New Impressions of Africa

Raymond Roussel, Mark Ford

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780691156033, 9780691144597
• eBook ISBN: 9781400838226
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

A new translation of a masterpiece of modernist poetry

Poet, novelist, playwright, and chess enthusiast, Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) was one of the French belle époque's most compelling literary figures. During his lifetime, Roussel's work was vociferously championed by the surrealists, but never achieved the widespread acclaim for which he yearned. New Impressions of Africa is undoubtedly Roussel's most extraordinary work. Since its publication in 1932, this weird and wonderful poem has slowly gained cult status, and its admirers have included Salvador Dalì—who dubbed it the most "ungraspably poetic" work of the era—André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Michel Foucault, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery.

Roussel began writing New Impressions of Africa in 1915 while serving in the French Army during the First World War and it took him seventeen years to complete. "It is hard to believe the immense amount of time composition of this kind of verse requires," he later commented. Mysterious, unnerving, hilarious, haunting, both rigorously logical and dizzyingly sublime, it is truly one of the hidden masterpieces of twentieth-century modernism.

This bilingual edition of New Impressions of Africa presents the original French text and the English poet Mark Ford's lucid, idiomatic translation on facing pages. It also includes an introduction outlining the poem's peculiar structure and evolution, notes explaining its literary and historical references, and the fifty-nine illustrations anonymously commissioned by Roussel, via a detective agency, from Henri-A. Zo.

II

Le Champ de bataille des Pyramides

Rien que de l’évoquer sur ce champ de bataille,

A l’âge où le surtout—le long surtout à taille—

Et le petit chapeau—desquels nous extrayons

Quel que soit notre bord d’intimidants rayons—

(Extraire à tout propos est naturel à l’homme;

5

Il extrait: de ce rien, la chute d’une pomme,

Une loi qui le voue à l’immortalité;

D’une fable ou d’un conte une moralité;

Du grêle épouvantail, simple croix qui se dresse

—Sa tenue accusant la plus noire détresse—

10

((Que d’aspects prend la croix! un groupement astral

II

The Battlefield of the Pyramids

The mere evocation of his presence on this battlefield,

At an age when the great coat—the long fitted greatcoat—

And the little hat—from which we deduce,

Whatever our perspective, an intimidating aura—

(To deduce at every turn is natural to man;

He deduces: from this nothing, the fall of an apple,

A law that consecrates him to immortality;

From a fable or story a moral;

From a thin scarecrow, a simple erect cross—

Its getup indicating the most dire poverty—

((How many aspects the cross assumes! A group of stars

Le Champ de bataille des Pyramides: The Battle of the Pyramids was fought at Embabeh near Cairo on July 21, 1798. Although not yet dressed in the long grey greatcoat and little hat that radiated such an intimidating aura, Napoleon comprehensively defeated the Mamluk forces of Mural Bey and Ibrahim Bey.

4 d’intimidant rayons: 633 lines, including those in footnotes, elapse before we return to Napoleon’s hat and greatcoat at line 605 of the main text.

7 Une loi: A reference to Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of the laws of gravity.

10 noire détresse: The deduction to be made from the miserably and unconvincingly attired scarecrow is that of the “foncière bêtise” (the basic stupidity) of birds (line 604).

11 Que d’aspects prend la croix!: Lines 11–22 present four further examples, in addition to that of the scarecrow, of the different aspects assumed by the cross. A fifth is begun at line 31, but is almost immediately interrupted; this syntactic unit is finally picked up and completed in line 602.

A scarecrow for sparrows (a cross
dressed in an old coat and an old hat).
No people. (lines 9–10 and 603–4)

Forme celle du sud au cœur du ciel austral;

Figurément parlant, tous nous portons la nôtre;

Quand un juste succès remporté par un autre

Eut l’approbation d’un de ces envieux

15

Qui, sourdement rageurs, sans percer se font vieux,

—Cerveaux poussifs privés de toute flamme innée,—

Ses familiers en font une à la cheminée;

Sans faute, une fois l’an,—parti le carnaval,—

(((Pour peu qu’il soit du moins sur le rite à cheval

20

Et, croyant à l’enfer, redoute d’y descendre)))

Le chrétien, sur le front, s’en fait mettre une en cendre;

Quand délibérément (((s’approcher d’un repas

Est un ravigotant sans rival pour le pas;

Quand vers le râtelier un équipage cingle,

25

Les chevaux fendent l’air sans que le fouet les cingle,

Tels des pur-sang issus d’illustres étalons;)))

On gagne un restaurant,—à l’heure où les talons

De tout bon estomac sont la place attitrée,—

Souvent, près d’un rôti, par la porte vitrée^1,

30

1. Si l’homme, pour bâtir, n’usait que de cristal
(Tel l’intermède ami qui coupe un récital,
Une note distrait, donne un peu d’insomnie),

Forms the Southern Cross in the heart of southern skies;

Figuratively speaking, we all bear our own;

When a deserved success achieved by another

Receives the approbation of one of those envious types

Who, raging inside, wear themselves out without a breakthrough,

—Wheezing intellects bereft of all inner spark,—

His intimates around the hearth make one;

Without fail, once a year,—after the carnival is over—

(((As long as he is at least one who keeps up with the rite,

And, believing in hell, fears descending there)))

The Christian has one put on his forehead in ashes;

When resolutely (((approaching a meal

Is an unrivalled stimulant to speed;

When a horse-and-carriage tears towards the rack in the stable,

The horses cleave the air without the lash of the whip

Like thoroughbreds born of famous stallions;)))

One enters a restaurant,—at the time of day

When all self-respecting stomachs experience pangs of hunger,—

Often, just by the roast, through a glass door¹,

1. If man, when bu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• CANTO I
• CANTO II
• CANTO III
• CANTO IV