Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

“Lettres d’un Soldat”

Wallace Stevens

Combattre avec ses frères, à sa place, à son rang, avec des yeux dessillés, sans espoir de la gloire et de profit, et simplement parceque telle est la loi, voilà le commandement que donne le dieu au guerrier Arjuna, quand celui-ci doute s’il doit se détourner de l’absolu pour le cauchemar humain de la bataille…. Simplement qu’Arjuna bande son arc avec les autres Kshettryas! (Préface d’André Chevrillon.)

Jamais la majesté de la nuit ne m’apporta autant de consolation qu’en cette accumulation d’épreuves. Vénus, étincelante, m’est une amie.
THE SPIRIT wakes in the night wind—is naked.

What is it that hides in the night wind

Near by it?

Is it, once more, the mysterious beauté,

Like a woman inhibiting passion

In solace?—

The multiform beauty, sinking in night wind,

Quick to be gone, yet never

Quite going!

She will leap back from the swift constellations,

As they enter the place of their western

Seclusion.

Ce qu’il faut, c’est reconnaître l’amour et la beauté triomphante de toute violence.
The streets contain a crowd

Of blind men tapping their way

By inches—

This man to complain to the grocer

Of yesterday’s cheese,

This man to visit a woman,

This man to take the air.

Am I to pick my way

Through these crickets?—

I, that have a head

In the bag

Slung over my shoulder!

I have secrets

That prick

Like a heart full of pins.

Permit me, gentlemen,

I have killed the mayor

And am escaping from you.

Get out of the way!

(The blind men strike him down with their sticks.)

Jusqu’à présent j’ai possédé une sagesse de renoncement, mais maintenant je veux une sagesse qui accepte tout, en s’orientant vers l’action future.
And so France feels. A menace that impends,

Too long, is like a bayonet that bends.

Si tu voyais la sécurité des petits animaux des bois—souris, mulots! L’autre jour, dans notre abri de feuillage, je suivais les évolutions de ces petits bêtes. Elles étaient jolies comme une estampe japonaise, avec l’intérieur de leurs oreilles rose comme un coquillage.
Here I keep thinking of the Primitives—

The sensitive and conscientious schemes

Of mountain pallors ebbing into air;

And I remember sharp Japonica—

The driving rain, the willows in the rain,

The birds that wait out rain in willow trees.

Although life seems a goblin mummery,

These images return and are increased,

As for a child in an oblivion:

Even by mice—these scamper and are still.

They cock small ears, more glistening and pale

Than fragile volutes in a rose sea-shell.

J’ai la ferme espérance; mais surtout j’ai confiance en la justice éternelle, quelque surprise qu’elle cause à l’humaine idée que nous en avons.
The palais de justice of chambermaids

Tops the horizon with its colonnades.

If it were lost in Uebermenschlichkeit,

Perhaps our wretched state would soon come right.

For somehow the brave dicta of its kings

Make more awry our faulty human things.

Bien chère mère aimée,… Pour ce qui est de ton cœur, j’ai tellement confiance en ton courage, qu’à l’heure actuelle cette certitude est mon grand réconfort. Je sais que ma mère a atteint à cette liberté d’âme qui permet de contempler le spectacle universel.
There is another mother whom I love,

O chère maman, another, who, in turn,

Is mother to the two of us, and more,

In whose hard service both of us endure

Our petty portion in the sacrifice.

Not France! France also serves the invincible eye,

That, from her helmet terrible and bright,

Commands the armies; the relentless arm,

Devising proud, majestic issuance.

Wait now; have no rememberings of hope,

Poor penury. There will be voluble hymns

Come swelling, when, regardless of my end,

The mightier mother raises up her cry:

And little will or wish, that day, for tears.

La seule sanction pour moi est ma conscience. Il faut nous confier à une justice impersonelle, indépendante de tout facteur humain; et à une destinée utile et harmonieuse malgré toute horreur de forme.
Hi! The creator too is blind,

Struggling toward his harmonious whole,

Rejecting intermediate parts—

Horrors and falsities and wrongs;

Incapable master of all force,

Too vague idealist, overwhelmed

By an afflatus that persists.

For this, then, we endure brief lives,

The evanescent symmetries

From that meticulous potter’s thumb.

Hier soir, rentrant dans ma grange, ivresse, rixes, cris, chants, et hurlements. Voilà la vie!
John Smith and his son John Smith,

And his son’s son John, and-a-one

And-a-two and-a-three

And-a-rum-tum-tum, and-a

Lean John, and his son, lean John,

And his lean son’s John, and-a-one

And-a-two and-a-three

And-a-drum-rum-rum, and-a

Rich John, and his son, rich John,

And his rich son’s John, and-a-one

And-a-two and-a-three

And-a-pom-pom-pom, and-a

Wise John, and his son, wise John,

And his wise son’s John, and-a-one

And-a-two and-a-three

And-a-fee and-a-fee and-a-fee

And-a-fee-fo-fum—

Voilà la vie, la vie, la vie,

And-a-rummy-tummy-tum

And-a-rummy-tummy-tum.

La mort du soldat est près des choses naturelles.
Life contracts and death is expected,

As in a season of autumn.

The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days’ personage,

Imposing his separation,

Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,

As in a season of autumn,

When the wind stops.

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,

The clouds go, nevertheless,

In their direction.