Hugues C. Pernath

Tien gedichten van de eenzaamheid II - Als een verwante, met niemand heb ik de hoop gemeen

Language: dutch

Translations: english (As a relative, I have hope in common with no one), french (Les dix poèmes de la solitude II - Comme un parent, je ne partage l’espoir), german (Zehn Gedichte der Einsamkeit II - Wie ein Verwandter, mit niemand teile ich die Hoffnung)

Tien gedichten van de eenzaamheid II - Als een verwante, met niemand heb ik de hoop gemeen

Als een verwante, met niemand heb ik de hoop gemeen
Met niemand de keuze van de liefde
Waarmee ik eenzaam leef, waarmee ik wankel
Bewegend maar bedwongen door het mateloze landschap
Waarin de dood de aren leest
Ons blijft alleen de tijd en niet het vluchten
En alles dat op de aarde beweegt,
Ons blijft de laatste reis van twee vermoeide mensen
Het afscheid nemen van de voldragen schoot.

Voorgoed.
Zoals iedereen het zag, zoals iedereen het hoorde
En zoals het ook iedereen zal vergaan
Naargelang de afstand naar de verte, de gloed
Doorheen de schaduwspelen van mijn schaduw.
Als een verwante versteen ik met de geur van de vrouw
En het verkrimpen van de kevers op het dodelijke mos.

Terwijl de waarheid het afgrijzen verwekt,
Een wilde wolk wordt, en wormen willekeurig
De eerste balk van ons huis doorboren,
Kom ik naar je toe en betast ik jouw kleren
Ik kus je, gebogen, gehurkt en verscheurd.
Opnieuw worden wij ouder en kleiner
En roekelozer in de gestage regen,
Waarin wij de rouw dragen voor de vele voorbije banden
Verder door de lage landen van de landerigheid.

Translations:

Language: english

As a relative, I have hope in common with no one

As a relative, I have hope in common with no one
With no one the choice of love
With which I live alone, with which I stagger
Moving but subdued by the boundless landscape
In which death gleans the corn
All we’re left with is time and not fleeing
And all that moves on the earth,
All we’re left with is the last journey of two weary people
Taking their leave of the womb at term.

Forever,
As everyone saw it, as everyone heard it
And as will happen to everyone
Depending on the distance from the distance, the glow
Through the shadow play of my shadow.
As a relative I turn to stone with the scent of the woman
And the convulsion of the beetles on the deadly moss.

While truth engenders horror,
Becomes a wild cloud, and worms arbitrarily
Gnaw through the first beam in our house,
I come to you and finger your clothes
I kiss you, bent over, crouching, torn in two.
Again we grow older and smaller
And more reckless in the steady rain,
In which we wear mourning for the many past bonds
Onward through the lowlands of depression.

Language: french

Les dix poèmes de la solitude II - Comme un parent, je ne partage l’espoir

Comme un parent, je ne partage l’espoir
avec personne le parti pris de l’amour
qui me fait vivre seul, me retenant
de chanceler dans ce domaine
démesuré où glane la mort.
Il ne nous reste que le temps, non la fuite
et tout ce qui se meut sur la terre,
il nous reste le dernier voyage d’un couple épuisé
l’adieu au sein près d’accoucher.

A jamais.
Au vu et au su de tout le monde
et comme il arrivera à chacun
selon la distance du lointain, la lueur
dans les yeux d’ombre de mon ombre.
Comme un parent me figent l’odeur de la femme
et les scarabées racornis par la mort velue.

Tandis que la vérité se fait horreur, se fait
sauvage nuée, et qu’une vermine arbitraire
perce la première poutre de notre demeure,
je viens vers toi, je touche tes vêtements,
je t’embrasse, courbé, accroupi, déchiré.
Et nous revieillissons, nous rapetissons
plus téméraires dans la pluie incessante,
où nous portions le deuil de tant de liens passés
à travers le plat pas de l’ennui.

Language: german

Zehn Gedichte der Einsamkeit II - Wie ein Verwandter, mit niemand teile ich die Hoffnung

Wie ein Verwandter, mit niemand teile ich die Hoffnung

Mit niemand die Wahl meiner Liebe

Mit der ich einsam lebe, mit der ich schwanke

Mich bewegend aber bezwungen von der maßlosen Landschaft

In dem der Tod die Ähren liest

Uns bleibt nur die Zeit und nicht das Fliehen

Und alles was sich auf Erden bewegt,

Uns bleibt die letzte Reise von zwei ermüdeten Menschen

Das Abschiednehmen vom ausgetragenen Schoss.

Für immer.

Wie jeder es sah, wie jeder es hörte

Und wie es auch jedem ergehen wird

Je nach der Distanz zur Ferne, zur Glut

Durch die Schattenspiele meines Schattens hindurch.

Wie ein Verwandter versteinere ich mit der Duft der Frau

Und dem Verschrumpfen der Käfer auf dem tödlichen Moos.

Während die Wahrheit Entsetzen erregt,

Zu einer wilden Wolke wird, und Würmer willkürlich

Den ersten Balken unseres Hauses durchbohren,

Komme ich zu dir und befühle deine Kleider

Ich küsse dich, nach vorne gebeugt, zusammen gekauert und zerrissen.

Und wieder werden wir älter und kleiner

Und dreister in dem ständigen Regen,

In dem wir die Trauer tragen für die vielen verblichenen Bande

Fort durch die Niederungen der Lustlosigkeit.

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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