Parenthesis

The train running from Biarritz to Paris is a big transnational joke. The French are so proud of their TGV, but sometimes I wonder if they're not simply comparing it with the steam engine bringing Monet from the Gare d'Orsay to Giverny. Maybe he thought then that the world was changing so fast that he had to paint it blurred. With happy stains.

When it comes to Aquitaine matters, "Train à Grande Vitesse" my foot. Thinking is all you've got to do. Or taking pictures between the two rays of light incrusted in the mirror. For the sake of good photography, not the good health of your ego. Obviously, Sir. I ended up blocking the "Voiture 17"'s toilets.

Near an over stressed girl, I sat and did nothing. I looked for something I could think of. You need to choose one topic and stick to it. Or how to lose 5 hours of your life. But this morning as I woke up in Bastille, before packing up my bag again and heading to my parents', I remembered Blaise Cendrars' Prose of the Transsiberian and of the Little Jehanne of France (La Prose du Transibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France), a long poem about the poet's trips in the train crossing Russia from Moscow to Vladivostok. The poem is a 2 meter illustrated document and looks like this:

Moi, le mauvais poète, qui ne voulais aller nulle part,
je pouvais aller partout

There are words in there that I will cherish until I don't exist. Here it is, in English, in a block, because I failed in selecting only the best bits.

Prose of the Trans-Siberian Railway and of Petite Jehanne de France

– dedicated to musicians

At that time I was in my adolescence
I was barely sixteen years old and had already forgotten my childhood
I was sixteen thousand leagues from my birth
I was in Moscow, in the city of the thousand and three belltowers
and the seven stations
And the seven stations and the thousand and three belltowers did
not suffice me
For my adolescence was then so ardent and wild
That my heart blazed in turn like the temple of Ephesus or the
Red Square in Moscow
As the sun sets.
And my eyes lit up ancient paths.
And I was already such a bad poet
That I did not know how to go to the very end.

The Kremlin was like an immense Tartar cake
Encrusted with gold, with the giant almonds of the white cathedrals
And the honeyed gold of the bells . . .
An old monk read to me the legend of Novgorod
I was thirsty
And I deciphered the cuneiform characters
Then, suddenly, the pigeons of the Holy Ghost flew up in the square
And my hands flew away also, with the sound of an albatross

And these, these are the last reminiscences of the last day
Of the last journey of all
And of the sea.

At that time I was in my adolescence
I was barely sixteen years old and had already forgotten my birth
I was in Moscow and wanted to feed myself with flames
And could not get my fill of the belltowers and the stations
which constellated my eyes
Cannon thundered in Siberia, it was war
Hunger cold plague cholera
And the silted waters of the Amur swept along thousands of carcasses
In all the stations I saw the last trains pulling out
No one could leave for tickets were no longer being issued
And the departing soldiers would much rather have stayed . . .
An old monk sang the legend of Novgorod.

I, the bad poet who wished to go nowhere, I could go everywhere . . .

Tears well up deep in my heart
If I think, Love, of my mistress;
She is but a child that I found thus
Pale, unsullied, in the depths of a brothel.

She is but a child, fair-haired, cheerful and sad,
She does not smile and never cries;
But in the depths of her eyes, when there she lets you sip,
Trembles a silver lily, the poet’s flower.
She is soft and silent, and without reproach,
And quivers slowly at your approach;
But when I go to her, this way, that way, gaily,
She takes a step, then shuts her eyes – and takes another.
For she is my love, and other women
Have but dresses of gold over great flaming bodies,
My poor friend is so alone
She is naked, and has no body – she is too poor.

She is but a guileless, slender flower,
The poet’s flower, a poor silver lily,
So cold, so alone, and already so faded
That tears come to my eyes if I think of her heart.

And this night is like a hundred thousand others when a train speeds
through the night
– Comets fall –
And a man and a woman, however young, delight in making love.

“Blaise, tell me, are we so very far from Montmartre?”
We are far, Jehanne, you’ve been travelling for seven days
You are far from Montmartre, from the Butte which fed you from
the Sacré Coeur against which you used to huddle
Paris has disappeared and of its huge blaze
Only eternal ashes remain
The falling rain
The swelling peat
Siberia swirling
The heavy rising sheets of snow
And the little bell of madness shivering like a dying wish in the blue sky
The train throbs in the heart of leaden horizons
And your sorrow giggles nervously . . .

I would like
I would like never to have gone on my journeys
Tonight a great love torments me
And despite myself I think of little Jehanne de France
On an evening of sadness I have written this poem in her honour

Jeanne
The little prostitute
I am sad I am sad
I will go to the Lapin agile to recall my lost youth
And drink a few small glasses
Then I will head back home on my own

Paris

City of the lone Tower of the great Gibbet and the Wheel

[Paris, 1913]

Translated by Alan Passes

So, in the train to Paris, I always end up buying a croque monsieur. Next time I take the train I will read again Barnabooth. Let's forget now.