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THE BREAD OF THE DAMNED
introduced and translated by James Kirkup

Index

Biography

INTRODUCTION

I have taken the title for this anthology from Paul Verlaine's sonnet "Luxures", here translated into tanka form:

... Love!

the one emotion left to

all those who are never moved

by the horrors of

living, love that grinds between

its millstones scruples

of libertines and bigots

for the bread of the damned whom

witches' sabbaths hunt ...

"Luxures" was just one of the many decadent poems I read with delight in Patrick McGuiness' magnificent and innovative "Anthologie de la Poésie Symboliste et Décadente" (Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2001). It is a scholarly work of immense value to the ordinary reader, with a long critical introduction "Des Décadents pleins d'énergie" whose paradoxical title well conveys the mysterious fascination of these writers, some of whom I had never heard of before. Among these poets are the lesbian Renée Vivien, with a group of eloquent works, and Iwan Gilkin, a Belgian. Dr McGuinness, in response to an enthusiastic letter of thanks for such bountiful revelations, kindly photocopied the whole of Gilkin's 240 page volume La Nuit (Librairie Fischbacher, Paris, 1897). I immediately began translating Vivien and Gilkin and eventually many of the 84 poets in the Anthology, that include several of my favourite poets - Valéry, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Jarry, Louÿs, Rodenbach, Verhaeren, Samain, Schwob, Tailhade and a number of discoveries like Ephraïm Mikhael and Léon Deubel.

I cannot express the depths of my gratitude to Dr McGuinness for having revealed to me such a wealth of unusual poetry.

I used my recently-discovered technique of avoiding the translation of mechanical rhyming that mars much French verse of the period by "transcribing" them into the ancient Japanese forms of tanka and haiku whenever possible. There were a few that proved intractable, so my versions of those poems follow their original forms. Several of these poems (Valéry, Verlaine, Mallarmé) appeared in "Modern Poetry in Translation."

(NOTE: A number of the poems I have chosen are not from Dr McGuinness' anthology.)

Notes on translating poetry: "PANTING SYLLABLES"

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