Richard Minne

De arme en de rijke dagen IV

Language: dutch

Translations: english (The world is a many mouthed flute), german (Die Welt ist eine Flöte), french (Les jours pauvres et les jours riches IV), spanish (Días pobres y ricos IV)

De arme en de rijke dagen IV

De wereld is een fluit met zooveel duizend monden.
En elkeen blaast zijn lied. En ’t maakt een droef geluid
waarin ik niets van eigen klank heb weergevonden.
En gij? Misschien hebt ge ook getikt aan meenge ruit
en werd ge als ik weer feestelijk wandelen gezonden.

Nochtans: ik heb gedroomd, gehoopt; en ik droeg boete.
‘k Zag de Alpen, Vlaanderen en Straatsburg aan den Rijn.
Ik heb bemind. Ik sloeg de trommel in veel stoeten.
Ik pluisde in boeken die vol oude wijsheid zijn.
Ik heb gezocht, zoo ’t kan, met handen en met voeten.

En ’t slot? Ik hield daaruit als onontvreemdbaar deel
den troost van ’t eigen lied, wanneer ik stil gezeten,
des avonds, op den hoogen berm een wijsje speel,
niet voor ’t heelal en de eeuwigheid, maar slechts voor ’t heden.
Dat maakt me een blijden dag te meer. En dat is veel.

Translations:

Language: english

The world is a many mouthed flute

The world is a many mouthed flute, and each single player
Blows his own tune, and their concert makes sad refrain,
In which I cannot find a note of my own flute’s prayer.
And you? Perhaps you too have tapped on many a pane
And were as I sent packing with cold disdain.

Yet, I have dreamed, and hoped, and written confessions,
Seen Flanders, the Alps, and Strassburg on the Rhine.
I have loved and beaten the drum in many processions,
Pored over old books and sipped their wisdom’s wine.
I have busily stirred these hands and feet of mine.

And the upshot? I retained what cannot be taken:
The solace of my own song when, alone, I play
A ditty at night where the sea on the dike comes breaking,
Not for the universe or eternity, just for today.
That’s another glad moment won, and that’s much, I would sai.

Language: german

Die Welt ist eine Flöte

Die Welt ist eine Flöte, die vieltausend Munde hat.
Und jeder bläst sein Lied. Und es macht trübe Klänge,
worin ich nichts dem eignen Klang fand adäquat.
Und du? Hast auch vielleicht geklopft an eine Menge
von Fenstern, wo wie mich man fortzugehn dich bat.

Und doch: ich hab geträumt, gehofft; ich lernte büßen.
Ich sah die Alpen, Flandern, Straßburg auch am Rhein.
Ich liebte; hab in vielen Zügen trommeln müssen.
Ich nagte manches Buch, das alter Weisheit Schrein.
Ich hab gesucht, wenn’s geht, mit Händen und mit Füßen.

Der Schluß? Mir blieb daraus, was mir nie mehr entfiel:
der Trost des eignen Lieds, wenn ich still in Natur
am Abend auf dem hohen Hang ein Liedchen spiel,
für Weltall nicht und Ewigkeit, für’s Heute nur.
Das macht noch einen frohen Tag mir. Das ist viel.

Language: french

Les jours pauvres et les jours riches IV

Le monde est une flûte à mille et une bouches.
Et chacun dit son air. Cela fait un rondeau
triste où je n’ai plus rien retrouvé de mon souffle.
Mais peut-être avez-vous frappé à maints carreaux,
pour être, comme moi, renvoyé dans la foule.

Pourtant, j’ai espéré, rêvé, souffert sans cesse.
J’ai vu l’Alpe, la Flandre et Strasbourg, près du Rhin.
J’ai aimé. J’ai joué du tambour aux kermesses.
J’ai fouillé des recueils débordants de sagesse.
J’ai cherché, s’il se peut, et des pieds et des mains.

Mais n’ai-je pas gardé la plus belle des parts,
mon propre chant qui me console quand je joue,
tranquillement assis sur le coteau, le soir,
non pour l’éternité, mais pour aujourd’hui. Car
cela me donne un jour de joie de plus. Et c’est beaucoup.

Language: spanish

Días pobres y ricos IV

El mundo es una flauta con miles de boquillas.
Cada cual toca su aire. En esta barahúnda
no he podido encontrar ningún sonido mío.
¿Y tú? ¿También has repicado en muchos vidrios
y te has mandado al cuerno, como yo, sin ira?

Pero caro he pagado el sonar y esperar.
Sí, he visto ya los Alpel, Flandes y la Renania.
He amado. He batido el tambor en muchas bandas.
Me he desojado en libros de antiguo buen pensar.
Y con manos y pies he buscado sin pausa.

Pero, en resumen, ¿qué ? De mi canto sólo me consuela
la musiquilla que tocaba, quedo,
de noche, en la alta berma. ¿Por el Universo ?
Ni por la eternidad : sino para hoy, aquí en la tierra.
Y así me he dado un día alegre más. Ya es mucho eso.

Richard Minne

* 30.11.1891, Gent, Belgium
† 01.06.1965, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium

Richard Minne (Belgium, 1891 - 1965) counts among Flanders’ most respected poets, but also among its loneliest. The latter should be taken both literally and figuratively: Minne stood alone with his poetry and spent the better part of his life alone. Minne came to maturity at a time in which neo-Classicists and Modernists were engaged in a struggle for domination in the world of poetry: the years following the Great War.

It cannot be claimed that Minne renewed poetry in terms of its external forms – sonnets and rhyme are abundantly present in his work –, but rather in terms of its interior form and tone. As an early forerunner of the Australian poet Les Murray, he employed everyday and on occasion agricultural motifs – as with Murray he lived on a farm for a period of time. Together with unconventional words and dialect, he cast the said motifs in a spoken language reminiscent of the so-called parlando style. He relativised and demystified both the outside world and his work.

Minne started out as a socialist and writer of militant poetry in the rebellious working-class city of Ghent but it came to nothing. A dyed in the wool individualist, he joined the socialist movement chiefly out of defiance, but the collective straightjacket did not fit. He finally revolted against socialism itself, gathered together his frustrations, misfortunes and broken dreams and withdrew. He lived a secluded existence and maintained only limited contacts with the literary world. Minne cultivated irony or (self) derision in his poems, but just as frequently countered melancholy with sarcasm. An empathetic twinge or ascetic longing drifted to the surface from time to time in his work.

A solitary ironist, Minne was alone in Flanders. What lay behind his ill-fated early years was unknown. Moreover, his recalcitrant, profane verses were too candid and ahead of their time for Flanders of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Understanding and recognition failed to materialise after the publication of his first collection In den zoeten inval (Open House) (1927). Influence from other poets in the Dutch speaking world is hard to detect, and likeminded poets at home and abroad are few and far between. Richard Minne was a sort of “great unknown”.

His colleague-writer Raymond Herreman once referred to this identity in Minne’s poetry: more bitter irony, more brutal insanity and more mystical lyricism. The minds with whom Minne really sensed a degree of kinship were old-fashioned foreign satirists and free thinkers – remarkably enough for the most part prose writers (Diderot, Voltaire, Sterne Swift, …).

Herreman encouraged him throughout his life to give poetic voice to this disposition, but in actual fact Minne’s career only lasted ten years. He seldom added new works to his oeuvre, and like poets that had died prematurely, he underwent the Keatsian tragedy of the poet’s life nipped in the bud by sickness, intrinsic uncertainty and misunderstanding. His poetic blood continued to flow later in his life when he worked as a newspaper journalist and columnist: prose by the square-centimetre with the much admired Montaigne at the back of his mind. Recognition of his enormous capacities as a poet, however, only emerged after he had taken his place among the figures of history.

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