Robert Desno's (羅拔 廸士奴) J'ai tant révé de toi (我多麽惦夢你)

I profited from the time I was waiting for churchgoers to come out from their Sunday mass to acquire some spiritual nourishment from the make-shift book selling counter of two long collapsible tables with a plastic cover outside of the community hall of the Cathedral to translate a French poem. The poem was one written by Robert Desno, well known in France but not so in Hong Kong. Desno belongs to a group of artists and writers quite influential in France, Spain and Germany after the debâcle to European culture caused by the First World War. Europe could no longer adhere with a clear conscience to the Enlightenment ideal of the application of the principles of reasons for the promotion of the sum of human happiness through the systemmatic application of the scientific method. The world war showed clearly that the unrestrained application of reason without regard to spiritual values led only to large scale violence. Europe was disillusioned and was in a mood for change. Freudian ideas about religion being an illusion and his unmasking of the deep seated rooted of human behavior in the irrationality hidden in the human sub-conscious id caused intellectuals in Europe to pay more attention to its role in human behavior and its manifestation in dreams. A new artistic and cultural movement called surrealism emerged, led by the French writer André Breton, who published two Surrealistic Manifestos in 1924 and 1929. They thought that man can no longer rely upon the bourgeos values of rationality and sought to display the new mood through the use of juxtaposition of disparate elements of experience, dreams and the free and uninhibited expression of the images of the human psyche. Such ideas are evident in the works of the artists of the period like Salvador Dali, Joan Miró, Margritte, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Michel Leiris, Marcel Duchamp and in music in the works of André Souris, Edgaard Varèse, Yves Tanguy and in film in those of Luis Buñuel, René Clair, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau. In the world of literature, their view and practices can be seen in the writings of Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, René Crevel, Jacques Baron, Paul Nouge, Garcia Lorca, Antonin Artaud, Raymond Queneau, Jacques Prévert.The literary surrealists sought to emphasize the role of dreams and a form of writing called "automatic writing" during which the relevant writer would try through various means to put himself into a trance state and then allow his outpourings to be recorded and later edited for publication. Robert Desno is the prime example of such a poet and was specially mentioned by André Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto.

The poem of Robert Desno is rather short. Here it is. But since his sentences are quite long, it is no longer practicable for me to do the translations in three columns, as is my previous practice. So I shall set them out successively instead of horizontally.

J'ai tant révé de toi

J'ai tant révé de toi que tu perds ta réalité.

Est-il encore temps d'atteindre ce corps vivant et de baiser sur cette bouche la naissance de la voix qui m'est chère?

J'ai tant révé de toi que mes bras habitués en étreignant ton ombre à se croiser sur ma poitrine ne se plieraient pas au contour de ton corps, puet-être.

Et que, devant l'apparence réele de ce qui me hante et me gouverne depuis des jours et des années , je deviendrais une ombre sans doute.

O balance sentimentales.

J'ai tant révé de toi qu'il n'est plus temps san doute que je m'eveille. Je dors debout, le corps exposé à toutes les apparences de la vie et de l'amour et toi, la seule qui compte aujourd'hui pour moi, je pourrais moins toucher ton front et tes lèvres que les premières lèvres et le premier front venu.

J'ai tant révé de toi, tant marché, parlé, couché avec ton fantóme quíl ne me reste plus peut-êtré et pourtant, qu' à être fantôme parmi les fantómes et plus ombre cent fois que l'ombre qui se promène et se promènera allègerement sur la cadran solaire de ta vie.

 

I've dreamt so much of you

I've dreamt so much of you that you've lost your reality.

Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss over this mouth the birth of that voice dear to me.

I've dreamt of you so much my arms, accustomed to embracing your shadow crossing over my chest could perhaps no longer hug the contour of your body.

And before the real appearance of that which shames and governs me for days and for years, I might have become without a doubt, a shadow.

O the scales of feelings.

I've dreamt of you so much that there's no more time without a doubt, for me to awake. I sleep standing up, my body exposed to all the appearances of your life and of love and of you, that which means everything to me today, that I could touch less your face and your lips than the first lips and the first face which comes.

I've dreamt of you so, walked so, talked so, slept so much with your phantom that there's nothing left for me but perhaps be a phantom amidst the phantoms and a hundred times more a shadow than the shadow which walks and will walk lightly over the sundial of your life.

 

我多麽惦夢你

我惦夢你到你不再真實。

還有時間觸及你那活生生的軀體和吻我那親愛聲源的嘴吧嗎？

我如此惦夢你使到我交叉胸前的手臂已如此習慣攬着你影子，也許不再能緊抱你的軀體的線條了。

在那使我天天年年羞愧及主宰我的真實外表前，我可能已毫無疑問地化成一個影子。

噢那感受的天秤。

我惦夢你使到毫無疑問，我已再沒時間甦醒過來了。我站着睡，我的軀體向着你的生命、愛情與你的外表、我今天的一切，無遺地展示，以至我比下一個到達的嘴唇和臉龐面更不能觸及你的臉龐和嘴唇。

我惦夢，與你的影子同行，對話，同睡得這麽多，也許已別無選擇，早化成一個在幽靈群中的一個幽靈，比現在及將來環繞你生命之日規輕步而行的影子更影子百倍。

The Surrealists' emphasis on achieving extraordinary effects by showing the details of everyday life and the use of everyday language is also evident in this poem. The surrealists seek a kind of precision in the use of language by eschewing the use of adjectives and adverbs, in contrast and opposition to the excessive use of emotional words by their predecessers, the Romantics. They seek to show emotion through concrete details of everyday life and through the use of everyday language but seek to achieve a kind of poetic unity through the careful employment of the sonic properties of words.

In this poem, we get a chance to see the repetitive sentence structure starting "J'ai tant révé de toi..." and the repetitive sound based upon the sound "an" or its relative "en" either as the first syllable or the second or last syllable of a word e.g. e.g "tant", "temps", "atteindre", "vivant", "naissance", "apparence", "étreignant", "ombre", "devant", "hante", "balance" "compte", "front", "ton""fantôme" etc. They all add up to a certain incantatory or mantra like sound as if one were in a temple reciting a prayer. Perhaps in the deepest part of the human psyche, they may have connections through associations. In this case, the sonic similarity gives disparate experiences a unity which they would never otherwise have and provides a principle for the achievement of a certain cohesion and unity to the tone and emotional tone to the poem. 

In addition, we find that to the poet, the boundaries between illusion and reality have become blurred, as in a dream. He says that by virtue of thinking of his lover in his day dreams so much that he has become totally unable to truly react with her when he actually sees her. He is more accustomed to her image in his dream and to embrace her in his dreams that if he were really to see her, he would not know how to hug her and pass his hands over her live body. In his own words, he has become more a shadow than the shadows which circles the sundial of her life!