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The Weddng Ceremony of the Dead, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel S Les Noces De La Mort By T Wignesan

The Wedding Ceremony of the Dead, Part One, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s Les Noces de la Mort by T. Wignesan Orgy of stone ! I drank hate in your inferior parts And bathed during a wild summer our green sepulchres O ! death and my animal mouth became distorted on those decomposed lips which long ago turned strange Stricken by god for having loved you during transfiguring summers O ! Madeleine wholly naked breasts dried up by such severe beauty and by such an impetuous sun between your legs and upon your flanks two large smelly wounds I loved you streaming and golden through fatigue O ! grape of sin ripened by my gaze I loved your heated mounting sucking in shadows and the houses your famous teeth and your gardens all juicy the evening of the dream of whores Nocturnal city whose walls of tears bitter crypt the obscene litanies that I have sung that I have prayed to your Madonnas of pleasure and those testing the guilt-ridden ex-votos which I trimmed during my wild years ! How I prayed shed tears sang How I intoned in a tenebrous voice your praises at the organ of winter’s rains in the tubas vertiginous in the shade and how I walked ! How I stalked Death for a long time under your arcades with my blood I mixed the oil of cobbled paving where I looked atrociously for pure crime amongst discordant murders the agonies the love And the svelte leaded-glass window I loved so naked in the square of memory that she was visible in the great heaps when her haïr raving cascaded graminaceous over you revealed your proud marble O ! speechless that she was grave and sculpted by your labours death which bathed you with her tender arms that she was tall like down in the depths of the lakes and that your rivers ran sweet on her ivory How difficult was the offering of tears where to be crucified, you appeared to be betrayed down there in the darkness How she was superbly black this heavy calice raised by two hands of blood over your sin Which from the other being never useless is the tomb II Lord ! You looked for me in the vacuous waters of a woman under the searing myrtles You stifled her the youthful dead drenched in tears ! And you cried out more desperately than the light and You laughed at the earth one could hear Your heart beating ferociously amongst the stones Father of my pain ! You tear apart my demise but why destroy the cadaver since You want the blood ? and why the emptiness ? and why do You let me have this victim ? Hands sullied by the night Am I the murderer am I the cursed priest of this death have I eaten the bread over her and drunken the wine have I shed Your blood over her have I invented her body cross of voluptuousness whereupon to have me nailed O ! jealous gods ! what is my crime ? I loved her She was a sword of fury between us in times gone by, but dead what can she still retain of my likeness this forgotten rock pounded by her kisses ? Is this blasphemy that these rites of a pious heart serve as down under the stone’s wing a black sun in her hair a sip of shadow at her lips a portion of autumn in her hand a herb But O ! You aren’t at all deceived by these environs of alleys of tranquil slumber : and You require that I were naked in the battle ! Here I am made glorious, a great flag of adorable countryside Death at the highest tower of the impossible, laid out for her ! I am the fort on which converge all vistas raised on the naked ire of memory hymn of stone and the resounding tomb where adorable Easter rises protected in You she who was death O ! Sacred One ! You Lord, march into crime ! amidst the detonations of the soul and the mammoth explosions of the depths, hurry up with the profanous dénouement or the darkness or it hardly matters the resurrection ! and don’t ever lift eyes towards the curtain of the theatre. (from the collection : Tombeau d’Orphée, 1941/1946/1967) © T. Wignesan – Paris, October 1, 2014 (from the collection : Tombeau d’Orphée, 1941/1946/1967) © T. Wignesan – Paris, October 1, 2014 I

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T Wignesan

Date: 10/5/2014 8:56:00 AM

You're welcome, of course, to make any comments, and please don't make me out to be a "mister". That was no bother at all to me, for I was translating a truely gifted poet, and above all a compassionate being I had the good fortune of knowing. As for the missing letter, I have tried vainly to rectify the error, but it just won't take! Recalcitrant peppered soup! I'll be posting up other poems by Noël Mathieu (his real name) as we go along that, I know, you'd like - along the same lines. Cheerio

Simona Dancila

Date: 10/5/2014 8:35:00 AM

i'm sorry i've bothered you, mr Wignesan. (there is a letter missing in the title of this poem) have good days

Simona Dancila

Date: 10/4/2014 8:02:00 PM

btw, what is the mith-making process in poetry?! miths have a precise origin and developement, a fundamental cause that a poet can not impose only by writting a poem. He can, at the most, use a mith in his poem, enlarge, explain etc. a story with mithical figures is not always a mith.

T Wignesan
Date: 10/5/2014 3:22:00 AM

I'm afraid this "discussion" is going to degenerate into an "argument" which would necessarily not have anything to do with the poem. Re-read the poem, and you'll see it's genesis is the Christ-Madeleine MYTH (or reality to Christians). I was refering to the "founders" of all religions - the intermediaries with vested interests, the myth-makers. Well, Lady, let's say you're wholly right, and I am utterly wrong.

Simona Dancila

Date: 10/4/2014 7:44:00 PM

as a human i should trust humans (but i dont do it always...) anyway, i was talking about humanity as a specific way to feel, to be weak and to express such fears (here, the extreme repulsion towards death, which becomes a false burning love) i don”t mix theory with feelings that”s why i don”t refere to artificial concepts when i express a simple and sincere opinion, and i dont get it in the didactic way. i just explain my feelings and you explain the poem, it”s not really an argument...

Simona Dancila

Date: 10/4/2014 3:48:00 AM

thank you for sharingsuch deep poetic (and human) experience.

T Wignesan
Date: 10/4/2014 3:13:00 PM

Not that this matters (i'm not self-justifying myself for the sake of winning an argument that i may have - at the expense of the poet- imposed upon myself), but your inveterate faith in "humans" is to be celebrated. Here, we are dealing with an experience which is the product of the myth-making process. That's the domain of vested interests. In the poem, the poet's imagination reigns supreme. And of course, passion and artful management.

Simona Dancila
Date: 10/4/2014 12:48:00 PM

no matter how much we like and we use these words, surreal and suprahuman, they only mean that we are not able to perceive and to assume reality and humanity, but i was able to feel that abyss so for me are totally real and human. thank you again for making this available through this site.

T Wignesan
Date: 10/4/2014 8:28:00 AM

Hello Simona! All thanks to you in the name of the late Pierre Emmanuel, but I beg to disagree:the poem is surreal and the experience supra-human; that's probably the reason why it astounds and grips us, here, at the prosaic level. Still, I'm glad you felt that-a-way, enough to react. See the poet's "The crime is snowed over" for bio and biblio references. Every good wish. Wignesan