Céline Arnauld (b. Romania/France)
1885-1952
1920 was a prodigious year for Arnauld, and for the Paris Dada scene in which she was, by then, so active. On February 5th, her ‘Ombrelle Dada’, was delivered at the Salon des Indépendants. This was the only manifesto by a female author to be published, later that year, in Littérature’s ‘Vingt-trois manifestes du mouvement Dada’ (May 1920). In March, she played a ‘femme enceinte’ (pregnant woman) in the inaugural performance of Tzara’s La Première aventure céleste de Monsieur Antipyrine at the ‘Manifestation Dada de la Maison de l’Oeuvre’. In May, Jeu d’Échecs, a ‘lyrical dialogue’ written and performed by Arnauld, featured on the bill for the ‘Festival Dada’ at the Salle Gaveau. She was the editor of ‘Projecteur’ (21 May 1920): a single-issue Dada magazine of prose and poetry by major figures including Eluard, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Tzara, Soupault, Breton and Renée-Dunan. The dissolution of Dada did not quell her productivity. Between 1919 and 1948 she produced ten further books of poetry and the experimental prose work, Tournevire (1919). An anthology of selected poems (1919-1935) appeared under the imprint of the ‘Cahiers du Journal des Poètes’ in Brussels in February 1936. Having lived for many years as the wife of the Belgian poet and editor Paul Dermée— her collaborator both in Dada and (having himself been born Camille Jannsen) in renaming—Arnauld died in Paris in 1952. Explicitly resistant to subsumption into the history of any single school or movement, Arnauld gave to her idiosyncratic poetic the (Olsen-anticipating) appellation ‘Projectivisme’.
See Ruth Hemus, Dada’s Women (Yale UP, 2009).
Dies in the well
My early years on the hill
Contend for the wheat and the tares
Gently
Have pity on my light
For I have not yet loved the rosebush
Sang the tares
Laughter ghostly burglar
Apparently imprinted in the poet’s memory
Do not fear being hung
At reality’s neck
A great misery
Hallucinatory wave
Made of my cruelty
Encircles my forehead
This solitude is blonde
Divine mortification on the summit of a pyramid
A great misery
Of fake jewels and silence
The villages push deep into verdant abysses
Pulled tense by a surfeit of whiteness
And behold the procession
The lyrical procession of me glimpsed alone
Lean in—laugh—
Here is the master of muses the carnie the ghost
In his wake the sun drawn along by birds
All in celluloid
The virgin in ripolin
The crystal butterflies
A muse in chiffon
A cardboard love
Don Quixote in satin…
On his way to the parade
It’s his finale
All of you beware
He’s the highest meteor on the wheel…
I never wanted to die
Let me love him too
Raise me up to watch him
Begged the wastrelle
Raise me up to watch him
Begged the wastrelle
Above all do not look
The dead will betray you
They are the loyal ones the opium dreamers
Our soul’s transparency
Which cannot bear the grave
Nor the heart’s suicide…
But the arms which tighten
Immense possession of this me of love
Of interior wit and incomprehension…
Which cannot bear the grave
Nor the heart’s suicide…
But the arms which tighten
Immense possession of this me of love
Of interior wit and incomprehension…
Your pride summed up in a few wisp of smoke…
Then the arithmetic leap—of learning
Old—old—old—the winking of dark roses
Wandering passions with lavender breath
These dead ones eyes glued to openworks…
We can jump the graves if you like
This tangle of casks and ivy
Abandoned to the wind
What have we done here
Babbling about time all the while—oy vey
I have found my cross
—Translated from the French by Sarah HaydenOld—old—old—the winking of dark roses
Wandering passions with lavender breath
These dead ones eyes glued to openworks…
We can jump the graves if you like
This tangle of casks and ivy
Abandoned to the wind
What have we done here
Babbling about time all the while—oy vey
I have found my cross
____
English language translation ©2014 by Sarah Hayden