The Verb to Be
André Breton in 1924.
I know the general outline of despair. Despair
has no wings, it doesn’t necessarily sit at a cleared table in the evening on a
terrace by the sea. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of
insignificant facts like seeds that leave one furrow for another at nightfall.
It’s not the moss that forms on a rock or the foam that rocks in a glass. It’s
a boat riddled with snow, if you will, like birds that fall and their blood
doesn’t have the slightest thickness. I know the general outline of despair. A
very small shape, defined by jewels worn in the hair. That’s despair. A pearl
necklace for which no clasp can be found and whose existence can’t even hang by
a thread. That’s despair for you. Let’s not go into the rest. Once we begin to
despair we don’t stop. I myself despair of the lampshade around four o’clock, I
despair of the fan towards midnight, I despair of the cigarette smoked by men
on death row. I know the general outline of despair. Despair has no heart, my
hand always touches breathless despair, the despair whose mirrors never tell us
if it’s dead. I live on that despair which enchants me. I love that blue fly
which hovers in the sky at the hour when the stars hum. I know the general
outline of the despair with long slender surprises, the despair of pride, the
despair of anger. I get up every day like everyone else and I stretch my arms
against a floral wallpaper. I don’t remember anything and it’s always in
despair that I discover the beautiful uprooted trees of night. The air in the
room is as beautiful as drumsticks. What weathery weather. I know the general
outline of despair. It’s like the curtain’s wind that holds out a helping hand.
Can you imagine such a despair? Fire! Ah they’re on their way … Help! Here they
come falling down the stairs … And the ads in the newspaper, and the
illuminated signs along the canal. Sandpile, beat it, you dirty sandpile! In
its general outline despair has no importance. It’s a squad of trees that will
eventually make a forest, it’s a squad of stars that will eventually make one
less day, it’s a squad of one-less-days that will eventually make up my life.
Translated
from the French by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow.
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