Le Fond Du Tableau

by Max Jacob

C’est une petite partie de campagne! une petite partie autour d’un puits. La pauvre enfant est seule sur la plage, sur les rochers en pente de la dune et on dirait qu’il y une auréole autour de sa tête. Oh! je saurai bien la sauver! moi, le gros boursouflé je cours, j’accours. Là-bas autour du puits on joue la Marseillaise et moi j’accours pour la sauver. Je n’ai pas encore parlé de la couleur du ciel parce que je n’étais pas sûr que ce ne fût avec la mer un seul tableau lisse couleur des tableaux d’école en ardoise souillée de craie, oui, avec une trainée de craie en diagonale, comme le couteau de la guillotine.

The Depths of the Painting

by Max Jacob

It’s a little party in the countryside! A little party near a well. The poor little girl is alone on the beach, on the steep rocky slope of the dune, and you might say there is a halo around her head. Oh, I’ll know how to save her! Me, the fat puffy one, I rush I run. Down there near the well they are playing the Marseillaise and I’m rushing to save her. I haven’t mentioned yet the color of the sky because I wasn’t sure that with the sea it doesn’t make a smooth painting the color of a blackboard smeared with chalk, yes, with a diagonal trail of chalk like the blade of a guillotine.

translated from French by Sophia Lecker

Max Jacob was born on July 12, 1876 in Quimper, Brittany to a non-observant Jewish family. After studying law, he settled in the Montmartre district of Paris and knew Picasso, Braque, Apollinaire, Cocteau, and many other writers and painters of the French avant-garde. In 1916 Jacob self-published his best-known book, the collection of prose poems, Le cornet à dés (The Dice Cup.)

Throughout his career, Jacob never identified with any movement. Instead, his prose poetry and verse moved freely through elements of symbolism, cubistic word play, and what came to be termed surrealism. Relying solely on his own belief that each poem must be situé or differentiated in terms of vocabulary, syntax, and tone, Jacob created an oeuvre notable for its piercing insights, audacious technique, and wide emotional range. He also published novels, essays, and exhibited paintings.

After experiencing two visions of Christ, Max Jacob converted to Catholicism. Although he published and exhibited in the 1920s and 30s, Jacob continued to struggle with poverty and marginalization. In 1936 he moved to Benôit-sur-Loire, Loiret, living near the abbey there and leading a semi-monastic life. In February 1944, after the deportation and deaths of several family members, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the internment camp at Drancy. Despite the efforts of Jean Cocteau to have his old friend released, Jacob died of pneumonia while at Drancy on March 5, 1944.

Sophia Lecker is an American translator and poet who currently lives in Canada. She recently discovered the work of the French poet Max Jacob while visiting his hometown of Quimper, Brittany. Since then, she has rendered a complete translation of Jacob’s book of prose poems The Dice Cup that is awaiting publication. Her own poetry has been published in Canadian journals such as Prism International, Event, and others. Several of her translations from The Dice Cup have appeared in a recent number of the Denver Quarterly.