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Yrs. t. at Le Depanneur Cafe a few months ago... didn't get photos from last night... [Photo: Adrien Chevrot]

Just getting over two weeks and a half where work quite took over. This week I got called in for a full slate of supply teaching plus my 9 hour regular shift in the evenings. Last week, even more work. Made plenty of $$$ (for me at least) but already I feel significantly out of touch with Brian the poet. I'm looking forward to contacting him again.

Tonight though was truly refreshing: I performed some of my songs & read from my translation of Santos at Volver Cafe, sharing the stage with another singer-songwriter named Normand Raymond and an excellent Django Reinhardt-inspired jazz quartet lead by guitarist Philippe Albert. I'm happy to report that the cafe was packed. (40 people? 50?) And show went très bien. The audience was really warm and responsive, a happy surprise considering that there was no smoke in the air nor alcoholic drinks at the tables: just a lot of Latin Americans and French Quebecoises, whose hot blood more than made up for the cold air outside.

When a singer sings out, he or she breathes in as much as ten times as much air as someone sitting in the audience. So I must admit, nice it is to sing in a smoke-free environment: no bronchitis-like symptoms afterwards, no stinging eyes. Some day, perhaps, we'll look back on ashtrays in bars as we look on spittoons today: once a standard saloon feature, now those dinky brass chamber pots look just plain weird.

From a Cafe Volver table: LEURS YEUX TOUJOURS PURS by Paul Eluard

LEURS YEUX TOUJOURS PURS by Paul Éluard
(click through to see large)

I'll try my hand at translating the above:

YOUR STILL PURE EYES

Days of sluggishness, days of rain,
Days of broken mirrors and scattered pins,
Days of eyelids closed to horizons of lost seas,
Days all alike, days barred shut –

For all that, I saw the most beautiful eyes in the world,
Silvery gods that held sapphires in their hands,
True gods, birds in earth and water,
I saw them.

Their eyes are your eyes, nothing exists
But their flight that shakes free my misery,
Their flight of star, of light
Of earth, of stone
On their floating wings
My thought sustained by life and death.

Paul Éluard
(trans. Brian Campbell)

A remarkable poem -- and the translation (or "trans version"), not bad, if I may say so myself.

Some crits, though, of the original:

The poet/editor in me would ax the whole final stanza: it's all implied by the second stanza anyway, and the final line is a classic false tail, abstract, weak. The revelation is all contained in "I saw them". (Then I might have kept the title literal -- "Their eyes still pure". Some instinct in me -- my dramatic instinct, I suppose -- made me go with the more definite "Your Still Pure Eyes".)

There are, though, some good things in the final stanza's "leur vol d'étoile," etc., but if they are to be saved they should be reshaped to make them to make them revelatory in a conclusive way. Merely asserting that "only they exist...", and falling back on "my thought sustained by life and death" -- that's commentary, not revelation.

To my mind, "mes jours de captivité" (final line, first stanza) -- translated literally it would be "my days of captivity" -- is also weak, since again all he's doing is summarizing abstractly what's already suggested by the previous lines. So I went for the more physical "days barred shut" -- at least that adds something, some emotional/sensational punch.

French is a gentle (should I say gentille?), whispery kind of language, and seems to sustain abstract nouns and adjectives more felicitously in its rhythms and passions than English. French poets, in my limited experience, embrace abstraction far more frequently than do Spanish or English poets, but it often translates tritely and seems rather ineffectual even in the original, to my mind. That's why, quite frankly, I'm no great fan of French poetry. Only two poets I've encountered really do it for me: Baudelaire and Rimbaud. May I be introduced to others.

Cafe Volver

"Since Feeling is First" by e.e. cummings
(Click through to see large)

Volver is a new cafe that just opened up in my area -- at 5604 ave. du Parc, just above St-Viatur. Owned and run by two Argentenian women, Nora and Sofia (that's Nora pictured below), it aims to be a Latin American-style "cafe culturel", with art exhibits, music performances and poetry readings. What won me over especially is its poetry friendliness: laminated on most tables is a poem. Most are in French and Spanish, by the likes of Paul Elouard, Emile Martel, and Octavio Paz; above is one by e.e. cummings. Light, air, and friendly cheer warm up this cavernous space. At the present time, events can be booked for free. I've booked the next League of Poets (W)Rites of Spring fundraiser there, on April 3. On Sat. Jan. 19, there's a Peña -- a celebration of music, poetry, & song -- to which I've been invited; other performances are on the books, and bulletin board outside. At the same time there's lots of cafe competition in the area -- The Depanneur, The Arts Cafe, and Cagalie (formerly the Cafe Pharmacie Esperanza) are all homey places that stage events and vernissages (otherwise known as art openings), and Cafe del Popolo, Montreal's mini-Mecca of spoken word, is not too far away -- so I can only hope this one takes off.