Ulysses: Variant I
The world opens within us at the view of ships
departing—they depart with their hair in the wind
The world opens within us at the view of ships
departing—they depart with their hair in the wind
returning—they return old and decrepit
in the dance of lights,
in the farewell revels of ports
like invalids
seated while everyone dances.
The world opens within us at vast mornings
(what ones I saw glistening on the ocean’s lashes!)
at fairies trapped
in fruit-pits where children are afraid,
at carpets unrolled before the feet of the Queen
(advancing calmly in the land of palms)
at songs of blacks on the Mississippi
(were they, too, chased from Paradise?)
and suddenly at nations of chimneys,
of night shelters
where the greenish waters of humanity drain away
(I’ve seen my share) and at clandestine gambling dens
the Fates of boredom
who knit wool stockings for the dead
The world opens within us (where have you been, my Thirst?)
at an oily mix of languages and race
at the long, soft murmur of epitaphs
(where? when? in what moors?)
—by sailors of sand who ask for sand
lost in the sand, looking for a world to forget
—at the endless vomiting of all that is incurable
crying out to hear itself cry
(oh! the nights and their pain)
—at the drunken dancers of the days and weeks.
—Have we not drifted long enough through fog
without asking quarter or begging mercy?
It is time to close the doors,
time to turn off the lamp. At last it is time
to sign this fresco we have finished painting
—that the wind sweeps away.
Benjamin Fondane (1898–1944) was a Romanian Jew who emigrated to France in 1923 to pursue his love of French poetry and culture. While at law school in Bucharest, he spent most of his time writing for avant-garde literary periodicals. In Paris, Fondane worked at an insurance company and for Paramount Pictures, while establishing himself as a poet and philosopher writing in French. Under the guidance of the Russian émigré philosopher Lev Shestov, Fondane became a leading exponent of existential philosophy in the 1930s. He also spent time in Argentina, at the invitation of Victoria Ocampo, lecturing on avant-garde film and directing a surrealist comedic film. In 1944, he was deported from France and killed at Auschwitz. In addition to Cinepoems and Others, New York Review Books publishes a volume of his selected essays, Existential Monday.
Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody is a translator living in Brussels. He studied math in Chicago and medieval French and Occitan literature in Poitiers and Paris. He has published translations of Benjamin Fondane and an article on the philosophy of sailing.
