Hours / Insomnia / The Toad | Tristan Corbière (1845-1875)
Heures
From Pamplona, I’m the loon
scared of the laughter of the cunning Moon,
under the crepe of world-pain that won’t pass…
For – o terror! – all is under a jar of glass.
I’ve begged more than a starved beggar
and dearly miss my princess mi amore cadenza
And afraid of the laughter of the cunning Moon,
the fierce hunter who starves himself to win the prey,
Under the threat of things that will never pass…
For all terror is nothing more than nightmares
that are made manifest for
forever in the prison that is a false reality.
Insomnie
Insomnia, impalpable Creature!
Is all your love in your head
That you come and are ravished to see
Beneath your evil eye man gnaw
His sheets and twist himself with spleen,
Beneath your black diamond eye?
Tell me: why, during the sleepless night,
Rainy like a Sunday,
Do you come to lick us like a dog?
Hope or Regret that keeps watch,
Why, in our throbbing ear
Do you speak low . . . and say nothing?
Why to our parched throat
Do you always tilt your empty cup
And leave us stretching our neck,
Tantaluses, thirsters for chimeras-
Amorous philter or bitter dregs,
Cool dew or melted lead!
Insomnia, aren’t you beautiful? . . .
Well, why, lascivious virgin,
Do you squeeze us between your knees?
Why do you moan on our lips,
Why do you unmake our bed,
And . . . not go to bed with us?
Why, impure night-blooming beauty,
That black mask on your face? . . .
To fill the golden dreams with intrigue? . . .
Aren’t you love in space,
The breath of Messaline weary
But still not satisfied?
Insomnia, are you Hysteria? . . .
Are you the barrel organ
Which grinds out the hosanna of the elect? . . .
Or aren’t you the eternal plectrum
On the nerves of the damned-of-letters
Scraping out their verses-which only they have read?
Insomnia, are you the troubled donkey
Of Buridan-or the firefly
Of hell? -Your kiss of fire
Leaves a chilled taste of red-hot iron . . .
Oh, come perch in my hovel! . . .
We will sleep together a while.
Sleep Litany
Sleep, that midnight moth flown away in the darkness, with no friendly wing-beat, leaving you
on the threshold, alone, in the pitch-pot with its eyeless lid.
The Toad
Some song on an airless night…
The moon tin-plates clear and bright
The cut-outs of gloomy greenery.
… Some song; like an echo dies,
Buried alive in that clump it lies…
– Finished: there in the shadows, see…
– A toad! – Why ever this fear
Of me, you old faithful thing?
Look: a shorn poet, not a wing,
The mud lark… – Horrible to hear! –
… It sings. – Horrible!! – Horrible, why?
Don’t you see its eye’s bright look?…
No: gone, cold, to its stone nook.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Goodnight – that toad is me. Goodbye.
Tristan Corbiere (middle) two friends Aimé Vacher and Ludovic-Alexandre Alonge
Tristan Corbière (1845-1875)
His mother Marie-Angélique-Aspasie Puyo, 19 years old at the time of his birth, belonged to one of the most prominent families of the local bourgeoisie. His father was Antoine-Édouard Corbière, known for his best-selling novel Le Négrier (1832).
As a schoolboy, he presented his aunt with a sheep’s heart, crying to her, “Here is my heart!”
He called himself Tristan after the Arthurian hero, Tristan of Lyonesse.
He played the hurdy-gurdy. The children in his village called him “Ankou,” a local Breton spirit of death.
The great love of his life was “Marcelle,” the actress Armida Cuchiani, mistress of Count Rodolphe de Battine, whom he met in 1871.
He crafted perfect miniature boats only to crush them.
His only published verse in his lifetime appeared in Les amours jaunes / The Yellow Loves, 1873.
Corbière died of tuberculosis at the age of 29.
T. S. Eliot used his self-description as “Melange adultère de tout” as the title for one of his own poems.
