Delmore Schwartz – Le royaume de la poésie

… La poésie est assurément
Plus intéressante, plus valable, et assurément plus charmante
Que les Chutes du Niagara, le Grand Cañon, l’Océan Atlantique
Et autres phénomènes naturels fort admirés.
Elle est utile comme la lumière, et aussi belle.
Elle est absurde
Précisément, et permet de dire
Qu’on ne peut porter une montagne, mais qu’on peut porter n’importe où un poème.
Elle est monstrueuse
Avec agrément, car la poésie peut dire, avec sérieux ou pour rire :

« La poésie est meilleure que l’espoir,
Car la poésie est la patience de l’espoir, et toutes les images vives de l’espoir,
La poésie est meilleure que l’émotion, elle est bien plus délicieuse,
La poésie est supérieure au succès et à la victoire, elle persiste dans sa sereine bénédiction
Longtemps après que l’exploit le plus fabuleux s’est élevé comme un feu d’artifice pour retomber.
La poésie est un animal bien plus puissant et enchanteur
Que n’en possèdent les bois, jungles, arcs, cirques ou zoos. »
…………………………………………………………

La poésie est rapide comme les tigres, adroite comme les chats, vive comme les oranges.
Néanmoins, elle est immortelle : elle est toujours verte et en fleur ; bien après que les Pharaons et les Césars sont tombés,
Elle brille et dure plus que les diamants ;
C’est que la poésie est le présent du possible. Elle est
La réalité de l’imagination,
La gorge de l’exaltation,
La procession de la possession,
Le mouvement de la signification et
La signification du matin et
La maîtrise de la signification.

L’éloge de la poésie est comme la clarté sur la cime des montagnes.
Les cimes de la poésie sont comme l’exaltation des montagnes.
Elle est le couronnement de la conscience au pays du matin !

***

The Kingdom of Poetry

This is like light.
This is light,
Useful as light, as charming
And enchanting…

…Poetry is certainly
More interesting, more valuable,
and certainly more charming
Than Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, the Atlantic Ocean
And other much admired natural phenomena.
It is useful as light, and as beautiful
It is preposterous
Precisely, making it possible to say
One cannot carry a mountain, but a poem can be carried all over.
It is monstrous.
Pleasantly, for poetry can say, seriously or in play:

“Poetry is better than hope,
“For poetry is patience of hope, and all hope’s vivid pictures,
“Poetry is better than excitement, it is far more delightful,
“Poetry is superior to success, and victory, it endures in serene blessedness
“Long after the most fabulous feat like fireworks has mounted and fallen.
“Poetry is far more powerful and far more enchanting animal
“Than any wood, jungle, ark, circus or zoo possesses.”

For poetry magnifies and heighten reality:
Poetry says of reality that if it is magnificent, it is also stupid:
For poetry is, in a way, omnipotent;
For reality is various and rich, powerful and vivid, but it is not enough
Because it is disorderly and stupid or only at times, and erratically, intelligent:
For without poetry, reality is speechless or incoherent:
It is inchoate, like the pomp and the bombast of thunder:
Its peroration verge upon the ceaseless oration of the ocean:
For reality glows and glory, without poetry,
Fake, like the red operas of sunset
The blue rivers and the windows of morning.

The arts of poetry makes it possible to say: Pandemonium.
For poetry is gay and exact. It says:
“The sunset resembles a bull-fight.
“A sleeping arm feels like soda, fizzing.”

Poetry resurrects the past from the sepulchre, like Lazarus.
It transforms a lion into a sphinx and a girl.
It gives a girl the splendor of Latin.
It transforms the water into wine at each marriage in Cana of Galilee.

For it is true that poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix.
Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark.
An omnibus containing, bearing and begetting all the mind’s animals.
Whence it is that poetry gave and gives tongue to forgiveness
Therefore a history of poetry would be a history of joy, and a history of the mystery of love
For poetry provides spontaneously, abundantly and freely
The petnames and the diminutives which love requires and without which the mystery of love cannot be mastered.

For poetry is like light, and it is light.
It shines over all, like the blue sky, with the same blue justice.
For poetry is the sunlight of consciousness:
It is also the soil of the fruits of knowledge
In the orchards of being:
It shows us the pleasures of the city.
It lights up the structures of reality.
It is a cause of knowledge and laughter:
It sharpens the whistles of the witty:
It is like morning and the flutes of morning, chanting and enchanted.
It is the birth and the rebirth of the first morning forever.

Poetry is quick as tigers, clever as cats, vivid as oranges,
Nevertheless, it is deathless: it is evergreen and in blossom; long after the Pharaohs and the Caesars have fallen,
It shines and endures more than diamonds,
It is because poetry is the actuality of possibility, it is
The reality of the imagination,
The throat of exaltation,
The processions of possessions,
The motion of meaning and
The meaning of morning and
The mastery of meaning.

The praise of poetry is like the clarity of the heights of the mountains.
The heights of poetry are like the exaltation of the mountains.
It is the consummation of consciousness in the country of the morning!

***

Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) – Summer Knowledge (1959) – « Le royaume de la poésie », Fragments – Trente-cinq jeunes poètes américains (Gallimard, 1960) – Traduit de l’américain par Alain Bosquet.

~ par schabrieres sur juin 29, 2019.