literary passport

Percy Shelley's "Adonais"

"Language can posit and language can mean, but language cannot 

posit meaning."  

What a pretentious statement, but Percy Shelley's poetry has led Paul de Man to this non-sensical literary-critical peroration.  So, let us leave de Man behind and venture into one of the greatest poet's greatest poems - "Adonais".  The group of Spenserian stanzas stands as one of the great monuments in the use of the English language.  The tight control and fluid mastery Shelley demonstrates in this lamentation cannot be beat with a stick.    Read and enjoy. 

The One remains, the many change and pass;	460
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!	465
Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

Link to entire poem found here 

                     

Benjamin Péret

Benjamin Péret has been lurking in my subconscious all of my life. When I read the volume "From the Hidden Storehouse" in the Field Translation Series from Oberlin, I entered the frightening, hilarious room which contains my dreams' nightmares. The English translation by Keith Hollman sizzles and the book contains works from four other volumes by Péret, offering a rich slice of the work by a poet who never abandoned surrealism.

Le Grand Jeu (The Big Flame) 1928

De Derrière Les Fagots (From the Hidden Storehouse) 1934

Je Ne Mange Pas De Ce Pain-Là (I Won't Stoop to That) 1936

Je Sublime (I Sublimate) 1936

Un Point C'est Tout (That's All There Is To It) 1947

The introduction to the text by Charles Simic not only sheds light on the shadowy world of Péret, but on the former poet laureate's own work as well.

This website is a treasure chest full of details on the work and life of Péret.  

One poem from the Oberlin collection.  (May the copyright gods protect me.)

A Thousand Times

for Elsie

Among the gilded debris of the gasworks

you will find a chocolate bar that will flee at your 

approach

If you run as fast as an aspirin bottle

you will end up way behind the chocolate

which upsets the countryside

like shoes with holes

on which a traveling cloak is thrown

so the passers-by aren't frightened by the spectacle

of this nudity

which makes the teeth chatter in the boxes of face

powder

and the leaves fall from trees like factory smoke-

stacks

And the train passes without stopping at the little

station

because it isn't hungry or thirsty

because it's raining and it doesn't have an umbrella

because the cows haven't come back yet

because the route isn't safe and it doesn't like

to meet drunks or thieves or cops

But if larks lined up at the kitchen doors

to be roasted

if water refused to cut the wine

and if I had five francs

There would be something new under the sun

there would be loaves of bread on castors which 

would smash in the police stations

there would be nurseries for growing beards

where sparrows would raise silkworms

there would be in the hollow of my hand

a small cold Chinese lantern

gilded like a fried egg

and so light that the soles of my shoes would fly off

like a false nose

so the bottom of the sea would be a telephone

booth

where no one would ever receive a call