![\"3415520020_33967def05\"](\"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/3415520020_33967def05-258x300.jpg\" "\\"3415520020_33967def05\\"")
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Last week’s reading at The Drawing Center<\/strong> brought back the pleasure I had when translating and working on Unica Z\u00fcrn’s anagrammatic poems. I had published these nine translations back in the early nineties in Clayton Eshleman’s SULFUR, but feel like posting them today again. A more deteailed essay on Z\u00fcrn and Hans Bellmer is forthcoming in my collection of essays, <\/a>Justifying the Margins<\/a>,<\/em> to be published later this month by SALT Publishing. If in NYC, don’t miss the exhibition of Z\u00fcrn’s drawings at the Drawing Center: it is a spectacular show.<\/p>\n N I N E\u00a0\u00a0 A\u00a0 N A G R A M M A T I C\u00a0\u00a0 P O E M S<\/p>\n translated & with notes by Hans Bellmer & Pierre Joris<\/p>\n IN THE DUST OF THIS LIFE<\/p>\n Pale sieves a tired Montpellier\u00a0 1955<\/p>\n ONCE UPON A TIME A SMALL<\/p>\n Once upon a time a small Montpellier 1955<\/p>\n AND IF THEY HAVE NOT DIED<\/p>\n I am yours, otherwise it escapes and for H.B. DANS L’ATTELAGE D’UN AUTRE AGE<\/p>\n (Line from a poem by Henri Michaux)<\/p>\n Eyes, days, door, the old country. Ermenonville 1957<\/p>\n WILL I MEET YOU SOMETIME?<\/p>\n After three ways in the rain image Ermenonville 1959<\/p>\n THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF MR K<\/p>\n It is cold. Ravens talk around the lake. Deer Ile de R\u00e9 1964<\/p>\n YOU’LL FIND THE SECRET IN A YOUNG CITY<\/p>\n Youth sings: now the sea is your harbor. Is Ile de R\u00e9 1964<\/p>\n THE LONESOME TABLE<\/p>\n I, the most lonely UNCAS, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS<\/p>\n Unica’s heroes murdered – scratch Ile de R\u00e9 1964<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n H A N S\u00a0\u00a0 B E L L M E R<\/p>\n P O S T F A C E\u00a0\u00a0 TO\u00a0\u00a0 H E X E N T E X T E<\/p>\n ANAGRAMS are words and sentences resulting from the rearrangement of the letters in a given word or sentence. It is surprising that despite the re-awakened interest in the develop\u00acment of language in psychotics, psychics and children, little thought has been given to the anagrammatic interpretation of the coffee grounds of let\u00acters. – It is clear that we know very little of the birth and anatomy of the “image.” Man seems to know his language even less well than he knows his own body: the sentence too resembles a body which seems to invite us to de\u00accompose it, so that an infinite chain of anagrams may re-compose the truth it contains. translated by Pierre Joris<\/p>\n A NOTE ON TRANSLATING UNICA Z\u00dcRN’S ANAGRAMMATIC POEMS<\/p>\n Unica Z\u00fcrn’s poems are extremely formal yet playful: they are anagrammatic constructs, i.e. each line is a strict transposition of the letters of a given line or phrase, usually the title line. There is of course no way in which a translator could be ‘faithful’ to this process: s\/he has to choose one of two roads: either translate the procedure & system of the poem into English, i.e. take the line or sentence Z\u00fcrn used as her transformational matrix & write an English anagram based on those letters – but this would make for another poem, for the translator’s poem – or translate the resulting semantic construct. Now, what makes Z\u00fcrn’s poems gripping work for the reader, is not so much the method – once one knows that she did use a specific procedure to generate her texts, a procedure, furthermore, which is obvious enough & can be described fully in English, i.e. “translated” (which is what I am doing right now) – but the meanings\/images\/soundings the poet is able to construct due to\/despite of\/with & against her chosen procedures. I have therefore chosen to translate the literal, semantic meanings Z\u00fcrn arrived at, to create English language works via a method of translation that, on a certain level in relationship to the original, is as arbitrary as the original method of creation. Limits are, what any of us, etcetera…<\/p>\n Pierre Joris Last week’s reading at The Drawing Center brought back the pleasure I had when translating and working on Unica Z\u00fcrn’s anagrammatic poems. I had published these nine translations back in the early nineties in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,103],"tags":[150,738],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-anagrams","tag-unica-zurn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAx in the tree’s bosom.
\nIn the foliage’s broom there is
\nSeed-blood-silk. Bites
\nin the lovenest of the building.
\nSweetly fogs in its ice-bath
\nthe Ibis’s blood. Masses
\nin the dust of this life.<\/p>\n
\nwarm iron was alone. No
\nNoise, no wine let in.
\nLightly at the sea ran, while no
\nIce was, thrush-pink in a
\nSee-egg. All wink: tear
\nlike all seeds. Sink in,
\nwatergerm, no, alone –
\nin a pillow. All warmth
\nonce upon a time’s a mall.<\/p>\n
\nwipes us into death. Sing, burn
\nSun, don’t die, sing, turn and
\nborn, to turn and into Nothing is
\nnever. The gone creates sense – or
\nnot died have they and when
\nand when dead – they are not.<\/p>\n
\nBerlin 1956<\/p>\n
\nEagle eyes, a thousand days old.<\/p>\n
\nwhen waking your counterimage: he,
\nthe magician. Angels weave you in
\nthe dragonbody. Rings in the way,
\nlong in the rain I become yours.<\/p>\n
\nand blackbird drink tea. Raven, seer of
\ndisaster at dusk – first stars – talk, K!
\nThe first toad most miserably died from
\nHik. Nearby the donkey-dream jawed. The
\nnose of poor Mr K is bleeding. Lake,
\ndark lake of the raven. To breathe means
\nto live, means climbing dreams of
\nrare adventures. Those, Mr. K’s?<\/p>\n
\ndream and hunt, the spirit’s inner feast, that send
\nhim into dark, stony days, yes, you! – and he’s
\nimmune from hand and serious sense – yes, You! Victories are
\nfound forebodings. You travel to the city of Jim-Sing.
\nGo into the youngest street and find Amin, the Ti.
\nHe says: yes, no, once, never, enemy, courage, it, are, you, D,H,G.
\nSecret signature? Jade stone? You’ll find the meaning.<\/p>\n
\nmixes his vein
\nwith ashes. Be the
\ntravelling mast – I
\njourney by night. Avoid
\nO avoid her, earnest
\nis the name I – it
\nis revenge. Mine the
\nvelvet empire, yours
\nthe lonesome table
\nin the roof. First one?
\nStone, I speak: Sam-
\nSimae-line. End
\nI, it ends. Simar,
\nSimae, cross out the
\nline at the end. Ice
\nin the table. Roaring,
\nlonesomest I of
\nearth. A mast rise
\nup in seasand:
\nthe lonesome table.<\/p>\n
\nin cold earth – listen! Thank “M” –
\nManitou for it, the cold hangman of
\nthe dream of noble Aztecs. KO-HIR-
\nKUNAS – KIMHONA, Last One of Earth.
\nSUNA, the red eagle, limps. KEZ-ME,
\nthe circling, cold anger. THU-MA,
\nStone-heart and ALKAE murdered.
\nUncas, the last of the Mohicans
\nspeaks to me. Listen to him: “Cold,
\nsick, old is the mouth, o heart
\nin earth’s ore. Uncas, Thokane,
\nnoble tomahawk of kin – ZUERN –
\nThe last moon – it sank” (Hakirer).<\/p>\n
\nAt close inspection the anagram is seen to arise from a violent and paradoxi\u00accal dilemma. It demands the highest possible tension of the form-giving will and, simultaneously, the\u00a0 exclusion of premeditated purposeful shap\u00acing, because of the latter’s sterility. The result acknowledges – in a slightly uncanny manner – that it owes more to the help of some “other” than to one’s own consciousness. This sense of an alien responsibility and of one’s own technical limitations – only the given letters may be used and no others can be called upon for help – leads toward a hightened flair, an un\u00acrestrained and feverish readiness for discoveries, resulting in a kind of au\u00actomatism. Chance seems to play a major role in the result, as if without it no language reality were true, for only at the end, after the fact, does it -surprisingly – become clear that this result was necessary, that no other was possible.\u00a0 Writing one anagram each day of the year would leave one with an accurate poetic weather report concerning one’s self at the end of that year.
\nWhat is at stake here is a totally new unity of form, meaning and feel\u00acing: language-images that cannot simply\u00a0 be thought up or written up. They enter suddenly and for real into their interconnections, radiating multiple meanings, meandering loops lassoing neighboring sense and sound. They constitute new, multifacetted objects, resembling polyplanes made of mir\u00acrors. “Beil” (hatchet) becomes “Lieb'” (Love) and “Leib” (body), when the hurried stonehand glides over it; the wonder of it lifts us up and rides away with us on its broomstick. The process remains enigmatic. For this kind of imaging and composing to happen, no doubt an eager hobgoblin – oracu\u00aclarly, sometimes spectacularly – adds much of its own behind the back of the I. A pleasantly disrespectful spririt, in all probability, who is serious only about singing the praises of the improbable, of error and of chance. As if the illogical was relaxation, as if laughter was permitted while thinking, as if error was a way and chance a proof of eternity.<\/p>\n
\nEncinitas, May 1st 1991<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"