La Guerre, Henri Rousseau (1894), Musee d'Orsay |
And so, then, for all in time of
war, here
are the cockerels, clamouring
defiance,
and the vultures, ponderous with
hate,
talons stained with the blood of
memories.
—epigraph
from Granier’s Cockerels and Vultures, 1917
French artillery officer Albert-Paul Granier was born in the
Atlantic coastal village of Le Croisic in September of 1888. He was raised in a
home where he was surrounded by music; Gabriel Fauré was a family friend. Although
Granier studied law and qualified as a solicitor, in his spare time he composed
music and was an accomplished pianist. In
the years before the Great War, he was also a “Sunday poet,” having “enough
leisure time for artistic activity.”*
Albert-Paul Granier |
Joining the French army in August of 1914, Granier was
assigned to the 116th Heavy Artillery regiment; in 1916 his unit was
stationed at Verdun in support of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. By
1917, Granier had volunteered and been reassigned as an aerial observer, accompanying
pilots on reconnaissance missions in the Verdun sector.
Granier recorded his impressions of the war in startlingly
modern poetry that has been compared to that of Apollinaire.
His only book of poems, Les Coqs et les
Vautours (translated as Cockerels and
Vultures), was published in Paris in 1917.**
Even his earliest poems, written in 1914, evoke the surreal
violence of war in a world gone mad (a video performance of the poem in French can be viewed here).
War Song
Dame Death is joyously dancing,
a drunken, hip-swinging jig,
never a word, just wriggling
and playfully juggling skulls
like so many knucklebones.
Dance of Death, Felicien Rops |
Dame Death is glad, and very drunk—
for there’s blood in full flow out there,
a heavy red brookful in every ravine.
Accompanying her weird dancing
is the tom-tom of guns in the distance:
“Tom-tom-tom! tom-tom-tom! Come then, White Lady,
come dance to the sound of the drums!”
Dame Death’s getting drunker and splashing
her sweet little face with blood,
like a child who’s been eating the jam.
Dame Death is paddling in blood,
and slapping down into it with her long hands,
as though she were washing her shroud;
wallowing, and silently sniggering.
Dame Death is flushed, writhing, dancing
like a girl who’s had too much drink.
“Hey, Death, get your hopping in time
with the tom-tom of guns in the distance!”
—Tomtomtom-tomtomtom!
The
guns in the distance
quicken their murderous presto,
guns laughing together in rhythm;
whipping her up for The Jubilation Ball:
“Spin on those dainty slim feet,
squirm the meat off those sinuous hips,
get waltzing and whirling, White Lady!
dancing and skipping! waving your arms!
dancing and skipping! waving your arms!
Here’s blood, here’s blood!
And here’s some more, to keep you going!
Come on now, drink up! totter and reel!
This is the start of the Orgy in Red!”
Dame Death is dancing, insanely drunk,
to the tom-tom of guns in the distance.
--1914,
Albert-Paul Granier, translated by Ian Higgins
Illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle Hartmann Schedel 1440-1514 |
Granier’s “Chanson de Guerre” is a highly unsettling portrayal of death as both a gleeful child and a drunken, dancing woman. Death appears not as the Grim Reaper, but as a
child whose “sweet little face” is smeared with blood as if it were jam. Nightmarishly, this vision of Death playfully juggles skulls and blithely
paddles in blood. At the same time,
Death appears as a highly sexualized woman, “flushed, writhing, dancing/ like a
girl who’s had too much drink.” She wriggles her “sinuous hips” and welcomes “the
Orgy in Red.”
What the child and the prostitute share is an eerie, inappropriate,
unstoppable laughter. They thrill at the carnage and laugh at the slaughter; to
Death, the war is a joyous event (the British trench poet Julian
Grenfell writes quite differently about the “Joy of Battle” at which Death “moans
and sings”).
In Granier’s “War Song,” Death celebrates her addiction to bloodshed.
She cannot get enough of her favorite brew, and there’s so very much of it –
enough blood to wash in, to wallow in, and to guzzle from “the heavy red
brookful” that fills every ravine. Death rhapsodizes, “Here’s blood, here’s
blood!/ And here’s some more, to keep you busy!”
French gunner, 1916 |
What is it that drives Death’s precarious and tottering dance
on her “dainty thin heels”? She wriggles
and writhes to the hypnotic drumbeat of the guns that laugh and “quicken their
murderous presto.” As a heavy artillery gunner, Granier would have been
intimately acquainted with the rhythmic beat of shellfire as he and his unit
tuned the music of their artillery batteries.
Granier’s “War Song” might seem to paint an exaggerated picture of death in the First World War, but the statistics are even more shocking. How much blood? How much death? During the duration of the war, on average, nearly 900 French soldiers were killed every day; of the 8.4 million French soldiers who were mobilized, 1.3 million died and 4.2 million were wounded. Over 73% of the French troops who entered the war became casualties of the war.†
Less than three weeks before his twenty-ninth birthday, on August 17, 1917 Albert-Paul Granier was killed while
flying as an observer over the Verdun battlefield. His plane was hit by a shell, and no trace of
his body was ever found. He is honored in the Pantheon in Paris, his name
appearing alongside those of 560 other French writers who died in the Great
War.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Jean Leclercq, “Albert-Paul
Granier, the unknown soldier poet,” Le
Mot Juste en Anglais, posted 5 April 2015.
**Despite receiving a commendation from the Académie française in 1918, the book was soon forgotten and only rediscovered in
2008 after a copy was found at a French flea market. Further discussion of
Granier and his poetry can be read on this blog at the post “A good
death.”
†The average number of French killed each day of the First
World War is taken from “War
Losses (France), 1914-1918 Online:
International Encyclopedia of the First World War. The statistics on French
total casualties during the war are from C.N. Trueman, “First
World War Casualties,” The History
Learning Site, posted 17 April 2015.
The imagery in this poem is fantastic, if horrifying.
ReplyDeleteIan Higgins' translation is masterful at conveying Granier's surreal vision -- I can't thank him enough for allowing me to share his work.
DeleteFor readers with a fair command of French, can I convince you that Granier's Les Coqs et les Vautours is a masterpiece that has gone unnoticed for far too long. In their own way, his poems easily rank with the best of Apollinaire's.
ReplyDelete