoolers, fellahin, jobless ones of the towns
      and starving ones of the douars,
    get yourselves up and raise up your alphabets, your oral culture
      against their mediocre verse!
    Those worms are already gnawing at our roots.
    But the root is stronger than their nibblings.
    So, on with the feast.
    Bite into the earth and keep its flavor in a tooth.
    A tooth for the poor, a head-strong, furious and fine
    tooth for loving and a healthy hunger.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Citizens of Beauty by Jack Hirschman. Copyright © 2016 Michigan State University. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Citizens of Beauty 1

Arbatache 11

The Night of Doubt 25

Words with Walt Whitman 51

Summoning the Diwan of the Pier 57

Brahim, the Generous 61

An Island against Death 67

Editorial Reviews

Now available in English for the first time, translated by the poet Jack Hirschman, this beautiful collection of poems by the Algerian poet Jean Sénac (1926–1973) was originally published when he was forty-one. Sénac represented the hope of the new generation of Algerians who were celebrating their independence from France after 130 years of colonialism, and in the tradition of René Char and the early Albert Camus, he portrayed an Algeria whose land and people would finally sing with their own voice. Sénac celebrates revolution, love, and the body, beginning with the resonant verses: “And now we’ll sing love / for there’s no Revolution without love.” He sang, as well, of beauty: “No morning without smiling. / Beauty on our lips is one continuous fruit.

From the Publisher