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The crime is snowed over, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s Il neige sur le crime Are we buried under snow holding our silence in what immense Cimmerian (collision) of terror ? The mouth kept open in the shriek of interminable shade lips held fast in the frozen depths we disturb the slumber of the Dead with our yelling mute – calling Whom, alas ? We howl by the sepulchre the absence of a name stretching towards a solitary Name : but the Voice suppressed down our throat strangles the liberating Name which could call back on its feet. The head in the tomb and touching our lips the lips of these the dead that we shall become tomorrow, we continue to live in spite of it all but let’s conceal our breath for fear of dispelling the silence gathering around us for God could oblige us to confront ourselves and more than the Fear of Him, we are (indeed) afraid. Fire over the snow Fire at those still alive What matters is that blood saturates this land/Earth Words enough snow down to cover up the blood It snows over the Shriek of long sighs of absence the glossy smiles over twisted lips It snows over wounds of pale hands, capable of simulated caresses like those of naked tortoises It snows weighted flakes, the glaring white of the blind which fill the great orbs the eyes of the dead make It snows a gentle down of murder on the plains just as troublesome as the slumber of assassins The Shriek sans end reaches up to lunar heights where trees are shorn of their barks : listen the strident whiteness of vast deserts populated by men where abandoned stones howl in the face of death. The Night, the immense snow Pièta of an ebony Christ looks at the shadow cast by rifles pointing towards her dead son the shadow of murderers projecting over the snow -- she feels the breath of that Shadow on her feet the horror freezes her over up to the stars ah crying « Fire » so that at last the salve explodes and downs these shadows of rifles these over-sized canons But the tears of this great Death shall alas get the better of this snow. (from the collection : La liberté guide nos pas, 1945) © T. Wignesan – Paris, September 28, 2014 Note : Pierre Emanuel, b. May 3, 1916, d. September 22, 1984 at Gan in the Basses Pyrénées, was one of the most prolific of XXth Century poets. His corpus also included books of critique and a novel. Rejected by a distraught mother at three weeks, his parents emigrated to the U.S., leaving him to be brought up by a paternal uncle, according to Anne-Sophie Constant who selected and prefaced his Anthologie Poétique, out this year. Upon graduating from the University of Lyon where he studied literature, he taught for some years before heading the English language services at the RTL and writing for Témoignage Chrétien, Réforme and Esprit. President of the French Pen Club (1973-76), he later headed the French National Audio-Visual Institute and the Cultural Affairs Commission of the VIth Plan. Elected to the French Academy of Letters in 1968, he renounced the honour in 1975 in protest at the election of Félicien Marceau. For a time, he also headed the International Association for Cultural Freedom. As a poet, he had already made his mark with his first collections : Elégies (1940) and Tombeau d’Orphée (1941), followed by a steady stream of some forty collections thereafter. Received – among many – the Grand Prize for Poetry of the French Academy in 1984. A-S. Constant quotes from two interviews on his inveterate independence : « Je ne me sens pas la vocation d’un maître, et je ne veux aucun disciple. » and « Je suis un poète et un chrétien. » T. Wignesan
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