TRANSLEXICALIA

TLex

The Journal of the Institute for Lexical Ecology (ILE)
An organ of ISOCPHYS.
Founded in 1992 by a “sestina of polylexical exiles.”
Translexicalia XV
Raymond Roussel

Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique

Ouvrage orné de cinquante-neuf dessins de H.-A. ZO

Paris: Librairie Alphonse Lemerre, 1932.

Translexicization, translexification, translexication, and translexicalization into lingua appalachiana and idiomatic anglosaxonic by D. I. Swopes [↑], based on the “deuxième édition” conserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France [↑], available as a full text pdf file [↑] from that grand institution’s Gallica collection [↑] of electronic texts.

Introduction

The peruser of the Lemerre edition will note that Roussel (1932) [↓] had both the text of his own four cantos, as well the 59 images he commissioned from Zo, printed only on the recto of each page such that text and image alike would be swaddled fore and aft by comfortable blanks of whitespace, thus providing an appealingly slight and thematically slant quanta of recuperation between lexical consumption and its optic echo which all subsequent writers should be urged to emulate. I have employed the foreparts of these puffy blanks, these flocculent wordrests, these pain de mie–like pauses, as convenient spaces in which to accommodate my translexification and translexicalization into fluent lingua appalachiana and idiomatic anglosaxonic of the original as best as I am able given my new lexican crutch, while concomitantly translexicating their more easily detached (and sullied) caudal homologues along this peripheral frame in which the translexicization of my marginal scholia may be seen to productively nestle. Pagination mimics the original (which all true seekers after knowledge are urged to consult), to which is added an appropriate mark (') abaft that of my own translexical contribution. At the risk of marring both versions’ margins, tight italicized line numbers—accumulating by snowdrifted decimals as dictated by convention—have been added for the benefit of scholars. I also did not deem it too perverse to caption each image with its referent verse. Furthermore, though I have not always resisted the temptation to peek at Andrew Hugill’s (1996) curious “translation” [↓] (the only I have been able to trace in the ER (last two letters of ether)), I have striven mightily towards that end, and I urge others to follow my pious example—yet perhaps his betrudged lucubration may not be completely bereft of utility, as a species of rough-hewn wand or crudely worked menhir directing the novice away from the wind-swept abyss and along the more sheltered trail arbored round by the thorny kraal of my pithy comments, my angular lines. As for the Kenneth Koch (1964) version of canto three [↓], toward that siren also I have lent a deaf ear, though in this case, while virtue certainly slept in circumstance’s bed, it definitely did not make it, being as I am currently interned in a mountain-top bungalow at least four hours’ journey by rail or boat from our neotropical country’s beleaguered though ever-bustling capital, Agua Prieta. Ditto for the admirable (and illimitable, for this translexicist at least, as the snippet in Badman (2004) [↓] illustrates) Monk/Mathews (2005) versification [↓]. Nevertheless, and as follows heartily from our institution’s very ethos and existence, the point is neither to supplant nor supersede nor stifle nor mock, but rather to complement, to contribute to that heady process of promiscuous textuality to which all may give tongue without fear of impotence or heckling, as one may witness at any poetry reading where even the most inept, the most banal, the most hackneyed, the most maudlin, the most contrite, the most foolish of poets will be observed to make use of poetic techniques more gainfully husbanded by our hoariest bards. I have acceded to Roussel’s (1932) [↓], alas, vain (for reasons of Depression-Era economics involving causal chains of ink supplies and paper production and book demands far too ornery and historically obtuse for me to dare describe the effects of which before mortally nicking the scimitar edge of this parenthesis) envisagement of his complex and beautiful work, by correlating degree of parenthetical insertion with various colors, allowing the complementary textual filaments to be easily and tastefully, I hope, teased apart from, and tagged again to, each other, in order that the eye may more readily follow whichever paths of lexical pleasure it may be the reader’s whim to tread. In addition, while Roussel’s (1932) [↓] notes en bas de page have been chromatically indexed to the trunks on which they epiphytically flourish, no effort has been made to further tint the sickled nodes radically infixed within these dendrites, as it was deemed that such hybridization would breed more ruttish fluff than clear flower and true seed. Something similar could be said about the lack of marginal line numbers attached (which they are not!) to these trailing shoots. I wish to tap a coda to this brief introduction simply by redundantly pointing out what will soon be obvious to many, that this translexicator’s marginal scholia sutures only into my own dig at a fluent lingua appalachiana and idiomatic anglosaxonic, thus sparing Roussel’s (1932) [↓] gallicisms (though I will, of course, be making reference to them) any untoward besmirchment by an overgrowth of superscripted digits or sebastianesque pock-a-plock of arrowheads with which my own patiently suffering lines will be martyred. Before planting my scholia, however, allow me to acknowledge the profound encouragement and support—heterolexical, translexical, and always promiscuously textual—visited upon me by two gracious palearctic migrants to our Tetrastic regions, my colleagues at ISOCPHYS, Bernard Vighdan and Arnaut Raymond: they, more than anyone else, will recognize that whatever smut may blight this script, owes its wordism to that sprawling paperist AGSAD of conid sloimciks, those prominent inexplicable lexical berdîwars conjunctivised by spry dragomaniacs and slangy liars to make divastigatory mnasiakakoe (“bad seeds”) in sex logurs.

Marginal Scholia

1. Roussel (1935: 33–34) informs us that “les Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique devaient contenir [would have contained] une partie descriptive. Il s’agissait d’une minuscule lorgnette-pendeloque, dont chaque tube, large de deux millmètres et fait pour se coller contre l’œil [and made to be pressed against the eye], renfermait une photographie sur verre, l’un celle des bazars du Caire, l’autre d’un quai de Louqsor.

“Je fis la description en vers de [I set to verse the description of] ces deux photographies. (C’était, en somme, une recommencement exact de mon poème la Vue.)” Indeed it is, as a reflective glance through each poem’s opening passage (door, gate, holder, reach, scope) will proove:

Sans doute à réfléchir, à compter cela porte,

D’être avisé que là, derrière cette porte
(Roussel 1932: 1, lines 1–2; emphasis added.)

Sans doute, the syllabic reflections evident in the second of each dyad of this pair of doublets is without coincident, as the interplay of initial alveodental sonorant occlusives [d], gamut-running glides sliding from dental [l] to glottal [r], twin avian or Avestan or maybe avaricious but definitely avid and available and perhaps avuncular instantiations of an [a] preceding the voiced labiodental fricative [v], followed by near-matching quantal high vowels [i] and [u] differing only in roundedness or lack thereof, shows, which may be illustrated as follows:

D–LAVU

D–RAVI

2. Conjunction of tint, line number, and incision (degree one at ten, red; degree four at twenty, blue) makes clear the decimal structure Roussel intended, which Kane (2006) [↓] perceptively notes:

My own guess, for what it is worth, is that he was trying to recreate the structure of an annotated chess game. Typically, this will contain the moves of the game itself and, within the annotations, variations and sub-variations (which often, incidentally, are set out within parentheses) relating to the moves played. These variations give the thoughts behind the moves, the moves that might have been played but weren’t. Roussel was a keen chess player and a friend of the Polish Grandmaster Xawier Tartakower, and invented a new method of checkmating a lone king with just king, bishop and knight. So he would surely have been familiar with chess literature. It seems important to note here that in chess the moves not played, the “unheard melodies,” are often of greater import than the moves actually made. They may give a better indication of the underlying logic in a game.

However, Roussel tells us that he set about composing what would eventually become his Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique in 1915, finishing them in 1928 (Roussel 1935: 33–34), and that it was not until 1932 that he began playing chess (ibid.: 133).

3. You will notice that the gallicism for “embarrassed” is “le rouge au front,” which rhymes nicely with Roussel’s (1925) play, L’Étoile au Front [↓], and mirrors the rouge caked onto the cheeks of the rich loose lady our impoverished lucky fop (grateful nod to Hugill) cannot quite believe he has captured the affection of.

4. Redundant verb repeated for clarity’s sake, poetry’s music, and attention’s prod.

5. Taking the sensible lead from other translexifiers and versificationists, a line-terminating m-dash has been added, though lacking in the original, though the semi-colon should be enough to break the spell sticking to the ears of our sea-sick tyro and our nodding seminarian—oh, how cute the gaulish for “typo”: Coquille! Coquille!

6. Il me semble qu’à cause de la longueur du vers, une lettre manquante dans l’exemplaire original avait transformé un fruit succulent mais un peu amer d’origine de la Chine en un grand-singe aux cheveux d’une couleur semblable aux peau et chair de ce genre d’agrumes. Sûrement est-ce que je l’avais corrigée non sans en pensant que cette coquille-là aurait dû certainement capturer l’attention de Vladimir Nabokov comme j’en vais élaborer dans un autre article. As an aside, allow me to remind the likely myopic reader that the classic vaudevillians employed the peel and pulp of any fruit, not just those of a banana, to lend a bit of slip and slide to their burlesque.

7. Out of custom and pity, those condemned in old-time Frankreich to suffer the ultimate chastisement were offered a glass, a least, of rum. In addition, a quirk of mammalian physiology guarantees a tumescent link between the garrot and the gonads, as many an erotic adventurer will attest. Compare with rites of animal and human sacrifice in say, Vedic India and Mexico under the Triple Alliance.

8. I think not even our author knew what he meant when he wrote, “un jour sans houle, / De l’avance au vapeur qu’oseur brave un voilier,” though we must applaud the daring bravery with which he did. I look forward to finding out how Monk or Mathews handled this heaving groaner.

9. This couplet shows that, though bouts rimés served as frame for Roussel’s versipel, a facile link was not what he was after. There are many more plausible ways by which Roussel could have made the connection between bourreau (executioner) and fourreau (sheath), for example: “L’assassin, demandant pardon, si son bourreau / Rentrera, sans l’user, son épée au fourreau.”: Roussel took the road less traveled by, stopping, however, every few feet, to orient himself, by catching sight of a previously hewn, mossed-over blaze. With just the first word, hiver, denoting a season, he alludes, at one stroke, to both the January snowmen of page 9 (and 9') and the drunken man about to hang pendant l’ivresse of page 13 (and 13'). The next qualifier, sur le trottoir, literally means “on the sidewalk,” but formerly indicated a young lady of marriageable stature (or, lately, among more ribald urbanites for whom consummation may be engaged in without recourse to elaborate ritual and communal consent, a street-walking grue ready to bend at the call of a cat and the clink of a doubloon (you will notice that in this note I have employed what in the business is known as Ityalian face to spell out what’s what)), and so in this context describes a tool which is waiting to be used by a steadfast worker in verse, a relentless master craftsman of rhyme, a cruel (to himself) carver of bouts rimés—that is, our bourreau himself, Rousseau, I mean, Roussel (though the phonetic connection would not, of course, have been lost on the latter—nor any gallophone, for that matter), who, in this case, before returning his carving instrument—a two-handled plane (riflard=rabot) metaphorically employed by those perfecting, correcting, polishing a piece of journeyman’s work, a literary composition—or more literally a file to free stone’s latent soul, or bodkin to cut type, or long-handled trowel to throw lime or shear the excess points off a plaster gargoyle’s ears—to its case or sheath or fourreau, consults Boileau:

And Rousseau (Émile, passim):

Que voulez-vous qu’il fasse? Il est prêt à tout: il sait déjà manier la bêche et la houe; il sait se servir du tour, du marteau, du rabot, de la lime; les outils de tous les métiers lui sont déjà familiers.

Comment ferons-nous donc? Prendrons-nous un maître de rabot une heure par jour, comme on prend un maître à danser? Non.

De sa blanche et débile main, elle pousse un rabot sur la planche; le rabot glisse et ne mord point.

And by the way, though riflard is currently taken as old-timey slang for “umbrella,” and rhume as “inflamed mucosa contributing to a runny nose,” in the context of this couplet it is most assuredly the scrape and screak (see Walter Campbell’s Appalachian epic, Pale Fire, line 931, which borrows, and corroborates, this sense of rhume) of the well-whetted blade of a two-handled plane along the grain of a hardwood board that is here implied.

References

Badman, D. (2004) Review of Monk and Mathews (2005) New Impressions of Africa. MadInkBeard, December 20, 2004. [Full Text]

Caradec, F. (1997) Raymond Roussel. Paris: Fayard.

Hugill, A., trans. (1996) Introduction to, and translation of, cantos I, II, and IV of Raymond Roussel’s Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique. Xiana 2, The Printed Head, vol. III, no. 11, pp. 7–41. [Publisher’s Information] [Full Text]

Kane, P. (2006) Review of Monk and Mathews (2005) New Impressions of Africa. The Modern World, May 15, 2006. [Full Text]

Koch, K., trans. (1964) The column which, licked until the tongue bleeds, cures jaundice. [Translation of canto III of Roussel (1932) Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique.] Art and Literature 2.

—. (1977) The column which, licked until the tongue bleeds, cures jaundice. [Translation of canto III of Roussel (1932) Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique.] In T. Winkfield, trans. and ed., How I wrote certain of my books. New York: Sun Press.

Monk, I. and H. Mathews, trans. (2005) New Impressions of Africa. [Verse translation of, and introduction to, Raymond Roussel’s Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique.] London: Atlas Press. [Publisher’s Information]

Roussel, R. (1904) La Vue. Paris: Lemerre. [Full Text]

—. (1925) L’Étoile au Front. Paris: Lemerre. [Acts II and III of which play first appeared serially in the theatre review Comœdia, from May 12–22, 1924.]

—. (1932) Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique. Paris: Lemerre. [Full Text]

—. (1935) Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres. Paris: Pauvert, 1979. [Pourtant l’exemplaire consulté s’agit de celui de Paris: Gallimard L’Imaginaire, 1995, qui suit celui de Paris: Société Nouvelle des Éditions Pauvert, 1979, qui reproduit celui de Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert Éditeur, 1963, tandis que l’original s’est paru après s’est disparu par ses propres mains notre auteur dans un hôtel de Palerme par l’imprimerie embauchée par les soins de Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1935, dont Michel Leiris avait fait apparaître la première partie dans la Nouvelle revue française (Paris), numéro 259, du premier avril mil neuf cent trente-cinq qui n’aurait dû pas passer inaperçu par l’œil de Vladimir Nabokov.]

—. (1998) Œuvres IV: La Vue, Poèmes inédits. Texte établi par P. Besnier. Paris: Pauvert.

Winkfield, T., trans. and ed. (1977) How I wrote certain of my books. [Translation of Roussel (1935) Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres.] New York: Sun Press.

—. (1995) How I wrote certain of my books and other writings by Raymond Roussel. Boston: Exact Change. [Publisher’s Information]

—. (2002) Reading Raymond Roussel. Context: A Forum for Literary Arts and Culture No. 10. [Full Text]

Nouvelles

Impressions d’Afrique


I

Damiette

la maison où saint louis fut prisonnier

Sans doute à réfléchir, à compter cela porte,

D’être avisé que là, derrière cette porte,

Fut trois mois prisonnier le roi saint!... Louis neuf!...

Combien le fait, pourtant, paraît tangible et neuf

En ce pays jonché de croulantes merveilles,

Telles qu’on n’en sait point ici-bas de plus vieilles!

New

Impressions of Africa


I

Damiette

the house where saint louis was prisoner

Doubtlessly to reflect, to bring it within reach, [←]

To be aware that here, behind this door,

Was three months a prisoner, the sainted king!... Louis the Ninth!...

How much the fact, however, appears tangible and new

In this country strewn with crumbling marvels

Such that one knows not which of these earthly things is oldest!

derrière cette porte, / Fut trois mois prisonnier le roi saint!... Louis neuf!...
D’être avisé que là, derrière cette porte,
Fut trois mois prisonnier le roi saint!... Louis neuf!...
NOUVELLES IMPRESSIONS D’AFRIQUE     5

Elles présentes, tout semble dater d’hier :

Le nom dont, écrasé, le porteur est si fier

Que de mémoire, à fond, il sait sans une faute

10 (Comme sait l’occupant, dans une maison haute

D’un clair logis donnant sur le dernier palier

— Photographe quelconque habile à pallier

Pattes d’oie et boutons par de fins stratagèmes —

((Pouvoir du retoucheur! lorsque arborant ses gemmes

(((Chacun, quand de son moi, dont il est entiché,

Rigide, il fait tirer un orgueilleux cliché,

— Se demandant, pour peu qu’en respirant il bouge,

Si sur la gélatine, à la lumière rouge,

Dans le révélateur il apparaîtra flou, —

20 ((((Tels se demandent : — S’il diffère d’un filou,

Le fat qui d’un regard (((((parfois une étincelle,

L’entourant de pompiers qui grimpent à l’échelle,

Fait d’un paisible immeuble un cratère qui bout1 ;)))))

1.   Que n’a-t-on, lorsqu’il faut d’un feu venir au bout,
Un géant bon coureur, — quand une maison flambe,
Un sauveteur loyal doit-il, traînant la jambe,
Considérer de loin la besogne en boudeur? —

5'     NEW IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA

They are here, all seem to date from yesterday:

The name of which, crushed, the bearer is so proud

That from deep in his memory, he knows faultlessly

10 (As the occupant knows, in a tall building [←]

From a bright room giving onto the top landing

— Any photographer able to palliate

Crows’ feet and pimples by delicate stratagems —

((Power of the retoucher! when flaunting his gems

(((Each, when of his self, to which he clings,

Rigid, brings forth a proud portrait,

— Asking himself, inhaling ever so slightly, as he agitates it,

Whether, on the emulsion, in the red light,

In the developer, he will appear out of focus, —

20((((So they ask themselves: — If he differs from a grifter,

The fop who, with one look (((((sometimes a spark,

Gathering round itself ladder-climbing firemen,

Makes of a peaceful building, a muddy crater1;)))))

1.   And one might need, in order to bring a fire to its end,
A fast running giant, — when a house is burning,
Must a loyal rescuer, dragging his feet,
Watch from afar his task, sulking? —

parfois une étincelle, / L’entourant de pompiers qui grimpent à l’échelle, / Fait d’un paisible immeuble un cratère qui bout
parfois une étincelle,
L’entourant de pompiers qui grimpent à l’échelle,
Fait d’un paisible immeuble un cratère qui bout
NOUVELLES IMPRESSIONS D’AFRIQUE     9

Enflamma, dépourvu, lui, de toute fortune,

Une catin de marque ayant voiture, hôtel,

Qu’il vient, le rouge au front, de conduire à l’autel ;

— A Nice, l’arrivant, l’œil sur le thermomètre,

Si, défiant le rhume, en toile il va se mettre1 ;

— Resté seul, Horace, à quelle vitesse fuir ;

30 — Le lièvre si lorsqu’il musait par le bruyère

L’eût distancé même un vieux morceaux de gruyère ;

— Si valsent ou non les bouteilles de Clicquot

Le soupeur dont le nez tourne au coquelicot ;


Qui, prêt, tel Gulliver, à vaincre sa pudeur;
Aurait à satisfaire une envie opportune.

1.   A l’hiverneur niçois donner un pardessus
(Prêt qu’il est à jurer — les jours même où, pansus,
De durs magots de neige y pouffent d’un air nice —
Qu’en janvier, de bon cœur, on irait nu dans Nice,
Tel Archimède aux cent coups criant : « Euréka «),
C’est donner : — au novice, en mer, de l’ipéca,
Tandis qu’à la briser l’ouragan tend l’écoute ;
Quand un conférencier prélude, à qui l’écoute,
Un narcotique ; — à qui hors d’un train bon marcheur
Se penche, un éventail ; — lorsqu’il rentre, au pécheur
9'     NEW IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA

Impassioned, though deprived himself of any fortune,

A high-class whore with her own car and house,

Whom he has just, embarrassed, led to the altar; [←]

— In Nice, the traveler, an eye on the thermometer,

If, suspecting a cold, he should hit the sack1;

— Left alone, Horace, how fast he should flee;

30 — The hare if, whilst sporting about the heath,

He may have overlooked an old piece of cheese;

— Whether they dance or not, the bottles of Clicquot,

Asks the partier whose nose turns poppy-red; [←]


Who, ready as Gulliver to conquer his reserve,
Would have to satisfy an opportune need.

1.   To give to the winterer in Nice an overcoat
(Ready as he is to swear — even on those days when, big-bellied,
Hard snowmen puff themselves up with an innocent air —
Sincerely, that in January, one could go about Nice naked,
Like Archimedes crying for the hundredth time: “Eureka”),
Is to give: — to the novice at sea some ipecac,
Though the sea-breaking gale is all he can tend to; — [←]
To the listener, when a lecturer starts,
A narcotic; — to someone, who, out of a fast train
Leans, a fan; — to the sinner, when he returns home,
les jours même où, pansus, / De durs magots de neige y pouffent d’un air nice
les jours même où, pansus,
De durs magots de neige y pouffent d’un air nice
NOUVELLES IMPRESSIONS D’AFRIQUE     13

— L’Yankee si, pour de bon, plus lisse est qu’une orange


Ayant communié tard, de la noix vomique ;
— Un nez postiche au juif, moins que le sien comique ;
— Pendant l’ivresse, avant le serrement complet,
Un aphrodisiaque au pendu ; — le soufflet
A qui s’escrime contre un feu de cheminée
Réfreactaire ; — à qui sort d’un livre, auguste aîné,
Une idyllique fleur sèche, un aplatissoir ;
— A qui, sagace, en paix laisse une aragne un soir,
S’assurant une passe heureuse, un porte-chance ;
— Lorsque en gants de peau vers l’eau bénite elle avance
Son médius rebelle, à la dévote, un truc
Pour ne rien gaspiller ; — quand l’express, truck par truck,
Brûle en route un marchand train, à qui voit leur lutte,
Un pronostic ; — le soir venu, quand, dans sa hutte,
Pour son somme il s’apprête, au noir, des bigoudis ;
— Quand, martelant le sol, dans ses doigts engourdis
Souffle un mal inspiré dyspeptique, une boule
Puante à qui de près lui parle ; — un jour sans houle,
De l’avance au vapeur qu’oseur brave un voilier ;
— Au piéton qu’un sellé cheval sans cavalier
Dépasse, un coup double à demi-tour sur l’échine ;
— A l’ouvrière, en juin, qui, cousant sans machine,
Se tette une phalange, une rose à tenir ;
13'     NEW IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA

— The Yankee if, really, more slick than an orange [←]


Having made communion late, some strychnine;
— To the Jew a fake nose, less comical than his own;
— During the grog, before the mortal cinch, [←]
An aphrodisiac to the hanged man; — billows
To one who fences against a refractory fire
In the fireplace; — to one who takes from a book, august elder,
An idyllic flower, an iron roller-press;
— To one who, shrewd, leaves in peace a spider one evening,
Assuring himself a happy stroll, an amulet;
— When in leather gloves towards the holy water she advances
Her rebellious middle finger, to the devout, a charm
Against dissipation; — when the express, wagon by wagon,
Overtakes a goods train, to someone watching the race,
A prognostic; — at night when, in his hut,
He’s getting ready for bed, to the black man, hair curlers;
— When, stomping the ground, into his engorged fingers
Breathes a wheezing dyspeptic, a stink
Ball to one who, close, speaks to him; — a day without swell
To the steamship captain who, anticipating, dares hitch a sail; [←]
— To the pedestrian whom a saddled horse without rider
Has just passed, a double half-whallop to the spine;
— To the tailormaid, in June, who, sewing without a machine,
Sucks a pricked phalanx, a rose to hold;
à qui sort d’un livre, auguste aîné, / Une idyllique fleur sèche, un aplatissoir
à qui sort d’un livre, auguste aîné,
Une idyllique fleur sèche, un aplatissoir
NOUVELLES IMPRESSIONS D’AFRIQUE     17

La terre, alors qu’il grimpe à l’Alleghanys Range ;

— L’étranger si plus rien n’est en vice amoral

Dans « vice-président » ou dans « vice-amiral » ;

— Si, méthodique, avant de l’arroser, Cerbère

Le flairerait de ses trois nez, le réverbère ;

40 — L’hiver, sur le trottoir, maudissant son bourreau,

S’il rentrera sans rhume, un riflard sans fourreau ;

— Quand, poisseuse, elle a l’heur de puer, la semelle,

Si de son sort chanceux jalouse est sa jumelle ;

— La fermière, à l’aube, en passant son caraco,

De quel coq debout la mit le cocorico ;


— A rebours, lorsqu’il gronde avant d’intervenir,
Un coup de brosse au chien sur l’épine dorsale ;
— Quand chez lui tout s’attaque, au maigre à langue sale
Qu’on va perdre, une forme à forcer les chapeaux ;
— Au reclus, quand dehors claquent dur les drapeaux,
Sur la flûte, ondulant, maint chromatique exemple ;
Quand naît l’orage, à qui, dominé, le contemple
Et l’oit, pour moins que la lumière ailé le son ;
— Au souffleur, quand tire à sa fin une chanson,
Lors du refrain un coup d’épaule à chaque ligne ;
— Un sursis au coq qui, l’automne enfui, trépigne
Quand tarde une aube ; — au Juif errant, un rond de cuir.
17'     NEW IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA

Is the earth, when he climbs in the Alleghany Range;

— The foreigner if the word vice means something amoral

In “vice-president” or “vice-admiral”;

— If, methodic, before drenching it, Cerberus

Should sniff it with his three nostrils, the streetlamp;

40 — In winter, ready for use, cursing its master,

If it will be sheathed unwhetted, an unsheathed plane; [←]

— When, resinous, it is happy to reek, the sole

Whether of its good fortune, jealous is its mate;

— The farmgirl, at dawn, slipping on her smock,

From which upright cock did she get the crow;


— A rebours, lorsqu’il gronde avant d’intervenir,
Un coup de brosse au chien sur l’épine dorsale ;
— Quand chez lui tout s’attaque, au maigre à langue sale
Qu’on va perdre, une forme à forcer les chapeaux ;
— Au reclus, quand dehors claquent dur les drapeaux,
Sur la flûte, ondulant, maint chromatique exemple ;
Quand naît l’orage, à qui, dominé, le contemple
Et l’oit, pour moins que la lumière ailé le son ;
— Au souffleur, quand tire à sa fin une chanson,
Lors du refrain un coup d’épaule à chaque ligne ;
— Un sursis au coq qui, l’automne enfui, trépigne
Quand tarde une aube ; — au Juif errant, un rond de cuir.
Si, méthodique, avant de l’arroser, Cerbère
Le flairerait de ses trois nez, le réverbère
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