If I Say If: the Poems and Short Stories of Boris Vian
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If I Say If The high-quality paperback edition is available for purchase online: https://shop.adelaide.edu.au/ CONTENTS Foreword ix Marc Lapprand Boris Vian: A Life in Paradox 1 Alistair Rolls, John West-Sooby and Jean Fornasiero Note on the Texts 13 Part I: The Poetry of Boris Vian 15 Translated by Maria Freij I wouldn’t wanna die 17 Why do I live 20 Life is like a tooth 21 There was a brass lamp 22 When the wind’s blowing through my skull 23 I’m no longer at ease 24 If I were a poet-o 25 I bought some bread, stale and all 26 There is sunshine in the street 27 A stark naked man was walking 28 My rapier hurts 29 They are breaking the world 30 Yet another 32 I should like 34 If I say if 35 If I Say If A poet 36 If poets weren’t such fools 37 It would be there, so heavy 39 There are those who have dear little trumpets 41 I want a life shaped like a fishbone 42 One day 43 Everything has been said a hundred times 44 I shall die of a cancer of the spine 45 Rereading Vian: A Poetics of Partial Disclosure 47 Alistair Rolls Part II: The Short Stories of Boris Vian 63 Translated by Peter Hodges Martin called… 65 The Swimming Priest 78 Another Day in Marseille 81 Dogs, Death and Desire 88 Don’t Trust the Band 96 Ramparts of the South 99 Léobille’s Party 123 The Slip-up 133 Frankfurt on Tap 139 A Cultural Experience 145 The Test 149 A Big Star 154 April’s Daughters 159 Love is Blind 164 A Dog of a Job 173 The Thinker 177 vi If I Say If The Killer 181 A Heart of Gold 185 Impotence 189 Motherhood 198 A Funny Old Game 206 The Motive 210 Danger from the Classics 213 The Werewolf 225 The Snowman 236 One Licence for Love 244 A Sad Story 249 The Waltz 258 And Other Short Stories… Boris Vian and Short Fiction 263 Christelle Gonzalo and François Roulmann Vian, in Short: An Ironic Take on the Art of the Short Story 277 Audrey Camus Part III: On Translating Boris Vian 297 On Not Wanting to Die: Translation as Resurrection 299 Maria Freij Determining a Strategy for the Translation of Boris Vian 307 Peter Hodges Notes to the Poems 323 Notes to the Short Stories 243 Bibliography of Works Cited 389 vii FOREWORD The collective endeavour behind this book is not only praiseworthy, it is historical as well. No anthology collecting so many poems and short stories by Boris Vian in English translation has ever been published before. The reader will find here all of the poems from the collection Je voudrais pas crever (I wouldn’t wanna die) as well as the 28 short stories which appeared posthumously in two previous books in French, Le Loup-garou (The Werewolf ) and Le Ratichon baigneur (translated here as The Swimming Priest). Vian’s first collection of short stories (Les Fourmis, 1949) was translated by Julia Older and published in 1992 under the title Blues for a Black Cat and Other Stories. As the late Noël Arnaud wrote in his preface to Le Ratichon baigneur, it is safe to say that today all of Vian’s short stories are available, but now we are able to add: in English. Arnaud not only insists that the short story genre is a difficult one, but also hints at the fact that Vian is one of the rare French writers of his time to be so prolific in it. Notoriously, Vian cultivated a strong affinity for short texts, be they fictional, journalistic or satirical (even his novels, except Autumn in Peking, are relatively short). The short story offers a format that suits his tastes particularly well. He can indulge profusely in his sweet and sour humour, deconstruct language and directly hit out at his favourite targets, all of which wear uniforms: the church, the military, cops and even bus drivers. He can easily flip the world around: in his universe, a werewolf is a real gentleman and a heart of gold is literally worth stealing. Vian’s unique style blends irony and tenderness, acidity and affection. One never knows for sure where one is being led in his stories, which almost all the time end up with an unexpected or irreverent “chute” — an ultimate line which provides the whole narrative with an indispensible and powerful punch. Boris Vian’s reputation holds a paradoxical status which is slowly evolving to the point, hopefully, of being radically altered. First and foremost, despite ix If I Say If his huge popularity in France, he is still largely snubbed by French academics, who condescendingly view him as an insignificant, at best marginal, author, a jack-of-all-trades, or even sometimes a novelist for grade twelve students. Furthermore, despite his public popularity in the Hexagon, he is still relatively unknown in the English-speaking world, most notably in North America (with the exception of French-speaking Quebec, where he is quite adulated). There is hope that the present book will shake off this uncomfortable status for good. True, TamTam Books (California) has diligently published half a dozen Vian titles, starting with the novel I Spit on Your Graves in 1998; but, despite positive reviews in The New Yorker, The Believer and the Los Angeles Times, it is still too early to assess the impact these publications are having on a potential readership. That said, it is not surprising to find that Foam of the Daze is TamTam’s bestselling novel, along with the aforementioned hard- boiled thriller, I Spit on your Graves, the original version of which was published in France in 1946 under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. This illustrates that there is at least some coherence between the French and English readerships. Translating Boris Vian, the prose writer and the poet, is no small feat. It would measure up to something like translating Swift or Joyce into French (which has been done, however, and quite successfully so). The problem here lies in Vian’s unique way of treating, or rather mistreating, the French idiom. Add to this a cutting type of humour and a constant use of slang that are in part firmly anchored in the post-war period, and you have all the ingredients to make the task of translating those texts rather daunting. In addition, many characters that populate these short stories really existed in Vian’s entourage, or are only slight subversions of them.1 The good news is simple to assert: the texts you are about to discover have been handled by people who have dutifully done their homework. They know Boris Vian very well, and they are obviously familiar with his novels and the rest of his short stories already published in English. Indeed, the translators Maria Freij and Peter Hodges were well equipped to perform a task that demanded time, effort and relentless patience. With regard to Boris Vian’s short stories in English, it is less known that Vian had himself translated into English seven of the eleven short stories 1 For that, the reader is advised to consult the endnotes, or peruse Vian’s Manuel de Saint- Germain-des-Prés, available in translation from TamTam Books. x If I Say If collected in Les Fourmis. However, for lack of evidence, we do not know what he hoped for in doing so.2 In a sense, therefore, this book closes the loop he had opened himself in the mid 1940s. Specialists of the life and works of Boris Vian do not roam in abundance around this planet. In fact, they are generally so scarce that they can easily gather in one single conference, as happened at the Sorbonne in June 2007, or pile up in one volume. Such is practically the case here, where you have the essence of Vianism both in French and English academia, with articles by Alistair Rolls, Christelle Gonzalo, François Roulmann and Audrey Camus, not to mention the technical notes of the translators and editors of this volume. What a treat! Not only will you, dear reader, relish discovering this truly gripping poetry and astonishing short fiction, but as a bonus you will get the elevated comments that do not usually accompany works of such nature. Bon voyage! Marc Lapprand 2 Cf. Œuvres romanesques complètes (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2 vols, 2010), vol. II, p. 1214. xi BORIS VIAN: A LIFE IN PARADOX Alistair Rolls, John West-Sooby and Jean Fornasiero Introducing Boris Vian to an Anglo-Saxon audience presents something of a challenge, principally because he is so well known in his native France that it is difficult to imagine how he could have escaped the attention of the rest of the world. And yet, Vian remains almost unknown outside academic circles in countries such as Great Britain and the United States, where so many other prominent figures of the French cultural and intellectual landscape of the 1940s and 1950s — most of whom Vian frequented and counted as his friends — remain a subject of enduring fascination.1 Whereas other figures of that heady period such as Georges Perec, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir have long been granted a place in the pantheon of world literature, Vian remains obstinately in the shadows.