Here's the verse preface and afterward to Philothée
O'Neddy's 1842 novel "The Enchanted Ring", which
I reviewed in Rain Taxi awhile back.
One of my few reservations about the translation (which didn't make it
into the published article) is that it does not include his long preface
in verse, which is a key document in understanding O'Neddy's theory and
practice as well as an odd and tongue-in-cheek text like the rest of
the book, and includes the verse afterward only in a bare
transliteration (a much lesser sin).
So here are both of those at
last – if you take MY advice, you'll
order the book and read these in
the appropriate places – down the line I'll likely publish them as a
chapbook with just that in mind. (It's like translation fanfic for
another publisher – fantrans?):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PREFACE
At the unwonted birth of a preface in verse,
kind reader, I wager, here you’ll sit quite morose:
–“Ha!” say ye, “if thus far these prefaces in prose,
in abusing their right to sedate the universe,
Fear not to join to their one thousand quirks
that of donning a tone lyric and grandiose,
to mount up to the heights to prognosticate,
to create, to explain the arcana, the lore,
to delimit[1] both man and god, both to abrade
in pointless eloquence, in limitless ardours,
What say now, what do now, what will this one dare!
Why, what will be the verse if the prose begins there!
Verse! . . . innate dialect of symbol and of dream,
whose most devoted goal, exclusive mission’s
to outrage, to exhaust, doubling hyperbole,
exaggerate the tip of exaggeration! . . .”
Hold on, dear reader, settle down, let me plead!
Your fear foundation lacks; on my alexandrines
deign to bind your eyes less sternly and less maudlin;
They act bourgeoisly, no aristocracy,
no formal chariots to drive some theory,
no triumphant tambourines, no noble clarions;
Abdicating at will their right to be rhapsodes,
naught in them imitates the lofty pomp of odes;
no resplendent robes burdeneth their kidneys.
Elsewise, wanting just to arm this peristyle
with a brief overview of the opus at hand,
I don’t think I could find here however I scan
motif of puffed-up noise in the data or style,
matter for monument; for all in question’s
just a fable, alas! quite flippant and futile,
just a humble novel whose whole narration
here in folly disputes its whole conception.
Ah! if this were, reader, a book puritanical,
one of those knights of justice and of verity,
whose eloquence files away tenaciously
cast-iron prejudice, the ancient manacle
which garrottes the corpus of society,
such great books as we call humanitarian
thinkers,[2] neo-christian, moral, utilitarian;
Were this one of those tomes where the gnostic cult[3],
within gothic tombs the slabs’ carved words consults,
resurrects the doctrine of feudal ways,
the blazon, the dagger, the sandals, tomes of praise,
the monk, the noble, the convent, and the rook;
Were this one of those tomes which, with a kindly look,
endeavouring to read in th’enigmatic book
of two sphinxes we call both the head and the heart,
construct for bourgeois taste the genre intimate,[4]
(that maudlin genre which the reviews in choral parts
refused the gift of their respect not long ago;)
Then indeed might you fear the prefacer arrogant,
I’d fashion myself a princely portico!
But no; let not your thought be so stupefied there;
Neither can I nor would I burst into fanfare,
for my tale boasts of no other pretension,
in its absurdity than common sense condemned,
than that of seeming, on the mould of Donkeyskin,[5]
A frivolous thing here spun from fiction.[6]
Yep, my goal, my intent, my oath, ’tis to amuse;
for no other concern did I pester my muse:
Modest, I wished quite simply to augment
the Thousand and One Nights with scraps of supplement.
Thus, ’tis a fanciful and off-the-wall saga,
’tis, this candid stunt, in full chimera[7],
an unrealistic work, a flight ebullient,
’tis a steeple-chase, no guide-line, no baluster . . .
May at least some small bit of vigour and talent
on the style and form have projected some luster!
Yet, if my pronouncement were made law, – I’d assert
when one shapes epic systems and uncanny art,
you’ll find that a hundred, a thousand more charms
does the steeplechase hold than the olympic course;
That it calls for a truer arm and surefire hocks,
that it must be graced with more impregnable heart
into arcane[8] of forests to hurl its horse,
over rocks girded round by an anemic fog,
all athwart the rough shrubs, all athwart fallow balks,[9]
along cramped gorges, aslide from a greedy scarp,
and amidst all the perils, the pitfalls of bogs,
– Than in tracks to make a chariot hurtle,
on the smooth arena, secure between the hurdles.
– And I think the audacity that spurs my speech
will leave all my contemporaries really pleased;
especially the sons you find by myriads
spoofing Alcibiades’ mood rash-spirited.
[The following sections were cut from the published version]
I should wrap this thing up: these remarks are drawn out.
But grant me one last word, if I may? I’ve avowed
nothing to you that’s true, dear reader, my master.
The things I’ve claimed to you may have been more than patter
when noising it abroad, while standing here smugly,
that the volume you hold holds nothing relevant.
Strewn across all its chatter of frivolous study,
Under its irreverence, scarcely malevolent,
a few tricks, I’ll admit, edify for brief moments
with altruistic thought and noble sentiments.
You’ll sense dwelling therein a bit of melancholy;
bits of reason mixed with the foundations its folly.
Among its teasing trifles there fain would gleam through it
unaffected amour that speaks its language sacred.
The volatile creases of its moorish tunic
conceal there a chivalric heartbeat’s palpitations.
At least (for I should here be a tiny bit shyer),
to keep it there concealed has been my utmost aim.
I desired, I aspired that an Ideal flame
should penetrate this tale and shape it like a soul.
[The published version resumes here:]
Little tome,[10] now what good’s all this clamour and fire?[11]
Why haggle with your life like this, ô little tome?
When I know well, alas! your life shall stay so low!
When I don’t even know that you merit your life!
The prelates, our elite criticism’s doctors,
Shall they admit you to their baptism benign?
Where are, to guide you there, your godparents, your sponsors?
If you must go without, you shall soon be a pariah!
suffocated to hush . . . or by abuse assailed!
O my wretched canoe[12], without your guiding stars
rely upon my reason’s upsetting prognosis
that never shall you last, with your so-feeble sail,
to reach publicity’s high seas you see afar.
It scarcely can descry one modicum of hope
that the port governors, relinquishing their bias,
might license you, so frail, to cruise a couple days
without the fear of feuds with covetous pursuers,
among the titanic competition of canooers
that ever check and block the harbour from your eyes.
~~~~~~~
NOTES TO PREFACE:
[1] réglementer. Modern dictionaries suggest “regulate,” but that sense
of the term seems to have developed after Dondey’s time; not only does
it seem contextually discordant, but the 1828 Boniface French-English
dictionary available to me does not even include the word, suggesting
that 14 years later when these lines were written, it was still new and
in flux (thus seductive to Dondey’s Romanticist sensibilities). My
rendering is based on the 1828 definitions of Règlement, règlementaire,
and regler.
[2] The use of the noun penseur as an adjective seems to
have been something of a Romanticist key-word; one of the few online
dictionaries who list its adjectival sense gives as its examples, three
Romanticist texts from the 1830s (two by Dondey’s acquaintance Balzac
and one by his close friend Borel) and one by the proto-Romantic
Chenier, a major influence on them all, plus one by the Oulipian poet
Raymond Queneau, who later engaged in research into avant-garde
Romanticism: http://www.cnrtl.fr/lexicographie/penseur
[3] A rather daring rendering of culte savant.
[4] A term kicked around a fair bit in the early 19th Century, whose
precise definition seems to have been evasive even at the time, based on
contemporary references. Likely novels based on the analysis of
individual psychology, such as those of Stendhal and Balzac–the
characteristic that has gone on to define the modern Bourgeois novel.
[5] A fairy tale first written down by Perrault in the seventeenth
century, combining a Cinderella motif with that of threatened incest.
[6] or, “in fact of fiction” Une chose amusante en fait de fiction.
[7] O’Neddy employs the noun as an adjective, as he often does.
[8] O’Neddy employs the adjective profond as a noun.
[9] guérets, “balks”, the unplowed ridge between the furrows in a field.
[10] In O’Neddy’s manuscript revised post-publication; the published version reads: “O my tome”
[11] Line 107 ends with flamme / flame, this line with feu / fire,
evoking the title of O’Neddy’s seminal collection of avant-garde poetry,
Feu et flamme / Fire and Flame.
[12] canot, here and below in the
neologism canotins (canooers). Though in contemporary french the word
has a broader connotation of small boats in general, both the 1835
Dictionnaire de l’Academie (and all earlier editions to 1694) and the
1828 Boniface French-English Dictionary refer specifically and
exclusively to the canoes of Native American tribes – rendering this
extended nautical analogy considerably more odd (particularly as this
canoe sports a sail!).
~~~~~~
EPILOGUE
There’s a golden-hued dream by which oft I’m consoled
for the void you’re to meet, ô my frivolous trifle!
for the void without waking you’ll live in tomorrow. –
– ’Tis on a summer’s eve, beneath a roman sky.
I conjure, within a marble villa’s Eden,
a Lady and her page beside some tree’s foot seated.
The page, thanks to the final fires of the day,
to his fay is now reading, to the Dame he loves,
my tale where is portrayed love and the land of fays.
Now they both, roused in soul and with voices be-hushed,
are rushed in their keen haste to lavish me with praise.
Such pampering is found in spheres fortuitous!
When they’ve lauded him well, well exalted the poet,
they are caught up by bliss – tis mute and luminous –
wherefore the lady-love – grips the finger of her lover
who exults on his knees – with magic ring bestows it.
Then between them hovers a flame, a mystery:
flame which must remain veiled, a mystery untold…
as one veils the gods, keeps their grace under cover,
for the Muse and the Priest share a like modesty.
Then, the cloud descends, – and the pair arise…
While respiring the vast forest’s balsamic sap,
at random through the shadowy paths they ramble.
All across the network of tenebrous brambles,
upon horizon’s edge the moon, who reclines,
looks down and smiles on them like a Lady in White.
Each with other enlaced, they’re blithely wandering…
Just like two seraphim who, – while briefly they deign
to tread our lowly soil – even yet feel their wings.
Unceasingly their eyes are interweaving beams.
On a whim – in her voice of azure – now the Dame
stitches a tune by Cimarosa or of Weber …
anon she falls quiet, quite delighted to hear
The page who then declaims this sonnet fond and grave:
“I’m owner of a ring whose gold, a mirror sacred,
assimilates my thought and heart and soul entire.
Tis a charming talisman of sympathetic fire
that’s mine by way of love from a dark-eyed fay.
“I’m owner of a ring whose jurisdiction chaste
makes any but my Lady strike my eyes as vile
while making her for me the only maid alive,
who only may be stirred by dint of my embrace.
“I’m owner of a ring whose sacred fairie keeper,
from all my reveries of love and chivalry,
has made it manifest the whole ideal proud.
“I’m owner of a ring! . . . – should it be snatched away then,
when in the coffin’s midnight I shall be laid out,
to make them give it back to me shall I awaken!!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This version based mainly on Philothée O’Neddy,
Poésies posthumes,
1878, Charpentier: Paris, pp. 216-218, but retaining some elements from
Théophile Dondey de Santeny,
Histoire d’un anneau enchanté: Roman de
chevalerie, Undated [1841], Boulé: Paris, pp. 45-46.
