Pásmo

by Guillaume Apollinaire

English, French (translation)

Genres: Poetry, Classics, French Literature, Philosophy

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

About the author

Italian-French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, originally Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky, led figures in avant-garde literary and artistic circles.

A Polish mother bore Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, this known writer and critic.

People credit him among the foremost of the early 20th century with coining the word surrealism and with writing Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917), the play of the earliest works, so described and later used as the basis for an opera in 1947.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillau...

Reviews

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het eerste lange gedicht uit 'Alcools', in een mooie tweetalige editie van Druksel, geannoteerd, gesigneerd door de vertaler en genummerd. Oplage: 100 exemplaren. Er zijn er nog, check: druksel.be

[Zuzana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nakonec se mi asi zalíbilo víc, než jsem čekala, aspoň tam napsal tu pasáž o Praze. Kdybych uměla francouzsky (pořádně) a mohla si to přečíst v originále, tak by to možná bylo ještě lepší. Na druhou stranu, Karel Čapek taky není špatnej překladatel.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This man has won my heart. He is looking for the secrets of the universe in "mother's wet farts."

[zvukomalba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nejsem fanda, tenhle typ poezie není pro mě.

[Jack Rousseau · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the end you are weary of this ancient world

This morning the bridges are bleating Eiffel Tower oh herd

Weary of living in Roman antiquities and Greek

Here even the motor-cars look antique
Religion alone has stayed young religion
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port Aviation

You alone in Europe Christianity are not ancient
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And you whom the windows watch shame restrains
From entering a church this morning and confessing your sins
You read the handbills the catalogues the singing posters
So much for poetry this morning and the prose is in the papers
Special editions full of crimes
Celebrities and other attractions for 25 centimes

*

This morning I saw a pretty street whose name is gone
Clean and shining clarion of the sun
Where from Monday morning to Saturday evening four times a day
Directors workers and beautiful shorthand typists go their way
And thrice in the morning the siren makes its moan
And a bell bays savagely coming up to noon
The inscriptions on walls and signs
The notices and plates squawk parrot-wise
I love the grace of this industrial street
In Paris between the Avenue des Ternes and the Rue Aumont-Thiéville

There it is the young street and you still but a small child
Your mother always dresses you in blue and white
You are very pious and with René Dalize your oldest crony
Nothing delights you more than church ceremony
It is nine at night the lowered gas burns blue you steal away
From the dormitory and all night in the college chapel pray
Whilst everlasting the flaming glory of Christ
Wheels in adorable depths of amethyst
It is the fair lily that we all revere
It is the torch burning in the wind its auburn hair
It is the rosepale son of the mother of grief
It is the tree with the world's players even in leaf
It is of honour and eternity the double beam
It is the six-branched star it is God
Who Friday dies and Sunday rises from the dead

*

All with its ardent ash an instant hides
Leaving the perilous straits the sirens three
Divinely singing join the company
And eagle phoenix peehees fraternize
One and all with the machine that flies

Now you walk in Paris alone among the crowd
Herds of bellowing buses hemming you about
Anguish of love parching you within
As though you were never to be loved again
If you lived in olden times you would get you to a cloister
You are ashamed when you catch yourself at a paternoster
You are your own mocker and like hellfire your laughter crackles
Golden on your life's hearth fall the sparks of your laughter
It is a picture in a dark museum hung
And you sometimes go and contemplate it long

To-day you walk in Paris the women are blood-red
It was and would I could forget it was a beauty's ebb

From the midst of fervent flames Our Lady beheld me at Chartres
The blood of your Sacred Heart flooded me in Montmartre
I am sick with hearing the words of bliss
The love I endure is like a syphilis
And the image that possesses you and never leaves your side
In anguish and insomnia keeps you alive

*

Now you are on the Riviera among
The lemon-trees that flower all year long
With your friends you go for a sail on the sea
One is from Nice one from Menton and two from La Turbie
The polypuses in the depths fill us with horror
And in the seaweed fishes swim emblems of the Saviour

You are in an inn-garden near Prague
You feel perfectly happy a rose is on the table
And you observe instead of writing your story in prose
The chafer asleep in the heart of the rose

Appalled you see your image in the agates of Saint Vitus
That day you were fit to die with sadness
You look like Lazarus frantic in the daylight
The hands of the clock in the Jewish quarter go to left from right
And you too live slowly backwards
Climbing up to the Hradchin or listening as night falls
To Czech songs being sung in taverns

Here you are in Marseilles among the water-melons

Here you are in Coblentz at the Giant's Hostelry

Here you are in Rome under a Japanese medlar-tree

Here you are in Amsterdam with an ill-favoured maiden
You find her beautiful she is engaged to a student in Leyden

*

There they let their rooms in Latin cubicula locanda
I remember i spent three days there and as many in Gouda

You are in Paris with the examining magistrate
They clap you in gaol like a common reprobate

Grievous and joyous voyages you made
Before you knew what falsehood was and age
At twenty you suffered from love and at thirty again
My life was folly and my days in vain
You dare not look at your hands tears haunt my eyes
For you for her I love and all the old miseries

Weeping you watch the wretched emigrants
They believe in God they pray the women suckle their infants
They fill with their smell the station of Saint-Lazare
Like the wise men from the east they have faith in their star
They hope to prosper in the Argentine
And to come home having made their fortune
A family transports a red eiderdown as you your heart
An eiderdown as unreal as our dreams
Some go no further doss in the stews
Of the Rue des Rosiers or the Rue des Ecouffes
Often in the streets I have seen them in the gloaming
Taking the air and like chessmen seldom moving
They are mostly Jews the wives wear wigs and in
The depths of shadowy dens bloodless sit on and one

*

You stand at the bar of a crapulous café
Drinking coffee at two sous a time in the midst of the unhappy

It is night you are in a restaurant it is superior

These women are decent enough they have their troubles however
All even the ugliest one have made their lovers suffer

She is a Jersy police-constable's daughter

Her hands I had not seen are chapped and hard

The seams of her belly go to my heart

To a poor harlot horribly laughing I humble my mouth


You are alone morning is at hand
In the streets the milkmen rattle their cans

Like a dark beauty night withdraws
Watchful Leah or Ferdine the false

And you drink this alcohol burning like your life
Your life that you drink like spirit of wine

*

You walk toward Auteuil you want to walk home and sleep
Among your fetishes from Guinea and the South Seas
Christs of another creed another guise
The lowly Christs of dim expectancies

Adieu Adieu

Sun corseless head

Translated by Samuel Beckett

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5*

[Christina]

(Note that I did not read the Beckett translation--read Ron Padgett.)

[princeznazknih]

tohle bylo opravdu hezké, i když si z toho už zas nic nepamatuju, ale pocit při čtení to byl krásný.

[Magda Kubickov · Rating 4 out of 5]

K mému vlastnímu překvapení to byl banger. Dobře se to čte a je to krátký, chci toho snad od básniček tak moc? 4*

[Jack Flores · Rating 3 out of 5]

My ex wanted me to read this. I did. It’s good. Made me want to visit Paris.

[Jomar Canales Conde · Rating 5 out of 5]

apollinaire es un poeta desigual pero este poema (y la traducción de beckett al inglés) es impecable.

[Bara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jsi v zahradě hospůdky v okolí Prahy
Cítíš se zcela šťasten na stůl růži ti dali
A místo abys psal svou povídku lenošíš pohříchu
Hledě na mandelinku spící v růžovém kalichu

(Někdy čtete básně, kterým nerozumíte, ke kterým si nedokážete najít cestu, ani vytvořit k nim citové pouto. Jindy zase čtete Pásmo.)

Vydání z roku 1919 překlad obstaral Karel Čapek a ilustrace vytvořil jeho bratr Josef Čapek. Náklad činil pouze 500 výtisků, což znamená že toto vydání je dnes velmi vzácné. Jsem vděčna za to, že se mi dostalo do rukou.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si tu vivais dans l'ancien temps tu entrerais dans un monastère
Vous avez honte quand vous vous surprenez à dire une prière
Tu te moques de toi et comme le feu de l'Enfer ton rire pétille
Les étincelles de ton rire dorent le fond de ta vie
C'est un tableau pendu dans un sombre musée
Et quelquefois tu vas le regarder de près

[Natasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe a bit too religious for me. Having said that, some parts were so contemporary it makes you wonder. I would suggest reading it in French and not in translation if possible.

[Ema · Rating 3 out of 5]

Myslím že jsem to úplně nepochopila