{"id":1321,"date":"2008-10-05T19:27:03","date_gmt":"2008-10-05T18:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mcrrview.web.its.manchester.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=163"},"modified":"2016-01-23T22:01:39","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T21:01:39","slug":"the-landscapist-pierre-martory-trans-john-ashbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1321","title":{"rendered":"Pierre Martory, The Landscapist<\/em> trans. by John Ashbery (Carcanet Press) \u00a312.95"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing but a book in a foreign language.
\nSomebody read it and shut it on the table,
\nForgot it, went away.
\n(\u2018Without Rhyme or Reason\u2019)<\/p>\n

In the introduction to this collection of the translations he has been publishing since the mid-sixties, John Ashbery addresses the implied tragedy of this image:<\/p>\n

“And after I began translating him, that is, after I began to realize that his marvelous poetry would likely remain unknown unless I translated it and brought it to the attention of American readers, I started to find echoes of his work in mine.”<\/p>\n

In place of the usual few lines from one of the poems themselves, this quote is reproduced on the back cover of this Carcanet edition, and the marketing choice is telling: Whatever one takes from Martory\u2019s life\u2019s work collected here, Ashbery\u2019s role in its delivery exceeds the normal task of translation. Still, should it matter who recommends a good book? Should Ashbery\u2019s relationship with Martory in Paris, where they lived together for nine years in the 50\u2019s and 60\u2019s, cause any suspicion toward his suggestion that \u2018Martory\u2019s work ranks with that of the finest contemporary French poets\u2019? Of course not.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, as Martory saw little success in France in his lifetime (he died in 1998), this bilingual edition is grouped according to the three volumes of Ashbery\u2019s translations which have finally seen publication over the last two decades. Making one\u2019s way through the eighty-something poems this comprises, it is as difficult not to imagine the American\u2019s famous fingerprints or his itching to fiddle with the personal pronouns as it is not to hear his voice between these quotation marks:<\/p>\n

\u201cI draw you like a salary.
\nYou are my superfluous statue
\nHatched beneath hot tears.
\nI\u2019m digging toward the antipodes.
\nI unwind the bandages, the horoscope:
\nIt\u2019s my body, it\u2019s my coccoon, surprised
\nIn a sleep of prolific sand,
\nThat I\u2019m uncovering, like a Cyclops that fainted.\u201d
\n(\u2018The Landscape is behind the Door\u2019)<\/p>\n

There are indeed such \u2018echoes\u2019, as promised, if one is interested, especially in the poems from first chapbook, Every Question but One<\/em> (1990). Martory comes closer to materializing as an important figure when that linguistic showmanship opens itself to other reverberations, however. Certain poems from the second and longest volume reproduced, <\/span>The Landscape is behind the Door <\/em>(1994), sing in their own unique accents from deep in H\u00f6lderlin and Rilke country, as in the title poem, \u2018The Landscapist\u2019, where the language coaxes the hills and every blade of grass into being, out of the \u2018Infinite dark\u2019. An Idealist\u2019s preoccupation here with the tension between the \u2018applied design\u2019 of consciousness and ‘the tree itself!\u2019\u2014which \u2018elude[s] every concept. \/ The regulated disorder of its branches obey[ing] no \/ Rhythm.\u2019\u2014leads to the rather Hegelian conclusion that the scene\u2019s<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 liberty can only be absolute,
\nEnclosed, as it is, in the laws which surpass
\nEvery idea of law.<\/p>\n

And yet, so many poems in this book also indulge themselves in the fine detail of \u2018you\u2019-addressed memories of beaches and bedrooms, where \u2018our life is loaded like a camera…\u2019 (Of Nights and Bodies). It becomes near impossible to position Martory as either a truly philosophical poet or as a thought-purveyor like Eliot\u2019s Donne, who is \u2018more interested in \u2018ideas\u2019 themselves as objects than in the \u2018truth\u2019 of ideas.\u2019 Or, more like Ashbery himself, for whom the single, fundamental law that the stuff of language always wins is only ever really affirmed by demonstration.<\/p>\n

In a good few of the poem from Oh, Lake<\/em>, the third volume included here, this question is superseded in places where Martory\u2019s form and sense of line appear to congeal more sturdily. Whether or not it\u2019s an effect of coming at the end of this collection, the perspective in at least some of these poems feels more tempered, and the \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018you\u2019 more often reconcile themselves to their linguistic role. Consequently, the best poems there expend more of their energy on projections and constructions of scenes more amenable on the page. In other words, independent of Martory of Ashbery, their own voice emerges from the darkness, as in \u2018Obscure Gestures,\u2019 taking its title from the epigraph by Michel Foucault, the \u2018I\u2019 of which succeeds by having reconstituted itself upon that<\/p>\n

Blank space peopled with empty shapes.
\nI say: You. I see my blurred image
\nAs the bottom of emptied glass.
\nGold paillettes stars to die for
\nOr sun-umbrella of stratagems. My life.
\n 
\nJ. T. Welsch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing but a book in a foreign language. Somebody read it and shut it on the table, Forgot it, went away. (\u2018Without Rhyme or Reason\u2019) In the introduction to this collection of the translations he has been publishing since the mid-sixties, John Ashbery addresses the implied tragedy of this image: “And after I began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nPierre Martory, The Landscapist trans. by John Ashbery (Carcanet Press) \u00a312.95 - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1321\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pierre Martory, The Landscapist trans. by John Ashbery (Carcanet Press) \u00a312.95 - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s nothing but a book in a foreign language. 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