mirlitonnades

2010-02-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

Translator's Note

Beckett's mirlitonnades in their original French often employ a rhyme scheme. Beckett alternately described them as "irregular, small poems," "gloomy French doggerel," "rimailles," "rhymeries," or "versicules" (The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett). At the risk of sounding too artificial or of sacrificing the best word in the place of a lesser word simply because it fits Beckett’s criteria, I decided that in the translation of these poems to English it is best to mostly dispense with rhyme. Any kind of phonetic translation, while an admirable undertaking, is finally beyond the scope of my efforts as translator.

These are not so much strict translations as open interpretations.

There are fifty-nine known mirlitonnades, "jotted down on ‘throwaway’ material and everyday objects, such as envelopes, letters, a piece from a box of cigars, pages torn from notebooks and coloured notepads" (Dirk Van Hulle, 'Beckett’s Art of the Commonplace: The "Sottisier" Notebook and mirlitonnades Drafts,' Journal of Beckett Studies 28.1) (2019): 67–89) and other objects, primarily in the years 1977 and 1978. As late as 1981 Beckett continued to add poems--some in English--to a notebook (the Sottisier Notebook [1976-1982]) in which these poems were copied. The poems, we are told by Ackerley and Gontarski, "were usually composed at a sitting, often a specific locale. Others were inspired by reading or revisiting past concerns" (the Grove Companion again). Of these fifty-nine, forty-four are in French and are translated into English below.

The title Beckett chose for these poems is a neologism, implying a coarse verse or doggerel (the French expression "Vers de militon" refers to poetry where aesthetic integrity is sacrificed for the sake of rhyme); a mirliton is a crude paper flute or kazoo, often sold at carnivals and fairs, a popularized version of an African instrument. "The mirliton," writes author Francis Bebey in his book African Masks, "which features in the ritual ceremonies of the Dan... consists of a hollow bone, one end of which is stopped up with a spider's web membrane. The other end, the part held in the mouth, is left open. When the player talks or songs with this mirliton in his mouth, the membrane vibrates and "masks" his voice. In other words, it is an 'acoustic mask.'" A mirlitonnade would therefore be the sound expelled by such a device, something similar to a discreetly disharmonious burst of air.

facing
the worst
he returns to
laughter

*

arrived home
at night
the house
lights

extinguished to see
the night to see
a face pressed
against the windowglass

*

after all
altogether
a portion of many
portions of an hour
not counting
dead hours

*

deep in the void
at the end of which watch
the eye thought to glimpse
slightly stir
the head calmed that says
it was only in your head

*

such silence that once was
will never again be torn by whispers
murmurs of unspoken words
without past vows of silence

*

listen to them
accumulate
word
after word
without a word
step
by step
one by
one

*

the shuttle's
borders gleam
heedlessly extinguished
headed home, its gleam returns

without stopping
one or the other
returns home unheeded
transformed

*

imagine if this
one day this
one fine day
imagine
if one day
this one fine day
ceased
imagine

*

at first
flat on the hard
right
or left
anything

then
flat on the right
or left
left
or right

at last
flat on the left
or right
anything
entirely
the head

*

flux causes
anything
to be something
to be anything
so that, let
us say,
one both is
and is not

*

Saturday's reprieve
more laughter
after midnight
before midnight
weep not

*

every day you desire
to one day desire
certainly not without regret
of the day that you were born

*

prolific night
dawn pleads
night of grace
grave

*

zero zilch
it will be
in vain
so much is
zero
zilch

*

from good conduct to punishment
the final step
rests until
custom commands
and the other follows suit
as custom commands
and carries the weight
of the first
as custom commands
until the here and now

*

what perfection
is known by the eyes
hands allow
to slip away
shut tight
eyes and fingers
until something better
arrives

*

what terror
the heart knows
what curse
terrible to say
resuscitates the worst
returns
as worse

*

do not miss in Tangier
the cemetery Saint-André
the dead under a tangle
of flowers overburied
a bench in memory
of Arthur Keyser
where his heart
now sits

*

and another commemorates
Caroline Hay Taylor
faithful to a philosophy
that where there is life there is hope
she fled from Ireland to heaven
in August 1932

*

in Stuttgart you must see
Neckar Street, a long street
where the attraction of insignificance
isn't what it used to be
so strong is the suspicion
insignifance is already there

*

old comes
old stops

goes
absent
missing
stop

*

fools who say
never again
soon
repeat

*

step by step
the path goes nowhere
only no one
knows how
these small steps
go nowhere
stubbornly

*

dream
without cease
truce
without peace

*

dead among
dead flies
a draught of breath
cradles the spider

*

from where
does the voice say
live

from another life

*

words survive
this life
even for a moment
keep him company

*

rivers and oceans
left him alive
at the brook of Courtablon
near the Mare-Chaudron

*

firm footing
while no longer waiting
they pass in front of him
aimlessly they advance

*

leaving the hermitage
calm after the storm

*

at that moment he is told
this won't go on forever
life at last makes him smile
reveals all his teeth

*

the night he lost his soul
he is finally claimed
it is not that unrestrained
he returned it an hour before

*

no disadvantage
the memories of those times
a day in April
a day

*

his evening shadow
re-appears
stretches out fades
dissolves

*

dark sister
from hell
sharp harm
throughout
what are you waiting for

*

the nonagenarian dwarf
in one last whisper
at least there is the reprieve
of a full-scale coffin

*

a dream after a good book
compels one to bed to bid farewell
the hunt purposely weary
forget the candlestick

*

it's time
harden
the heart
go

*

as in
the cradle
all words drunk
as in
the cradle
a new madness moults

*

him
at his age
do that to him
sacred canal
weeps

*

a fault in existence
infiltrates miasmas of oxygen
in the silence of pseudo-silence
of the fortunately rare twilight

*

midnight a thousand years from now
halfway through the day
so midnight
tonight
is here

*

naked empty silence
will never
be

empty silence

*

she raises her head
that is her beauty
she just raises
her head

Beckett's mirlitonnades

mirlitonnades