JULES
SUPERVIELLE (1884–1960)
NOLINI
KANTA GUPTA
Sri
Aurobindo Ashram,
Jules
Supervielle is a French poet and a modern French
poet. He belongs to this century and died only a few years ago. Although he
wrote in French, he came of a Spanish family being born in a Spanish colony of
His
poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and
manner of French poetry. He has by-passed the rational and emotional tradition
of his adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the
East. This mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way but a kind of oblique
sight into what is hidden behind the appearance. By the oblique way, I mean, a
sideway to enter into the secret of things, a lateral passage opening
tangentially as it were. The mystic vision has different ways of approach–one
may look at the thing straight, face to face, being level with it in a
penetrating gaze, piercing a direct entry into the
secrets behind. This frontal gaze is also the normal human way of knowing and
understanding, the scientific way. It becomes mystic when it penetrates sufficiently
behind and strikes a secret source of another light and sight, that is, the
inner sight of the soul. The normal vision which I said is the scientist’s
vision, stops short at a certain distance and so does no possess the key to the
secret knowledge. But an aspiring vision can stretch itself, drill into the
surface obstacles confronting it, and make its contact with the hidden ray
behind. There is also another mystic way, not a gaze inward but a gaze upward.
The human intelligence and the higher brain consciousness seeks
a greater and intenser light, a vaster knowledge and
leaps upward as it were. There develops a penetrating gaze towards heights up
and above, to such a vision the mystery of the spirit slowly reveals itself.
That is Vedantic mysticism. There is a look downward
also below the life-formations and one enters into contact with forces and
beings and creatures of another type, a portion of which is named Hell or Hades
in Europe, and in India, Paathaala and Rasaathala. But here we are speaking of
another way, not a frontal or straight movement, but as I said, splitting the
side and entering into it, something like opening the shell of mother of pearl
and finding the pearl inside. There is a descriptive mystic: the super-sensuous
experience is presented in images and feeling forms. That is the romantic way.
There is an explanatory mysticism: the supersensuous
is set in intellectual or mental terms, in parables and allegories, making it
somewhat clear and meaningful to the normal understanding. That is, I suppose,
classical mysticism. All these are more or less direct ways, straight
approaches to the mystic reality. But the oblique is different–it is a seeking
of the mind and an apprehension of the senses that are allusive, indirect, that
move through contraries and negations, that point to a different direction in
order just to suggest the objective aimed at. The Vedantic
(and the scientific too) is the straight, direct, rectilinear gaze–the Vedantin says: “May I look at the Sun with a transfixed gaze?”–whether he looks upward or inward or downward, the eyes are wide
open, winkless, steady. But the modern mystic
is of a different mould. He has not that clear absolute vision,
he has the apprehension of an aspiring consciousness. It is a gaze askance as
it were, yet ardent and wistful. His is not religious
poetry for that matter, but it is an aspiration and a yearning to perceive and
seize truth and reality that eludes the senses, but seems to be still there. It
is the agnostic trying to be a believer. We shall understand better by taking a
poem of his as an example. (An English translation follows each original poem
in French.)
Une souris s’echappe
(Ce n’en etait
pas une)
Une femme s’eveille
(Comment
le savez-vous?)
Et la porte qui grince
(On
l’huila ce
matin)
Pres du mur de cloture
(Le
mur n’ existe plus)
Ah!
Je ne puis
rien dire
(Eh bien, vous vous tairez!)
Je
ne puis pas bouger
(Vous marchez
sur la route)
Ou allons nous ainsi?
(C’est moi
qui le demande)
Je
suis seul
sur la Terre
(Je suis la pres de vous)
Peut-on
etre si seul
(Je le suis plus que vious,
Je
vois vetre visage
Nul ne m’a jamais vu).
A
mouse runs out
(It
was not there)
A
woman wakes
(How
do you know?)
And
the squeaking door
(It
was oiled this morning)
Near
the cloister wall
(There
is now no wall)
Oh!
I can’t say a thing
(Well,
now you’ll be quiet!)
I
cannot move
(You
are walking along the road)
Does
all this get us anywhere?
(I’m
asking you)
I’m
alone on Earth
(I’m
here beside you)
Can
one be so alone?
(I’m
more alone than you,
I
can see your face,
No
one has ever seen mine.)
It
is a colloquy between “I” and the “other-I.” The apparent self sees things that
appear so concrete and real but in the other, they vanish and become airy
nothings. Still if things have any reality it is there in that other self.
We
are reminded of a parallel experience and imagery found in another French poet,
the famous romantic Alfred de Musset who speaks of
someone accompanying him, shadowing him, pursuing him constantly without
respite, sharing his joys and sorrows throughout his life, who looked almost
like his own brother, someone unknown yet so close:
Un etranger vetu de noir
Qui
me ressemblait comme un frere *
Or again, take this:
Si vous touchez sa main c’est bien sans le savoir,
Vous vous le rapplelez mais sous un
autre nom,
Au
milieu de la nuit au plus fort du
sommeil,
Vous dites son vrai nom et Ie faites asseoir.
Un
jour on frappe et je devine
que c’est lui
Qui
s’en vient pres de nous a n’iporte quelle heure
Et
vous le, regardez avec un tel oubli
Qu’il
s’en retourne au loin mais en laissant derriere
Une porte vivante et pale comme lui.
If
you touch his hand it is quite without knowing,
You
remember him, but he had another name.
In
the middle of the night, in the depth of sleep,
You
speak his real name and ask him to be seated.
One
day there comes a knock and I guess it is he
Who
comes to be beside us at any time
And
you give him such an empty stare
That
he turns and goes far away, but leaving behind him
A
living door, as pale as he himself.
The
reality is so real that it is always there and it is not always altogether
intangible, invisible. You touch it often enough but you do not know that it
was the reality. You give it another name: perhaps imagination, illusion,
hallucination. Yes, at the dead of night when you have forgotten yourself,
forgotten the world, nothing exists, you call out his true name and set
him in front–O my soul, O my God!
In
the next poem that I quote, the mystery is explained, that is to say, described
a little more at length.
Saisir,
saisir le soir, la pomme et la statue,
Saisir,
l’ombre et le mur et le
bout de la rue.
Saisir
le pied, le cou de la femme couchee
Et
puis ouvrir lei mains. Combien d’oiseaux laches
Combien
d’oiseaux perdus qui deviennent la rue,
L‘ombre,
le mur, le soir, la pomme et la statue.
Mains,
vous vous userez
A
ce grave jeu-la
Il
faudra vous couper
Un
jour vous couper ras.
Grands
yeux dans ce visage
Qui
vous a places la?
De
quel vaisseau sans mats
Etes-vous
l’euipage?
Depuis
quei abordage
Attendez-vous
ainsi
Ouverts
toute la nuit?
Feux noirs d’un bastingage
Etonnes
mais soumis
A
la loi des orages.
Prisonniers
des mirages
Quand
sonnera minuit
Baissez
un peu lei cils
Pour
reprendre courage.
Saisir
quand tout me quitte,
Et
avec quelle mains
Saisir
cette pensee,
Et
avec quelles mains
Saisir
enfin le jour
Par
la peau de son cou,
Le
tenir remuant
Comme
un lieure vivant?
Viens,
sommeil, aide-moi,
Tu saisiras pour moi
Ce qae je n’ai
pu prendre,
Sommeil
aux mains plus grandes.
Seize,
seize the apple and the statue and the night
Seize
the shadow and the wall and the end of the street
Seize
the foot, the neck of the lady in bed
Then
open your hands. How many birds released
How
many lost birds that turn into the street,
The
shadow, the wall, the apple, the statue, and the night?
Hands,
you will wear yourselves out
At
this dangerous game.
You
will have to be cut
Off,
one day, off at the wrist.
Great
eyes within this face, who
Placed
you there?
Of
what vessel with masts of air
Are
you the crew?
Who
boarded your decks,
That
you must ride
The
darkness, open wide?
Black
flares on the bulwarks,
Astonished,
you complied
With
the law of storms and wrecks.
Prisoners
of a mirage,
When
the strokes of midnight settle,
Lower
your lids a little
To
give yourself courage.
Seize
when all else fails me,
And
with what hands
May
I seize that thought,
And
with what hands
Seize,
at last, the daylight
By
the scruff of the neck,
And
hold it wriggling
Like
a live hare?
Come,
sleep, and help me,
You
shall seize for me
What
I could not hold,
Sleep,
in your larger hands.
These
hands do not grasp that thing, these eyes do not see that. Try to capture
through the senses that tenuous substance, you find it nowhere. You cannot
throttle that reality with your solid fist. Chop off your hands, pluck out your
eyes, then perhaps something will stir in that darkness, something that exists
not but wields a sovereign power. The eyes that see are not these winkless wide eyes, blank vacant and dry, before which
blackness is the only reality. One must have something of the bedewed gentle
hesitating human eyes; it is there that the other light condescends to cast its
reflection. The poet says, “man with his outward regalia seems to have lost all
traces of the Divine in him, what is still left of God in him is just the
‘humidity’ of his soul** –the ‘tears of things’ as a great poet says.
The
sense that seizes and captures and makes an object its own is not any robust
material sense, but something winged and vast and impalpable like your
sleep–the other consciousness.
The
poet speaks obliquely but the language he speaks by itself is straight, clear,
simple, and limpid. No rhetoric is there, no exaggeration, no effort at effect;
the voice is not raised above the normal speech level. That is indeed the new
modern poetic style. For according to the new consciousness prose and poetry
are not two different orders, the old order created poetry in heaven, the new
poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the
spoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best
poetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneous and easy
and felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between the poetic speech and
prose is considerable, in French it is not so great, still the two were kept
separate. In England Eliot came to
demolish the barrier, in France a whole company has come up and very
significant among them is this foreigner from Spain who is so obliquely simple
and whose Muse has a natural yet haunting magic of divine things:
Elle
leve les yeux et la brise s’arrete
Elle
baisse les yeux la campagne s’etend.
She
lifts her eyes and the breeze is stilled,
She
lowers her eyes and the landscape rolls on.
* A stranger robed in
black
Who resembled me like a brother.
** God says to man: “L’humidite de votre ame, c’est ce
qui vous reste de, moi.”