Customer Reviews

Collected Poems in English and French

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I beg to differ with the previous reviewer. The greatness of this collection has to do with its connection to French poetry, and not to any connection to Beckett's stage work. The aphorisms are of minor interest, for example, and appeal to those seeking the expository. Rather, the volume's center of gravity is the translations of Eluard, which comprise many pages. These poems and their translations are breathtakingly beautiful, combining the intuitive and delicate play of sound and language of a Hart Crane (or a Dylan Thomas) with the experimentation (an occasionaly touch of Dada) and yet directness of a Rene Char. The few poems of Beckett himself are clearly following this lead -- if not directly emulating-- and are themselves beautiful and experimental more than they are meaningful. Witness the singsonginess of "Roundelay," or, for those who want something more comprehensible, the mixture of experiment and directness in "Mort de A.D." here a selection from the author's own translation from the French:

"je suis ce cours de sable qui glisse
entre le galet et la dune...

my way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end

my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts

what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above its ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
amoing the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

I would like my love to die
and the rain to be raining on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning her who thought she loved me"

I have never found a volume of poetry more accessible to people, other than poems of Rilke and of Rumi. Beckett manages to combine a musicality of language with the communication of complex and gentle heart-messages. Other poets could take a lesson from Beckett: less is more. Not everything you commit to paper must find its way to the marketplace; having one great book of poetry makes you no less a formidable poet than one with a dozen. Quite the contrary.

Even though Beckett is my favorite writer, I do not think that poetry was his best medium, and I think that this volume shows it all too well. Also, on a more technical note, this book does not include translations of all the French works into English (which bothers me) or, for all that matter, all the English works into French. That said, there are great moments here that poetry fans who are not necessarily also Beckett fans may enjoy. Beckett's first published work, an odd dissertation on Descartes called "Whoroscope," has a wonderfully Bohemian presence. I was most impressed, however, with the translations, which truly roar and pitch! The best are those of Apollinaire's "Zone," Rimbaud's "Drunken Boat" (which Rimbaud himself would have loved, I think), and several maxims by the little-known French Revolutionary writer Sebastien Chamfort. When one reads of Rimbaud "foul(ing) unutterable Floridas," one is inclined to think, "What about the utterable Floridas?" This is one of the reasons poetry is so much fun.

These poems are not as intersting or important as his dramatic and prose works, but this volume has a few very good poems("Echo's Bones", "sanies I", "Saint Lo", "Whoroscope") and interesting trasnaltions of Apolloinaire & Rimbaud. But it is his adaptaions of the maxims of Sebastien Chamfort(called "Long after Chamfort") that give that characteristic mix of humor, despair, intimacy, isolation, confession and soul-searing. To wit, a few choice maxims:

"Better on your arse than on your feet, Flat on your back than either, dead than the lot.

Ask of all-healing, all-consoling thought Salve and solace for the woe it wrought.

sleep till death healeth come ease this life disease"