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<p class="paracenter">
<b>JULES SUPERVIELLE </b>
</p>
<p class="paracenter"></p>
<p class="para"> 
Jules Supervielle is a French poet and a modem French poet. He belongs to this 
century and died only a few years ago. Although he wrote in French, he came of a 
Spanish colonist family settled in South America (Montevideo). He came to France 
early in life and was educated there. He lived in France but maintained his 
relation with his mother-country.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
His poetry is very characteristic and adds almost a new vein to the spirit and 
manner of French poetry. He has bypassed the rational and emotional tradition of 
his adopted country, brought in a mystic way of vision characteristic of the 
East. This mysticism is not however the normal spiritual way but a kind of 
oblique sight into what is hidden behind the appearance. By the oblique way I 
mean the sideway to enter into the secret of things, a passage opening through 
the side. The mystic vision has different ways of approach—one may look at the 
thing straight, face to face, being level with it with a penetrating gaze, 
piercing a direct entry into the secrets behind. This frontal gaze is also the 
normal human way of knowing and understanding, the scientific way. It becomes 
mystic when it penetrates sufficiently behind and strikes a secret source of 
another light and sight, that is, the inner sight of the soul. The normal vision 
which I said is the scientist's vision, stops short at a certain distance and so 
does not possess the key to the secret knowledge. But an aspiring vision can 
stretch itself, drill into the surface obstacle
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-55</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">confronting it, and make its contact with the hidden ray behind. There is also 
another mystic way, not a gaze inward but a gaze upward. The human intelligence 
and the higher brain consciousness seeks a greater and intenser light, a vaster 
knowledge and leaps upward as it were. There develops a penetrating gaze towards 
heights up and above, to such a vision the mystery of the spirit slowly reveals 
itself. That is Vedantic mysticism. There is a look downward also below the 
life-formation and one enters into contact with forces and beings and creatures 
of another type, a portion of which is named Hell or Hades in Europe, and in 
India<i> p&#257;t&#257;l </i>and
<i>ras&#257;</i><i>tal</i>.
But here we are speaking of 
another way, not a frontal or straight movement, but as I said, splitting the 
side and entering into it, something like opening the shell of mother of pearl 
and finding the pearl inside. There is a descriptive mystic: the suprasensuous 
experience is presented in images and feeling forms. That is the romantic way. 
There is an explanatory mysticism: the suprasensuous is ,set in intellectual or 
mental terms, making it somewhat clear to the normal understanding. That is I 
suppose classical mysticism. All these are more or less direct ways, straight 
approaches to the mystic reality. But the oblique is different- it is a seeking 
of the mind and an apprehension of the senses that are allusive, indirect, that 
move through contraries and negations, that point to a different direction in 
order just to suggest the objective aimed at. The Vedantic (and the Scientific 
too) is the straight, direct, rectilinear gaze-the Vedantin says, ' May I look 
at the Sun with a transfixed gaze' -whether he looks upward or</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-56</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">inward or downward. But the modem mystic is of a different mould. He has not 
that clear absolute vision, he has the apprehension of an aspiring 
consciousness. His is not religious poetry for that matter, but it is an 
aspiration and a yearning to perceive and seize truth and reality that eludes 
the senses, but seems to be still there. We shall understand better by taking a 
poem of his as example. Thus:
</p>
<br>
<p class="paracenter">
<b>Alter Ego </b>
</p>
<br>
<p class="para">Une souris s'échappe
</p>
<p class="para">(Ce n'en était pas une) 
</p>
<p class="para">Une femme s'éveille
</p>
<p class="para">(Comment le 
savez-vous?) </p>
<p class="para">Et la porte qui grince
</p>
<p class="para">(On l'huila ce matin) 
</p>
<p class="para">Près du mur de clôture
</p>
<p class="para">(Le mur n'existe plus) 
</p>
<p class="para">Ah! je ne puis rien dire 
</p>
<p class="para">(Eh bien, vous vous tairez!) 
</p>
<p class="para">Je 
ne puis pas bouger </p>
<p class="para">(Vous marchez sur la route) 
</p>
<p class="para">Où allons nous ainsi? 
</p>
<p class="para">(C'est moi 
qui le demande) </p>
<p class="para">Je suis seul sur la Terre 
</p>
<p class="para">
(Je suis là près de vous) </p>
<p class="para">Peut-on être 
si seul </p>
<p class="para">(Je le suis plus que vous, 
</p>
<p class="para">Je vois votre visage, 
</p>
<p class="para">Nul ne m'a jamais vu).
</p><br><p class="para">
Page-57</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
It is a colloquy between &quot;I&quot; and the other-I. The apparent self sees things that 
appear so concrete and real but in the other, they vanish and become airy 
nothings. Still, if things have any reality it is there in that other self.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
Or again, take this:
</p>
<br>
<p class="paracenter"><b> Lui seul
</b>
</p>
<blockquote>
	<blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
Si vous touchez sa main c'est bien sans le savoir, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Vous vous le rappelez mais sous un autre nom, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Au milieu de la nuit au plus fort du sommeil, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Vous dites son vrai nom et le faites asseoir. </p>
<p class="para"> 
Un jour on frappe et je devine que c'est lui </p>
<p class="para"> 
Qui s'en vient près de nous à n'importe quelle heure </p>
<p class="para"> 
Et vous le regardez avec un tel oubli </p>
<p class="para"> 
Qu'il s'en retourne au loin mais en laissant derrière </p>
<p class="para"> 
Une porte vivante et pale comme lui. </p>
	</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> 
The Reality is so real that it is always there, and it is not always altogether 
intangible, invisible. You touch it often enough but you do not know that it was 
the reality. You give it another name: perhaps imagination, illusion, 
hallucination. Yes, at the dead of night when you have forgotten yourself, 
forgotten the world, nothing exists, you call out his true name and set him in 
front—O my soul, O my God!
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
In the next poem that I quote, the mystery is explained, that is to say, 
described a little more at length.
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-58</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="paracenter">
<b>Saisir </b>
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Saisir, saisir le soir, la pomme et la statue, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Saisir, l'ombre et le mur et le 
bout de la rue, </p>
	<br>
	<p class="para">Saisir le pied, le cou de la femme couchée
	</p>
	<p class="para">Et puis ouvrir les mains. Combien 
d'oiseaux lâches, </p>
	<p class="para">Combien d'oiseaux perdus qui deviennent la rue, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">L'ombre, le 
mur, le soir, la pomme et la statue. </p>
	<br>
	<p class="para">Mains, vous vous usurez
	</p>
	<p class="para">A ce grave jeu-là, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Il faudra vous couper
	</p>
	<p class="para">Un jour, vous 
couper ras. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para">
* * 
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Grands yeux dans ce visage, 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Qui vous a placés là?
	</p>
	<p class="para">De quel vaisseau sans mats 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Etes-vous 
	l'équipage?</p>
	<br>
	<p class="para">Depuis quel abordage
	</p>
	<p class="para">Attendez-vous ainsi
	</p>
	<p class="para">Ouverts toute la nuit?
	</p>
	<br>
	<p class="para">Feux noirs d'un bastingage
	</p>
	<p class="para">Etonnés mais soumis
	</p>
	<p class="para">A la loi des orages.
	</p>
	<br>
	<p class="para">Prisonniers des mirages 
	</p>
	<p class="para">Quand sonnera minuit
	</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para">
Page-59</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">Baissez un peu les cils
</p>
<p class="para">Pour reprendre courage.
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">
	* * </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para"> Saisir quand tout me quitte,
</p>
<p class="para"> 
Et avec quelles mains </p>
<p class="para"> 
Saisir cette pensée, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Et avec quelles mains </p>
<p class="para"> 
Saisir enfin le jour </p>
<p class="para"> 
Par la peau de son cou, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Le tenir remuant </p>
<p class="para"> 
Comme un lièvre vivant? </p>
<p class="para"> 
Viens, sommeil, aide-moi, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Tu saisiras pour moi </p>
<p class="para"> 
Ce que je n'ai pu prendre, </p>
<p class="para"> 
Sommeil aux mains plus grands. </p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
These hands do not grasp that thing, these eyes do not see that. Try to capture 
through the senses that tenuous substance, you find it nowhere. You cannot 
throttle that reality with your solid fist. Chop off your hands, pluck out your 
eyes, then perhaps something will stir in that darkness, something that exists 
not but wields a sovereign power. The eyes that see are not these winkless wide 
eyes, blank, vacant and dry, before which blackness is the only reality. One 
must have something of the bedewed gentle hesitating human eyes; it is there 
that the other light condescends to cast its reflection. The poet says, man with 
his outward regalia seems to have lost all trace of the Divine in him, what is 
still left of God in him is just the  
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-60</p>
<hr>
<br>
<p class="para">&quot;humidity&quot; of his soul<sup>1</sup>—the 'tears of things' as a great poet says.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
The sense that seizes and captures and makes an object its own is not any robust 
material sense, but something winged and vast and impalpable like your sleep—the 
other consciousness.
</p>
<br>
<p class="para"> 
The poet speaks obliquely but the language he speaks by itself is straight, 
clear, simple, limpid. No rhetoric is there, no exaggeration, no effort at 
effect; the voice is not raised above the normal speech level. That is indeed 
the new modem poetic style. For according to the new consciousness prose and 
poetry are not two different orders, the old order created poetry in heaven, the 
new poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the 
spoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best 
poetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneous and easy 
and felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between the poetic speech and 
prose is considerable, in French it is not so great, still the two were kept 
separate. In England Eliot came to demolish the barrier, in France a whole 
company has come up and very significant among them is this foreigner from Spain 
who is so obliquely simple and whose Muse has a natural yet haunting magic of 
divine things:
</p>
<blockquote>
	<p class="para">Elle lève les yeux et la brise s'arrête
	</p>
	<p class="para">Elle baisse les yeux, la campagne 
s'étend. </p>
</blockquote>
<p class="para">
<sup>1</sup> God says to man: &quot;L'humidité de votre âme, c'est 
ce qui vous reste de moi.&quot; 
</p>
<br><p class="para">
Page-61</p>
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