Hédi Kaddour’s poetry arises from observation, from situations both ordinary and emblematic—of contemporary life, of human stubbornness, human invention, or human cruelty. With Treason, the award-winning poet and translator Marilyn Hacker presents an English-speaking audience with the first selected volume of his work.
The poetries of several languages and literary traditions are lively and constant presences in the work of Hédi Kaddour, a Parisian as well as a Germanist and an Arabist. A walker’s, a watcher’s, and a listener’s poems, his sonnet-shaped vignettes often include a line or two of dialogue that turns his observations and each poem itself into a kind of miniature theater piece. Favoring compact, classical models over long verse forms, Kaddour questions the structures of syntax and the limits of poetic form, combining elements of both international modernism and postmodernism with great sophistication.
Capturing Kaddour’s full range of diction, as well as his speed, momentum, and tone, Marilyn Hacker’s translations brilliantly bring these poems alive.
Hédi Kaddour’s poetry arises from observation, from situations both ordinary and emblematic—of contemporary life, of human stubbornness, human invention, or human cruelty. With Treason, the award-winning poet and translator Marilyn Hacker presents an English-speaking audience with the first selected volume of his work.
The poetries of several languages and literary traditions are lively and constant presences in the work of Hédi Kaddour, a Parisian as well as a Germanist and an Arabist. A walker’s, a watcher’s, and a listener’s poems, his sonnet-shaped vignettes often include a line or two of dialogue that turns his observations and each poem itself into a kind of miniature theater piece. Favoring compact, classical models over long verse forms, Kaddour questions the structures of syntax and the limits of poetic form, combining elements of both international modernism and postmodernism with great sophistication.
Capturing Kaddour’s full range of diction, as well as his speed, momentum, and tone, Marilyn Hacker’s translations brilliantly bring these poems alive.
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Overview
Hédi Kaddour’s poetry arises from observation, from situations both ordinary and emblematic—of contemporary life, of human stubbornness, human invention, or human cruelty. With Treason, the award-winning poet and translator Marilyn Hacker presents an English-speaking audience with the first selected volume of his work.
The poetries of several languages and literary traditions are lively and constant presences in the work of Hédi Kaddour, a Parisian as well as a Germanist and an Arabist. A walker’s, a watcher’s, and a listener’s poems, his sonnet-shaped vignettes often include a line or two of dialogue that turns his observations and each poem itself into a kind of miniature theater piece. Favoring compact, classical models over long verse forms, Kaddour questions the structures of syntax and the limits of poetic form, combining elements of both international modernism and postmodernism with great sophistication.
Capturing Kaddour’s full range of diction, as well as his speed, momentum, and tone, Marilyn Hacker’s translations brilliantly bring these poems alive.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300149586 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/06/2010 |
| Pages: | 168 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Hédi Kaddour is the author of five books of poems, two novels, and a book of nonfiction. Marilyn Hacker is an award-winning poet, translator, and critic.
Read an Excerpt
treason
Poems
By HDI KADDOUR, MARILYN HACKER
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2010 Marilyn HackerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-16298-1
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Le troupeau
Portes ouvertes à l'espacement
De la colline où se déploient
La poudre du matin, la métaphore
De beige et bleu, les tintements
Comme réponse au grand cortège
Des nuages à cul plat : la canne,
Un groupe et son berger s'en vont
Au pas qui mène hors de portée
Vers un temps qui se gagne, et jusque
Dans l'oeil des lièvres la vérité
Vient guetter alentour. Approche,
Rien n'empêche, on en serait jaloux,
On oublierait l'idée qu'un mouton
Meurt rarement de vieillesse.
The Flock
Doors flung open on the hillside's
Outspread space where there are, unfurled,
The powder of morning, the metaphor
Of beige and blue, a tinkling
Like a response to the grand cortege
Of flat-bottomed clouds: the staff,
A flock, and its shepherd go off
At a pace which leads them out of sight
Toward a time which is earned, and even
In hares' eyes the truth
Draws near, lies in wait around them. Come closer,
Nothing's stopping you, you could envy them,
Forgetting the fact that a sheep
Rarely dies of old age.
Arbres
La milice qui croyait tellement
Aux grands chênes
Qu'elle les garnissait de pendus.
Celui qui contemple les arbres
A parfois la froideur
Du renard guettant les corbeaux
Jusqu'à ce qu'il lui en tombe un,
Sur la gueule, gelé.
Trees
The militia which had such faith
In tall oaks
That it festooned them with hanged men.
He who gazes at trees
Sometimes has the cold indifference
Of a fox who stares at the crows
Until one drops to him
Right on his snout, frozen.
Noces du chacal
Quand le ciel restait trop longtemps
bleu intense, il arrivait que les gens
se vêtissent de gris et de terne.
Comme en appel. Parfois même,
un peu de pluie pouvait tomber.
Alors — entre la terre rousse des collines,
le plomb volatile du crachin
et les premiers brins de l'orge
— il y avait comme un éclair du soleil
et l'arc-en-ciel surgissait.
Cela s'appelait les noces du chacal.
The Jackal's Wedding
When the sky had stayed too intensely
blue for too long, it sometimes happened that people
dressed in gray and in dull colors.
Like an appeal. Sometimes a little
rain would even fall.
Then—between the red earth of the hills
the volatile lead of the drizzle,
and the first shoots of barley
—there was a kind of sunlight flash
and the rainbow sprang forth.
This was called the jackal's wedding.
La détresse spirituelle
Et marre des faiseurs d'almanachs qui vous
laissent pris entre les dettes, la mort,
ou la semaine des sept demains. Aujourd'hui
c'est encore un monsieur : " Les convulsions
de l'histoire, monstrueuse métaphore de notre
détresse spirituelle. " Regarde donc, détresse :
Burgos, au Moyen âge, un fils de boulanger
se convertit au christianisme, et le père entre
en telle fureur qu'il le jette dans le four.
Sainte Marie, dit la chronique, sauva le fils,
les habitants de Burgos brûlèrent le père et
ne t'éloigne pas trop, détresse, vers le fou rire,
car la suite est une énigme : mon premier
est un convoi de juifs envoyés à Auschwitz par
la Préfecture de Gironde; mon second, un cortège
d'Algériens noyés par balles qui défilent
sous le pont Mirabeau; mon troisième le trésor
d'un grand parti national dans les années soixante,
mon tout doit être le nom propre d'une grande
détresse spirituelle et ne s'appelle surtout pas
Martin Heidegger et ne vous énervez pas, l'énervant
c'est que tout ça ne soit plus qu'allusion.
Spiritual Distress
And damn the almanac makers who leave you
stuck between debts and death
or a week with seven tomorrows. Today
here's another gent: History's convulsions,
monstrous metaphor of our
spiritual distress. Listen to this, distress:
in Burgos, in the Middle Ages, a baker's son
converted to Christianity, and his father,
in a fury, flung him into the oven.
Saint Mary, says the chronicle, saved the son, and
the citizens of Burgos burned the father and
don't wander too far off, distress, and start to giggle
because what comes next is a riddle: my first is
a convoy of Jews sent to Auschwitz by
the Préfecture of the Gironde; my second, a procession
of bullet-bloated Algerians who float
under the pont Mirabeau; my third the funding
of the party in power in the sixties,
and together they make the proper name of a great
spiritual distress which is certainly not called
Martin Heidegger and don't get annoyed, what's annoying
is that all this should merely be allusion.
Trahison
" Les poètes n'ont pas la pudeur de leurs aventures : ils les exploitent. "
—F. NIETZSCHE
Qu'ils n'aient rien à se mettre dans la bouche
pour le dernier voyage! Des mois entiers de courses
au grand marché — pas drôle du tout, si, des fois,
quand le soleil embrase le coeur du monde
et qu'on que la voix se précipite pour empêcher
que ça vous saute aux yeux c'est maladroit
comme le cycle inquiet des endocrines
alors on se met à trois ou quatre derrière
une grasse matrone, le taffetas collé à la peau
par des inondations de sueur et on lui gueule
en pleine allée centrale madame, madame, le cul
y mange la robe ! Et file entre les cageots, tandis
que rouge, vert, ocre, l'espace rebalance
les grandes claques de son rire. Halte au coeur :
avec dix francs de longue épargne on l'avait,
le ballon made in France avec odeur de cuir
et penalties presque à neuf mètres, grands matchs,
grands cris, grandes bagarres jusqu'à la nuit
du temps qui ne dormira pas, quand les hautes
chandelles rendent aux étoiles un peu de l'énergie
qui nous en vient, avec dix francs, le con
d'leur mère à ces tarés du testicule, ils avaient
filé droit chez une putain à forte touffe.
Treason
"Poets lack modesty in their adventures: they exploit them."
—F. NIETZSCHE
May they have nothing to fill their mouths
on their last journey! Months of running errands
in the marketplace—no fun at all, but sometimes,
when the sun sets the heart of the world on fire
and your voice rushes up to stop
everyone seeing it, it's as awkward
as your uneasy hormone surges,
so three or four of you gang up behind
a hefty matron, shiny cloth glued to her skin
by floods of sweat, and you shout at her
between the vegetable stalls, lady, lady, your dress
is up your ass, and take off around the fruit crates! While
red, green, ocher, the air swings her huge
peals of laughter back at you. Heartstopping:
with ten hard-saved francs you could have
the soccer ball Made in France smelling of leather
and penalties at nearly nine yards, great games,
great shouts, great fights until the night
of time which won't sleep, when the tall
candles give back to the stars some of the
energy we get from them, with the ten francs,
those pus-balled motherfuckers, they
went straight to some hairy-cunt whore.
Les coquelicots
Et c'est peut-être vrai que le destin
avait commencé par agioter entre les cascades
et les grands arbres qui sont l'orgueil là-bas
du regard des maîtres quand ils consentent
à délaisser le cul des cousines appauvries.
Qui sait la vérité ? Celui qui a frappé
et celui qui a reçu les coups. Etait venue
d'un Oberland à silences pas très propres
et vivait avec eux, disait l'eau doit bouillir,
et les femmes ont de nouvelles responsabilités,
aimait aussi dans l'herbe remercier le Dieu
du soleil et des spasmes vaginaux, et quand
on a mis le feu à tous les coquelicots d'Europe,
elle a crié Les peuples ! Et à Kiental, chez moi,
les socialistes ! Mais, les arabes, vous savez,
le baroud ... son mari la fit taire, partit premier,
revint avec la croix, la jambe en moins, liste
de Mohammed morts à Verdun. Elle criait C'est
de la folie, pas vous, il y a là-bas en Russie ...
elle trimbalait son estropié, ça l'avait rendue
folle, oui, pas "d'intelligence avec l'ennemi",
il faut savoir, même pour vingt ans, soigner
les femmes de héros, a dit le procureur.
Poppies
Fate, perhaps it's true that it began
by trading on the futures of waterfalls
and tall trees, the pride there
on the masters' faces when they deign
to spare the asses of their threadbare female cousins.
Who knows the truth? The one who struck the blows
and the one who was beaten. She came
from an Oberland of soiled silences
and lived with them, said, Water must boil,
and Women now have new responsibilities;
also loved, stretched in the grass, to thank the God
of sunlight and vaginal spasms, and when
they had set fire to all the poppies of Europe
she cried out, The people! And in my land, in Kiental,
the socialists! But Arabs, you know
what hotheads they are ... Her husband shut her up, left first,
came back plus a medal, less a leg, a list
of all the Mohammeds dead at Verdun. She exclaimed, It's madness, not you, there in Russia ...
she hauled her cripple around, it drove her mad,
yes. Not "dealings with the enemy,"
you must be able, even for twenty years
to take care of heroes' wives, said the prosecutor.
Le moulin
Je suis le point unique, la leçon
D'un paysage où se joignent, le soir,
Rivière, église et vieux moulin :
Le clocher monte, l'arbre tient,
La roue travaille, et l'eau grise
S'en va sous le vent d'hiver,
Laissant passer, entre chaque aube,
De quoi moudre le grain, scier
Les planches des cercueils, et faire
Rêver l'oisif, dans ce roulement calme
Qui continue à fabriquer de l'énergie
Avec le temps qui reste à la matière
Quand les hommes ont fini de crier
Sur le manteau doux de la neige.
The Mill
I am the single point, the lesson
In a landscape where evening links
A stream, a church, and an old mill:
The bell tower rises, the tree stands fast,
The wheel works, and gray water
Flows away beneath the winter wind,
Letting enough pass, from dawn to dawn
To grind grain, to saw
Coffin planks, to make
Idle men dream, in this calm rumbling
Which keeps on fabricating energy
In the time that's left for matter
When mankind has done shouting
Over the soft cloak of snow.
Les fileuses
Celle qui malgré l'hiver a gardé
Aux joues le souvenir des raisins
Suit de l'oeil un couple lent ;
Il franchit le pont de pierre
Vers le bout de forêt où s'embusque L'ombre bleue des renards. Tout cela
Prend silencieusement sa part de haine,
A l'heure où les jeunes femmes
Quittent la maison lourde de neige,
La tête dans la nuit, étourdies d'avoir
Bu du vin en flammes et filé le lin
De leurs draps entre les jeux, les gages
Et les mensonges, sous le regard
Des hommes qui graissaient des courroies.
The Spinners
The one who has kept, in spite of winter
A memory of grapes on her cheeks
Follows a slow couple with her eyes;
They cross the stone bridge toward
A bit of forest where the blue shadows
Of foxes lie in ambush. All that
Silently claims its portion of hate,
At the hour when young women
Leave the house, heavy with snow,
Their heads still full of night, careless from having
Drunk mulled wine and spun
The linen of their sheets between games, forfeits,
And lies, beneath the gaze
Of men waxing harnesses.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from treason by HÃeDI KADDOUR. Copyright © 2010 by Marilyn Hacker. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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