Email Poem

Your IP Address: 216.73.216.198
Your Email Address:
To Email Address:
Subject
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
Back Door Side Door Front Door : Which door might a Confucian take
 
..................for René ETIEMBLE (Jan. 26, 1909 – Jan. 7, 2002)*

In homage - dedicated to the Chair Professor of Comparative Literature
.................at the prestigious pre-1968 Sorbonne University 

 
Barely a few speechless moments before your first words
.............burned the « Coplas por la muerte de su padre » :

...................‘Nuestras vidas son los ríos       
.......que van a dar en la mar,
.......que es el morir ;
      ……………………………
.......y llegados, son iguales
.......los que viven por sus manos         
.......y los ricos.’

 
.......Is the open back door which emboldens courage
No untarnished name to be remembered by
No selfless mate to lay by your honour
.......No issue laying about themselves for your prize

.......Decidedly it was a door of stealth
As if choosing it.....you let it be known
you were only merely passing by
.......and stopped to hang your hat here for a while
 
Yet you let your kin and callers believe
......your whims were worth putting up with
......your mischievous tantrums and gripes
merely the mental athlete’s unwinding antics

The poïetic birth pangs of imminent glory
......just the mounting stones in the monumental lighthouse
that ages from hence would pick forth
......your works on Montesquiex.....Confucious
your unfathomable literary resource

You upheld dozens who did leave behind a name
......a lasting name...not quite torn from solitary pain

Yet who could deny you could have bettered their fame 
......What undisclosed pain you harboured in your brain

Oh so strangely were you endowed with the intelligence
......of the Chun Tzu - that uncanny eagle’s scan
To rout out of the mazes of your students’ past lives
......just that one passage through their Tierra del Fuego


But then you who completely espoused the rigours
......of that step by step mounting of respectful steps
Were unsparing in your demands of adherence
......to old Master Kung’s hierarchical obedience

An open hand ready to sign any cheque
......to succour the caller’s needs
......was alas ! also the whip hand
To keep the renegades in constant check

You were possessed of a rare brand of anger
......which shook the land about you
At those who bent justice to their unsavoury will        
......such thunder boiled from within the guts of the earth

Now you’re gone and empty lecture halls echo your
......uncontainable ire where forged resounding silence
You said at the start of a seminal master-seminar :
......« Nul n’est prophète dans son pays ! »        

With the distaff side hanging on your every word
......wondering if your plans were for something yet undone

No stray notes lie about to record your travail
.....No visible correspondence to make it all credible
Only books and books...files magazines and books
.....and an overcrowdedly conquered mental pad                                    
jumbled words scratched into shaded inchoate sketches
.....ganglia synapses ......  shot-up neurons

......no clues to a ragingly flailing mind
.............none to record the lives you succoured
.....................nor even the beneficiaries’ hurriedly scribbled thanks

.......nor besides to the beclouding relations with one and all
...............not even a hint at why you may have refused
.......................to forge a name beyond the beaten path of fame

Would going by the front door

in a fanfare of tv talkshows conference papers prize-giving ceremonies paper-interviews in ample studied poses and thoughts for future auto-memoirs volume one to seven the rest put-together posthumously in an omnibus

expurgated version with prefaces notes introductions critiques eulogies

...............would it have been less like you
...............................................................to exit by the side-door   
the baywindow leading to reflected glory
........in a cool cloister of buffeted leaves

stray poems in the tradition of your schooled masters 
or did you burn them all
..................................................................................in a fit of (cou)rage
......... tore them to bits...incinerated by your fiery mind 
............................or squashed within yesterday’s leftovers

not caring who thought what
.................the mocking condescension
...............................................................towards

 qu’en-dira-t-on

 

* The late Professor René Etiemble held the Chair of Comparative Literature at the old, pre-1968 Sorbonne University but retired in 1978 while a professor at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. In later life, he even refused nomination to the French Academy of Letters, though he did accept the Academy’s Prize. He was a prolific critic, essayist, and memorialist, having published some poetry (one book, he burned the rest) and three novels. Like most French greats, he finished schooling at the highly competive Louis le Grand Lycée which runs alongside the Sorbonne. A renowned linguist (he could either speak or do research into a dozen languages) and grammarian (a graduate of the prestigious and elite Ecole Normale Supérieure de rue d’Ulm, Paris), he remained until his very last days an inveterate Sinophile. He edited the Gallimard-instituted UNESCO oriental literary classics series, a fitting tribute to his encyclopaedic learning. He was also one of the editors of the Encyclopedia Universalis. His father died when he was four, and his mother did menial chores in rich homes to pay for his upkeep. During WWII, he taught at Chicago University and was co-opted into the State Department for the war effort. 

© T.Wignesan,  6 novembre 1997, Fresnes-94, France  (from the collection : Poems Omega Minus, Paris, 2002: Poem revised.)

 
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2012
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required