Jacques Prévert (1900–1977)

O gato e o pássaro

Uma aldeia escuta desolada
O canto de um pássaro ferido
É o único pássaro da aldeia
E foi o único gato da aldeia
Que o devorou pela metade
O pássaro deixou de cantar
O gato deixou de ronronar
E de esfregar o focinho
E a aldeia preparou para o coitadinho
Um extraordinário funeral
O gato que também foi convidado
Seguiu atrás do pequeno caixão de palha
Onde o pássaro morto jazia
Carregado por uma menininha
Que não parava de chorar
Se eu soubesse que isso ia te fazer sofrer show more tanto
Disse-lhe o gato
Eu o teria comido inteirinho
E depois eu lhe diria
Que o vi partir voando
Voando até o fim do mundo
Lá longe onde é tão longe
Que de lá nunca se volta
Você sofreria bem menos
Ficaria tristinha e só lamentaria um pouco

Nunca devemos deixar as coisas pela metade. show less

These poems are a bitter lover’s quarrel with the world. In one, “Pater Noster,” the poet prays to “Our father in heaven” and tells him to stay there, leaving the earth to humans. In addition to listing the mysteries of New York and Paris (“at least as good as that of the Trinity”) and idyllic places in the countryside around Paris, he also mentions “the world’s outrageous misfortunes.”
As another poem says, it is “a world without knowledge of how to live but full of the show more joy of living.”
The quarrel continues in the following poem in the collection, “Rue de Seine,” between a woman who wants to know it all (all what? Her partners’ misdeeds or the atrocities of the occupation) and Pierre, who “has a smile that perhaps he wishes were tender.”
More than one poem rails at the folly of fathers and mothers sending their sons to war, while the pre-war memory of one glimpse of a pretty girl named Barbara haunts him as he returns to where he saw her, the now-ruined Brest.
The final two poems are homages to Picasso; the second evokes the painter’s Guernica.
This book selects roughly half the poems in the original French collection with the same title. I haven’t compared these translations to the French originals. My impression, though, is that Lawrence Ferlinghetti has managed both to be faithful to Prévert and speak in a voice recognizably his. The result are poems that make Prévert seem a kindred spirit to the Beats.
At times, I was reminded of songs of Dylan, particularly in “I’ve Seen Some of Them,” with its concluding lines presaging the sights Dylan records in his song, “Hard Rain.” But that’s a subject for further study. Ferlinghetti published this collection in 1964, Dylan wrote “Hard Rain” in 1962. Had he heard Ferlinghetti read this? Had this circulated before publication? Or was this an idea that was simply blowing in the wind? show less

Paroles is Prévert's best-known collection, containing pieces dating from the early thirties to the end of the war. There are a couple of longer prose pieces, the satire "Tentative de déscription d'un diner de têtes à Paris-France" and the quasi-autobiographical "Souvenirs de Famille ou L'Ange Garde-Chiourme", but otherwise the collection is mostly poems and songs, including a short-story-length "feuilleton" in free verse, "La crosse en l'air".

Lots of political engagement, as you'd show more expect in the thirties: Prévert knew a thing or two about being hungry and unemployed himself, and he takes up the cause of victims of the economic crisis in many of the pieces here, and there is also plenty of ammunition to spare for Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and the Roman Catholic Church. ("La crosse en l'air", which opens with a bishop drunk in the gutter, covers just about all these satirical bases in one place.) Anti-war poems feature heavily as well, also as you'd expect. Lots of lists, too, Prévert's favourite structural device, lots of wordplay, and quite a few absurd leaps of logic. Altogether good fun, even if he goes a bit too far here and there. show less

O amor robô

Um homem escreve à máquina uma carta de amor e a máquina responde ao homem e à mão como se fosse a destinatária
Tão aperfeiçoadas as máquinas
a máquina de lavar cheques e cartas de amor
E o homem confortavelmente instalado na sua máquina de morar lê com a máquina de ler a resposta da máquina de escrever
E na sua máquina de sonhar com a sua máquina de calcular compra uma máquina de fazer amor
E na sua máquina de realizar os sonhos faz amor com a máquina de escrever show more com a máquina de fazer amor
E a máquina o engana com um mecânico
um mecânico que morre de rir. show less