I can only read in tiny snatches at the moment. G\u00e9rard de Nerval\u2019s sonnets have been a great recourse in such a situation: brief, crystalline and endlessly evocative, they\u2019re things I can dip into in spare moments, particularly the ones I know by heart and can think about as I walk to the shops or do the dishes. I have no academic grounding in them and my French is limited so my responses are personal and subjective, but I think in the case of these poems that\u2019s as it should be. Anyway, I thought I\u2019d set out some of my current thoughts about \u2018Horus\u2019. I\u2019m going to discuss the poem in French because that\u2019s how I hear it in my head and the subtlety of Nerval\u2019s ordering of sound and idea are vital to the poem\u2019s effect.<\/p>\n
……………………………………<\/span>Horus<\/p>\n ………….<\/span>Le dieu Kneph en tremblant \u00e9branlait l’univers : ………….<\/span>– Le voyez-vous, dit-elle, il meurt, ce vieux pervers, ………….<\/span>L’aigle a d\u00e9j\u00e0 pass\u00e9, l’esprit nouveau m’appelle, ………….<\/span>La d\u00e9esse avait fui sur sa conque dor\u00e9e, One of the most remarkable things in this poem, it seems to me, is the second volta<\/em> (change of direction) at line 11. It underlies the haunting power of those last three lines. We\u2019ll come to that later.<\/p>\n The poem begins in packed, highly condensed drama. I think this is embodied in the very sounds and rhythms of the language as well as being evoked by the images. There\u2019s an explosive power to that first line, sweeping us through astonishing ideas and imaginative reversals. \u201cLe dieu Kneph\u201d sounds<\/em> powerful with its hard plosives, as if about to announce a powerful action by this exotic but so familiarly-mentioned god; \u201cen tremblant\u201d startlingly suggests his weakness; \u201c\u00e9branlait l\u2019univers\u201d takes us back to power in a stunning expansion of perspective. As I hear it, both this expansion and the contradictory suggestions of the line are held together by strong patterns of sound, especially the assonance between \u201ctrem<\/em>blant\u201d and \u201c\u00e9bran<\/em>lait\u201d. Though strictly speaking the first four lines are in a narrative mode they feel<\/em> dramatic because their jagged, leaping surprises keep our responses on edge, and because they\u2019re so full of violence. With the direct speech of the second quatrain we\u2019re in full dramatic mode. And how vividly embodied it is: \u201cle voyez-vous\u201d challenges the reader to react to Isis\u2019s spitting vituperations. These fuse the tones and claustrophobic intimacy of marital dispute with the mythic perspectives in which god and goddess incarnate fundamental cosmic processes. Surely it took genius of a very high order to fuse such different fields of reference and to compress such vast, fissile ideas into this brief, lucidly structured quatrain. Kneph and Isis aren\u2019t people<\/em>, though, they\u2019re states of nature or states of mind. If they were people, the state inhabited by Kneph, trembling, squinting, crippled, and with all the freezing fogs of the world passing ambiguously into and out of his mouth, would be as much a state of victimhood as the Isis state is at this stage. Isis\u2019s hatred of him would seem callous. Admittedly, there\u2019s nothing attractive about her at this point. Hard plosives make \u201cAttachez son pied tors\u201d sound<\/em> violent and \u201c\u00e9teignez son oeil louche\u201d is horrifyingly so. Kneph and Isis both seem to belong to the same savage, hate-filled world.<\/p>\n The \u201cvolta\u201d or turn in line 9 is clean, sharp and exhilarating, a complete change in the feeling of the poem:<\/p>\n ………….<\/span>L’aigle a d\u00e9j\u00e0 pass\u00e9, l’esprit nouveau m’appelle, Kneph and his world of bitterness, sterility and frustration are forgotten. Rapid changes of tense fill the lines with movement. \u201cL’esprit nouveau m’appelle\u201d thrills with anticipation. In a sense it\u2019s still Isis speaking but she\u2019s been transformed to an excited, buoyantly loving, rejuventated figure that seems to have nothing in common with the old one. Fleeting suggestions move round \u201cJ’ai rev\u00eatu pour lui la robe de Cyb\u00e8le…\u201d, intertwining ideas of religious ceremony and amorous courtship. In a deeper sense it seems to me that we\u2019re no longer seeing Isis from outside, as a dramatic personification; her voice has become the voice of the poem itself, living through this enormous transformation.<\/p>\n This is a huge change, although in a sense we\u2019re still in<\/em> the drama of Kneph and Isis. The wholly unexpected change of direction comes with line 12, where we\u2019re suddenly outside<\/em> that drama, contemplating what seems to be its after effect. Had the final tercet begun \u201cLa d\u00e9esse a<\/em> fui\u201d it would have seemed like a simple narrative continuation. The extraordinary stroke of shifting the goddess\u2019s departure to the pluperfect (\u201cavait<\/em> fui\u201d) sharpens the sense that these three lines involve a radical change. We\u2019re suddenly in a different time scheme in which the events of the first eleven lines are seen as belonging to a remote past.\u00a0 Now we see the goddess with an extraordinary combination of wistfulness and delight. Wistfulness, because she\u2019s gone \u2013 gone in a reversal of the arrival<\/em> of Aphrodite on her conch. Delight, because although she herself is gone the sea and air still shine with the beauty of her remembered presence.<\/p>\n Loss and recovery are fundamental, recurrent notes in the Nerval poems I\u2019ve read. We see them here in \u201cl’ardeur d’autrefois brilla dans ses yeux verts\u201d, in \u201cJ’ai rev\u00eatu pour lui la robe de Cyb\u00e8le\u201d and in \u201cla mer nous renvoyait son image adore\u201d \u2013 the first two full of energy and forward-looking purpose, the third ethereally reflective. In fact the more I think about it the more the whole poem seems a magical orchestration of the tenses in three movements \u2013 a first, eight line movement revolving round the bitter stasis of a present that seems inescapable, a second, forward-looking three line movement which draws life from an eagerly anticipated future, and a third three-line movement of rapt retrospection.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I can only read in tiny snatches at the moment. G\u00e9rard de Nerval\u2019s sonnets have been a great recourse in such a situation: brief, crystalline and endlessly evocative, they\u2019re things I can dip into in spare moments, particularly the ones I know by heart and can think about as I walk to the shops or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2931,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions\/2931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n………….<\/span>Isis, la m\u00e8re, alors se leva sur sa couche,
\n………….<\/span>Fit un geste de haine \u00e0 son \u00e9poux farouche,
\n………….<\/span>Et l’ardeur d’autrefois brilla dans ses yeux verts.<\/p>\n
\n………….<\/span>Tous les frimas du monde ont pass\u00e9 par sa bouche,
\n………….<\/span>Attachez son pied tors, \u00e9teignez son oeil louche,
\n………….<\/span>C’est le dieu des volcans et le roi des hivers !<\/p>\n
\n………….<\/span>J’ai rev\u00eatu pour lui la robe de Cyb\u00e8le…
\n………….<\/span>C’est l’enfant bien-aim\u00e9 d’Herm\u00e8s et d’Osiris !<\/p>\n
\n………….<\/span>La mer nous renvoyait son image ador\u00e9e,
\n………….<\/span>Et les cieux rayonnaient sous l’\u00e9charpe d’Iris.<\/p>\n
\n………….<\/span>J’ai rev\u00eatu pour lui la robe de Cyb\u00e8le…
\n………….<\/span>C’est l’enfant bien-aim\u00e9 d’Herm\u00e8s et d’Osiris !<\/p>\n