Sleep Spaces – Robert Desnos / Carmen Lobo

In the night there are of course the seven wonders
of the world and the greatness tragedy and enchantment.
Forests collide with legendary creatures hiding in thickets.
There is you.
In the night there are the walker’s footsteps the murderer’s
the town policeman’s light from the street lamp and the ragman’s lantern
There is you.
In the night trains go past and boats
and the fantasy of countries where it’s daytime. The last breaths
of twilight and the first shivers of dawn.
There is you.
A piano tune, a shout.
A door slams. A clock.
And not only beings and things and physical sounds.
But also me chasing myself or endlessly going beyond me.
There is you the sacrifice, you that I’m waiting for.
Sometimes at the moment of sleep strange figures are born and disappear.
When I shut my eyes phosphorescent blooms appear and fade
and come to life again like fireworks made of flesh.
I pass through strange lands with creatures for company.
No doubt you are there, my beautiful discreet spy.
And the palpable soul of the vast reaches.
And perfumes of the sky and the stars the song of a rooster
from 2000 years ago and piercing screams in a flaming park and kisses.
Sinister handshakes in a sickly light and axles grinding on paralyzing roads.
No doubt there is you who I do not know, who on the contrary I do know.
But who, here in my dreams, demands to be felt without ever appearing.
You who remain out of reach in reality and in dream.
You who belong to me through my will to possess your illusion
but who brings your face near mine only if my eyes are closed in dream as well as
in reality.
You who in spite of an easy rhetoric where the waves die on the beach
where crows fly into ruined factories, where the wood rots
crackling under a lead sun.
You who are at the depths of my dreams stirring up a mind
full of metamorphoses leaving me your glove
when I kiss your hand.
In the night there are stars and the shadowy motion of the sea,
of rivers, forests, towns, grass and the lungs
of millions and millions of beings.
In the night there are the seven wonders of the world.
In the night there are no guardian angels, but there is sleep.
In the night there is you.
In the daylight too.”

Robert Desnos
Sleep Spaces

Robert Desnos was born in 1900 in Paris where he later attended commercial college and then worked as a clerk. Besides being one of the influential surrealists, he also worked as a journalist and a radio personality. He met Breton in 1919, who was so interested in Desnos’ ability to practice automatic writing he later wrote about it in his book Nadja, but their friendship ended in 1929, when Desnos signed an attack that called Breton an ox. In 1926 Desnos wrote a volume of poems in quatrains, which strayed from more free forms towards the classic style of Baudelaire. In 1944 Desnos was arrested and spent time in a series of concentration camps until he died of typhoid.

Desnos was a master of hypnotic sleeps, and his obsession with dream-states becomes a theme in his poems as he examined the intersections of waking and sleeping. Like Apollinaire, Desnos wrote about the modern city and enjoyed his lively neighborhood in Paris where he experienced both high and low culture. His poems reflect the intersections of these disparate cultures. Despite his early death his is considered to be one of the most influential lyricists of the 20th century. He believed in universal freedoms and maintained a sense of optimism until the end of his life. His obsession with wordplay culminated in experiments with language that highlighted the plastic nature of words and phrases. This wordplay shows the breakdown of communication that indicates the possibility of multiplicity of meaning.

Les espaces du sommeil

Dans la nuit il y a naturellement les sept merveilles du monde et la grandeur et le tragique et le charme.
Les forêts s’y heurtent confusément avec des créatures de légende cachées dans les fourrés.
Il y a toi.
Dans la nuit il y a le pas du promeneur et celui de l’assassin et celui du sergent de ville et la lumière du réverbère et celle de la lanterne du chiffonnier.
Il y a toi.
Dans la nuit passent les trains et les bateaux et le mirage des pays où il fait jour. Les derniers souffles du crépuscule et les premiers frissons de l’aube.
Il y a toi.
Un air de piano, un éclat de voix.
Une porte claque. Une horloge.
Et pas seulement les êtres et les choses et les bruits matériels.
Mais encore moi qui me poursuis ou sans cesse me dépasse.
Il y a toi l’immolée, toi que j’attends.
Parfois d’étranges figures naissent à l’instant du sommeil et disparaissent.
Quand je ferme les yeux, des floraisons phosphorescentes apparaissent et se fanent et renaissent comme des feux d’artifice charnus.
Des pays inconnus que je parcours en compagnie de créatures.
Et y a toi sans doute, ô belle et discrète espionne.
Et l’âme palpable de l’étendue.
Et les parfums du ciel et des étoiles et le chant du coq d’il y a 2000 ans et le cri du paon dans des parcs en flamme et des baisers.
Des mains qui se serrent sinistrement dans une lumière blafarde et des essieux qui grincent sur des routes médusantes.
Il y a toi sans doute que je ne connais pas, que je connais au contraire.
Mais qui, présente dans mes rêves, t’obstines à s’y laisser deviner sans y paraître.
Toi qui restes insaisissable dans la réalité et dans le rêve.
Toi qui m’appartiens de par ma volonté de te posséder en illusion mais qui n’approches ton visage du mien que mes yeux clos aussi bien au rêve qu’à la réalité.
Toi qu’en dépit d’une rhétorique facile où 1e flot meurt sur les plages,
où la corneille vole dans des usines ruine, où le bois pourrit en craquant sous un soleil de plomb.
Toi qui es à la base de mes rêves et qui secoues mon esprit plein de métamorphoses et qui me laisses ton gant quand je baise ta main.
Dans la nuit il y a les étoiles et le mouvement ténébreux de la mer, des fleuves, des forêts, des villes, des herbes, des poumons de millions et millions d’êtres.
Dans la nuit il y a les merveilles du monde.
Dans la nuit il n’y a pas d’anges gardiens, mais il y a le sommeil.
Dans la nuit il y a toi.
Dans le jour aussi.