Hugues C. Pernath

Tien gedichten van de eenzaamheid I - In het liefdeloze landschap van mijn eenzaamheid

Language: dutch

Translations: english (In the loveless landscape of my solitude), french (Les dix poèmes de la solitude I - Dans l’impassible paysage de ma solitude), german (Zehn Gedichte der Einsamkeit I - In der lieblosen Landschaft meiner Einsamkeit), slovenian (Deset pesmi samote I – V brezčutni pokrajini moje samote)

Tien gedichten van de eenzaamheid I - In het liefdeloze landschap van mijn eenzaamheid

In het liefdeloze landschap van mijn eenzaamheid
Heerst geen beweging die mij bedaart, geen rust
Die mij troost of afmaakt als een eerstgeborene.
Hoogmoedig vertaalt mijn bloed de tekens,
De flitsen over het wrange water van weleer,
En draagt de eigenschappen van hem
Die zelfs de pijnen van november schuwt.
Ellendig, lijf en droom ontkennend, wijk ik
Naar de onderwereld van mijn ongeloof.

Geen grenzen, geen bakens, geen horizont.
En dalend, als een doelbewuste zwerver,
Begint de valk haar vreselijke vlucht.
En uit de laatste resten van mijn hoop
Verzamel ik de vreemde fragmenten van mijn verval,
Eerst verslaafd en dan genezen, verschuil ik mij
In de schandelijke schade die mij verteert.

Ik zal geen kwaad doen, noch verderf stichten
Geen heilige berg is mij onbekend,
Ik zal mezelve beterschap toewensen, en vredig
De levenslijnen der herinnering volgen
Naar de puinhoop van mijn verleden dat nog slechts smeult,
En stuiptrekkend in mijn ontworteld landschap
Zal ik de hand uitstrekken naar de sluier van de diepe slaap
Zachtjes genoeg om geen haat, geen pijn te krassen
In het zwangere achterblijven van haar weigerend woord.

Translations:

Language: english

In the loveless landscape of my solitude

In the loveless landscape of my solitude
No movement prevails that calms me, no rest
That consoles or dispatches me like a firstborn.
Proudly my blood translates the signs,
My translates the signs,
The flashes across the wry water of the past,
And bear the qualities of him
Who shuns even the pains of November.
Wretched, body and dream denying, I retreat
To the underworld of my unbelief.

No limits, no beacons, no horizon.
And descending, like a nomad with a goal,
The falcon begins its dreadful flight.
And from the last remnants of my hope
I gather the strange fragments of my decay,
First addicted and then cured, I hide
In the shameful disaster that consumes me.

I shall do no harm, or wreak havoc
No sacred mountain is unknown to me.
I shall bid myself get well, and peacefully
Follow the lifelines of memory
To the ruins of my past still just smouldering,
And in death’s throes in my uprooted landscape
I will stretch out a hand to the veil of deep sleep
Softly enough not scratch hate, or pain
In the pregnant absence of her word of refusal.

Language: french

Les dix poèmes de la solitude I - Dans l’impassible paysage de ma solitude

Dans l’impassible paysage de ma solitude
il ne règne aucun repos, aucun geste apaisant
Qui me console ou qui me parfait comme un nouveau-né.
Mon sang transpose avec superbe les signes,
Les éclairs sur l’eau glauque d’autrefois,
Et porte les stigmates de celui
Qui évite même les douleurs de novembre.
Misérable, déniant chair et rêve, je fuis
Vers le séjour souterrain de mon incroyance.

Ni frontières, ni balises, ni perspective.
Le gerfaut, tel un aventurier lucide,
Entame en plongeant son vol terrifiant.
Je puise les étranges fragments de ma déchéance
Dans les derniers vestiges de mon espoir.
Asservi d’abord, sauvé ensuite je me retranche
Dans l’abjecte nuisance qui me consume.

Je ne perpétrerai pas le mal, je ne perdrai personne
Aucune montagne sacrée ne m’est étrangère,
Je souhaiterai mon propre amendement, sereinement
Je suivrai les sillons du souvenir vers les feux
De mon passé qui ne rougeoient plus qu’à peine,
Et secoué par un dernier spasme dans mon paysage déraciné
Je tendrai la main vers le voile du profond repos
Assez doucement pour ne griffer de haine, ni de peine
La réluctance gravide de sa réponse rétive

Language: german

Zehn Gedichte der Einsamkeit I - In der lieblosen Landschaft meiner Einsamkeit

In der lieblosen Landschaft meiner Einsamkeit
Herrscht keine Bewegung die mich beruhigt, keine Ruhe,
Die mich tröstet oder schlachtet wie einen Erstgeborenen.
Hochmütig übersetzt mein Blut die Zeichen,
Die Blitze über das bittere Wasser von damals,
Und trägt die Eigenschaften von ihm,
Der sogar die Schmerzen vom November scheut.
Elend, Leib und Traum verneinend, verdufte ich
In die Unterwelt meines Unglaubens.

Keine Grenzen, keine Baken, kein Horizont.
Und fallend, wie ein zielstrebiger Streuner,
Beginnt der Falke seinen furchtbaren Flug.
Und aus den letzten Resten meiner Hoffnung
Sammle ich die fremden Fragmente meines Zerfalls,
Süchtig zunächst und dann geheilt, verstecke ich mich
In dem schändlichen Schaden, der mich verzehrt.

Ich werde nichts Böses tun, kein Unheil anrichten,
Kein heiliger Berg ist mir unbekannt,
Ich werde mir gute Besserung wünschen, und friedlich
Den Lebenslinien der Erinnerung folgen
Zum Trümmerhaufen meiner Vergangenheit, der nur noch schwelt,
Und gliederzuckend in meiner entwurzelten Landschaft
Werde ich die Hand ausstrecken nach dem Schleier tiefen Schlafes
Zart genug um keinen Hass, keinen Schmerz zu kratzen
In das schwangeren Zurückbleiben ihres sich weigernden Wortes.

Language: slovenian

Deset pesmi samote I – V brezčutni pokrajini moje samote

V brezčutni pokrajini moje samote
Ne vlada noben gib, ki bi me pomiril, niti spokoj,
Ki bi me potolažil ali pokončal kot prvorojenca.
Zanosno prevaja moja kri znamenja,
Bliske prek trpke vode minulih časov
In prenaša lastnosti njega,
Ki se izmika celo bolečinam novembra.
Nesrečen, zanikujoč meso in sen, bežim
V podzemlje svoje nevere.

Nobenih meja, nobenih znamenj, nobenega obzorja.
In spuščajoč se kot neuklonljiv klatež,
Začenja sokol svoj strašen let.
In iz poslednjih ostankov svoje vere
Zbiram čudne drobce svojega propada,
Najprej omamljen, nato ozdravljen se vkopljem
V nizkotno nesrečo, ki me razžira.

Nič hudega ne bom storil, nikogar pogubil,
Nobena sveta gora mi ni tuja,
Zaželel si bom ozdravljenja, in vedro
Sledil življenjskim črtam spomina
K le še kadečim se ruševinam svoje preteklosti,
In sredi svoje izkoreninjene pokrajine bom v krču
Iztegnil roko proti kopreni globokega sna,
Dovolj nežno, da ne opraskam sovraštva niti bolečine
V noseči odsotnosti besede njene zavrnitve.

Hugues C. Pernath

* 15.08.1931, Borgerhout, Antwerp, Belgium
† 04.06.1975, Borgerhout , Antwerp, Belgium

Hugues C. Pernath is the attractive literary pseudonym of Hugo Wouters, who was born in the suburbs of Antwerp.

At the age of sixteen he volunteered for the Belgian army in order to escape the friction between his parents, who were in the process of divorcing. At the beginning of the 1950s his first poems were published in the avant-garde magazine Het Cahier. From 1955 on, with Paul Snoek and Gust Gils, he became the driving force behind the magazine gard-sivik and a pivotal figure in the second experimental generation in Flanders. In 1957, when Paul Snoek for called up for military service in the Belgian army, he and the professional soldier Hugues Pernath wrote each other poetic letters. A selection appeared as Soldatenbrieven in 1961. Their work had thematic affinities, but their approach to poetry was totally different. Pernath favoured autonomous literature, Snoek a romantic-expressive style.

1963 saw the appearance of Pernath’s collection Instrumentarium voor een winter Tool Kit for a Winter), in which through idiosyncratic selection, combination and elimination of words he adapts the syntax of Dutch to his unbridled need to explain his own existence. This he experiences as torn apart and he assembles the irreconcilable oppositions in a poetry that reflects this state of mind.

In his second collection, Mijn gegeven woord (My Given Word, 1966), Pernath gives a poetic and pessimistic report on his loves and friendships, disappointments and antagonisms, hope and despair. Feelings of fear and inferiority alternate with guilt and irritation at the loss of a lover and the disloyalty of friends.

In the early 1960s Pernath also began making translations and adaptations of dramatic texts (Tartuffe, King Lear, The Hostage, etc.) in collaboration with directors. In 1967 he went on a three-month directing course at the Film and Theatre School in Łodz in Poland, where met such directors as Wajda and Skolimowski. At the end of that year he appeared stark naked in Masscheroen by his friend Hugo Claus, which resulted in the latter’s conviction on a charge of indecency.

Between 1966 and 1970 Pernath wrote Vijftig index-gedichten (Fifty Index Poems), many of which were protests designed to be read at poetry events in Amsterdam, Brussels and Antwerp. These occasional poems show the poet’s intense involvement in social developments.

In 1970 Pernath married Myra, from an Australian Jewish background. He dedicated his Exodus cycle to her: in it memories of his visit to Auschwitz merge with painful childhood memories, a tormenting sense of loneliness, and a heightened sense of mortality. The cycles De acht hoofdzonden (The Eight Cardinal Sins) and De tien gedichten van de eenzaamheid (The Ten Poems of Solitude) present the poet’s disillusion, alienation and isolation in strongly physical imagery rooted in philosophy. They also contain sublime love poetry.

The collection Mijn tegenstem (My Counter-Voice, 1973) contains work written in the period 1966-1973.

In 1973 Pernath joined the exclusive society of Pink Poets, a group of 13 poets, artists and intellectuals united in their opposition to the dumbing down of culture, in their fostering of a dandified, romantic-decadent attitude to life and in the creation of sophisticated, word-based and mannerist poetry. Pernath had just been elected as the society’s first president, when on 4 June 1975 he died suddenly at the age of only forty-three. In the years following his death Pernath acquired the image of a writer of genuine poetry, in which what is at stake is no more or less than the authenticity of his own experience of existence. This made a great impression on the generation of poets that succeeded him: Leonard Nolens, Roger de Neef, Dirk van Bastelaere, Peter Verhelst and others. In 2005 a reading edition of the complete poetic works of Hugues C. Pernath, based on scholarly research, was published.

Joris Gerits

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