Marie Étienne: King of a Hundred Horsemen

Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker, who received the 2009 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.

Preface by Marilyn Hacker

Marie Étienne has always composed poetry and prose alternately or simultaneously, seeing the genre barrier as arbitrary in many instances. In an extended essay in a recent issue of the journal Formes poétiques contemporaines, she examined the prose poem as genre, with its attractions and pitfalls, and scrutinized its uses by a variety of contemporaries. She resists the idea of a “collection” of poems, seeing in each book of her poetry as much unity as in a work of fiction, and concomitantly regards some of her fiction as approaching the long poem in prose. Indeed, “fiction” is as limiting a definition of her work in prose as “collection” might be of her carefully constructed poetic works. Some of these books could more properly be called extended memoir than novels: extended, that is, into an individual or familial past, but with an elaboration that has more to do with acknowledged imagination and linguistic invention than with documentary reconstruction.

>> Read the full translator’s preface

King of a Hundred Horsemen

9.

In my childhood, I had learned how to run quickly
around tables.
The more I ran, the less often I was caught.
Punctual Santa Clauses came all the way to the tropics,
they brought me books that I would read, rewrite.
I cut the pages with my fingers holding them down the
middle, no need of any tools.
They called me dear sorrowful one.
I had learned very early what it cost to carry that. My
burdens, afterwards, only grew.
It was wartime, I didn’t get away from that, I didn’t get
over that.
We had gone far away, I got used to being elsewhere,
the unnamed.
So I insist: to write is to take a running start on untan-
gling the blanks.
There were two Barbarians, were ten, were a thousand,
you couldn’t see them but you heard them.
Little right-angled streets. Behind closed shutters, the
shadows of a party.
When I arrived in the garden, guests were turning the
spits, women seated in the midst of their dresses.
Everyone was eating handfuls of rice and fish from
enameled bowls.
Velvet, lamb suint.

9.

Dans mon enfance, j’avais appris a courir vite autour
des tables.
Plus je courais, moms je me faisais prendre.
Les Père Noel exacts venaient jusqu’aux tropiques, ils
m’apportaient des livres, que je lisais, réécrivais.
Je les ouvrais avec mes doigts en les tenant par le mi-
lieu, pas besoin d’outillage.
On m’appelait cher douloureux.
J’avais appris très tôt ce qu’il en coûte de porter. Mes
fardeaux, par la suite ne firent qu’augmenter.
C’était la guerre, je n’en revenais pas, je ne m’en remis
pas.
Nous étions partis loin, je m’habituais à être ailleurs, le
non nommé.
J’insiste donc : écrire, c’est prendre son élan pour dé-
mêler le blanc.
Les Barbares étaient deux, étaient dix, étaient mille, on
ne les voyait pas mais on les entendait.
Petites rues à angles droits. Derrière les volets clos, les
ombres d’une fête.
Quand j’arrivai dans le jardin, les invités tournaient les
broches, les femmes s’asseyaient au milieu de leur robe.
Chacun mangeait à pleines mains le riz et le poisson
dans des cuvettes émaillées.
Velours, suint des agneaux.

11.

I’ve traveled my whole life long in countries with
splendid names. I’ve entered into their legends as if I were
a king myself.
“Pero me gustan también las rosas.”

I’ve made my way up yellow rivers in patched-up boats,
climbed the thousand peaks and crossed the marshlands.
“Pero me gustan también las rosas.”

In those countries become my own, I have built roads
and houses, bridges, aqueducts and railroads, fed, cared
for and sometimes healed.
“Pero me gustan también las rosas.”

I have also brought the fire of our cannons and our
bombs, destroyed, killed, buried, for these countries were
not my own.
“Pero me gustan también las rosas.”

But at present I live at ease between the sea and the
mountains, I read books to understand the meaning of
each thing.
“Pero me gustan también las rosas.”

11.

J’ai voyagé ma vie durant dans des pays aux noms
superbes. Je suis entré dans leurs légendes comme si j’étais
moi-même un roi.
>

J’ai remonté les fleuves jaunes dans des bateaux
rapetassés, escalade les mille monts et traversé les ma-.
récages.
>

Dans ces pays devenus miens j’ai construit routes et
maisons, ponts, aqueducs et voies ferrées, nourri, soigné
parfois guéri.
>

J’y ai aussi porté le feu de nos canons et de nos bombes,
detruit, tué, enseveli car ces pays n’étaient pas miens.
>

Mais à présent je me repose entre la mer et la mon-
tagne, je lis les livres pour comprendre quel est le sens de
toute chose.
>

17.

Conversation. Excitement.
And overblown promises.
One cries out. Fatigue.
The countryside, outdoors, magnificent.
One governs minimally. But at least decides what’s pos-
sible.
Every idea of death leads back to the lack of love. Every
death: to that one.
The effort to be in the world. The struggle.
To keep one’s eyes open when one’s eyelids are weighed
down.
A nightmare.
Awakening and salvation.
The injustice of conversation.
Marvel of writing, taste for writing.
It’s others who are exhausting.
My necessary dose of solitude.

17.

Conversation. Excitation.
Et surenchère.
On crie. Fatigue.
La campagne, au-dehors, magnifique.
On gouverne très peu. Mais au moins décider du pos-
sible.
Toute idée de la mort ramène au désamour. Toute mort :
celle-là.
L’effort pour être au monde. La lutte.
Garder les yeux ouverts quand les paupières pésent.
Un cauchemar.
L’éveil et le salut.
Iniquité de la conversation.
Merveille de l’écrit, goût de l’écrit.
Ce sont les autres qui épuisent.
Ma quantité de solitude nécessaire.

35.

The more she spoke, the darker it became.
She plunged into the forest everywhere and she saw
the sea.
Busy holding on to my thoughts, I can’t think, nor can I
prevent the images.
— Oyster disgorger.
“They take them out of the sea and put them in basins,
so that they will be less natural.”
He had struck her.
She had remained alone in the company of her wound,
not wishing to die.
— A port being cleared of sand.
“As for the animals, there’s nothing to do but eat them.
The worst thing would be to throw them away.
“Stones, that’s different, when they’re taken out of the
earth or the sand, they lose their colors, there’s nothing to
do but throw them away.”
She knew the picture without ever having seen it.
The wounded man brought to the beach, seated in an
armchair, his back to the sea, to the spectator. Facing the
firing squad.
— His house was cleaned. Everything left intact.
Crossing of the skin.
CROSSING OF THE SKIN.

35.

Plus elle parlait, plus ça s’obscurcissait.
Elle s’enfonçait dans la forêt partout et elle voyait la
mer.
Occupée à tenir mes pensées je ne peux pas penser, je ne
peux pas non plus empêcher les images.
— Dégorgeoir pour les huîtres.
qu’elles soient moins naturelles. >>
Il lui avait porté un coup.
Elle était restée seule en compagnie de sa blessure, ne
voulant pas mourir.
— Un port qu’on désensable.
pire serait de les jeter.
la terre ou au sable, elles perdent leurs couleurs, il n’y a
plus qu’à les jeter. >>
Elle connaît le tableau sans l’avoir jamais vu.
Le blessé amené sur la plage, assis dans un fauteuil, dos
à la mer, au spectateur. Le peloton de face.
— On avait nettoyé sa maison. Tout conserve intact.
Traversée de la peau.
TRAVERSÉE DE LA PEAU.

77.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti takes Lam for a walk.
He has placed his dog between them so that people
passing won’t bump into him.
Blind and white like the poet’s head.
— I hope, he says, moving his lips, damp and pink, and
tying up the dog, that this time I won’t forget about him
all night long.
Lam has a dream.
He is in a palace.
The walls are made of fabric and the apartments are
filling up with water.
While the women disappear, behind screens, the men
confer.
The partitions are soaked with sea-water.
Leaning out the window, he sees the harbor, similar
palaces, lit by the fading daylight.
— I think that I’m confusing things, that I’m in Venice,
in a dream about a painting.
Turned toward Seneca Lake, the Frenchwoman looks
distraught.
— No fences here, and no hedges.
“Lacking limits, the gaze has nowhere to stop.”

77.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti emmène Lam en prome-
nade.
Il a placé son chien entre eux, pour éviter que les pas-
sants ne le bousculent.
Aveugle et blanc comme la tête du poète.
— J’espère, dit-il, en remuant ses lèvres, humides et
roses, et attachant le chien, que cette fois je ne l’oublierai
pas toute la nuit.
Lam fait un rêve.
Il est dans un palais.
Les murs sont des étoffes et les appartements s’emplis-
sent d’eau.
Cependant que les femmes disparaissent, derrière des
paravents, les hommes se consultent.
Les parois sont mouillées par la mer.
En se penchant par les fenêtres il aperçoit la rade,
d’autres palais semblables, éclairés par le jour déclinant.
— Je crois que je confonds, que je suis à Venise, dans
un rêve de peinture.
Tournée vers le Seneca Lake, la Française a un air
— Ici, ni barrières, ni haies.
rêter.>>

79.

The winds insist.
They are called constant winds. You observe.
From within rooms, from tents, or on the roads.
The winds move quickly.
Unlike us, the winds move quickly.
Either they turn or they dig.
But they continue to heat up, they rise.
They are always there, in our hair, on our faces.
You would like them to stop. You hang on so as not to
give in to them.
But they whistle.
You cannot not hear them. Be beyond.
Beyond them, beyond the sand.
The feeling is too strong. You might fall.
Make a stain.

79.

Les vents insistent.
Ils sorit dits vents constants. Tu observes.
Depuis les chambres, depuis les tentes, ou sur les routes.
Les vents vont vite.
Contrairement à nous, les vents vont vite.
Soit ils tournent, soit ils creusent.
Mais toujours ils s’échauffent, ils soulèvent.
Ils sont ailleurs et toujours là, dans nos cheveux, sur nos
figures.
Tu aimerais qu’ils cessent. Tu t’accroches pour ne pas
leur céder.
Mais ils sifflent.
Tu ne peux pas ne pas entendre. Être dehors.
Dehors d’eux et du sable.
L’émotion est trop forte. Tu peux tomber.
Faire une tache.

Copyright © 2002 by Flammarion. Translation and preface copyright © 2008 by Marilyn Hacker. All rights reserved.