Note on the Translations

In its realist and inflexible description of contemporary society, Houellebecq’s prose is often thought to be the opposite of poetry. But it is in fact as a poet that Houellebecq began his literary journey. These translations are taken from The Way of the Struggle, and it is the second of three to be published in France; the first and the third being The Pursuit of Happiness and Renaissance. The three books form a triptych, a single poetic corpus. Taken together, and especially in the chronological order in which they were published – The Pursuit of Happiness, The Way of the Struggle and Renaissance - the books suggest an ascendence from quest and struggle to rebirth. In Staying Alive, a Method, his first of several critical pieces on poetry, Houellebecq offers practical and intellectual advice on how to survive as a young poet in the twenty-first century.

In one of his letters to us, Houellebecq says he feels The Way of the Struggle is not just his best book of poetry, but his best book altogether. This might seem strange from someone whose fame is principally as a novelist. But reading his works together, it is clear his poems do not simply precede his novels but are instrumental in producing them. Characters and landscapes from his novel Atomised make an appearance in some of the poems of The Way of the Struggle. Houellebecq’s writing is a constant coming and going between the worlds of prose narrative and poetry.

Houellebecq’s poetry is as much an exploration of modernity at the end of the millennium as an exploration of the poetic forms of French nineteenth-century Romantic poetry. Houellebecq has been called the “Baudelaire of the supermarkets”, but his poetic voice is nevertheless instantly recognisable as his own. It is a voice for the new kinds of suffering brought upon man in the landscape of globalised cities, a landscape of increasingly accelerated and isolated relationships between human beings. But the poetic form needed for that voice emerges from a different temporality altogether. This is the temporality of reading, and especially Houellebecq’s reading of his nineteenth-century predecessors, who witnessed the making of yesterday’s cityscapes and described them with equal prescience as the beginning of a profoundly troubling new world.

All the poems are taken from Le Sens du Combat, (Paris: Flammarion, 1996). We have chosen to translate the title as The Way of the Struggle.

Poem

Cet homme sur l’autre quai est en bout de course;
Je ne suis plus tout à fait au début.
Pourquoi est-ce que je ressens de la pitié pour lui?
Pourquoi, exactement?

Sur le quai, près de moi, il y a des amoureux
Qui ne regardent pas l’homme
(de pseudo-amoureux, car il est déjà chauve).
Cependant, ils s’embrassent;
Ils semblent croire à l’existence d’un monde entre eux,
D’un autre monde que celui de l’homme,

De l’homme en face
Qui se lève et rassemble ses sacs Prisunic,
Définitivement en bout de course;
Sait-il que Jésus-Christ est mort pour lui?

Il se lève, il rassemble ses sacs,
Il clopine jusqu’au bout du quai
Et là, profitant de l’angulation de l’escalier,
Il disparaît.

•

This man on the other platform has reached the end of the race;
And I am no longer quite at the beginning.
Why do I feel this pity for him?
Why exactly?

On the platform, near me, there are lovers
Who do not look at the man
(pseudo-lovers, he is already bald).
But they’re kissing anyway;
They seem to believe there is a world they share,
Another world than that of man,

Or of that man opposite
Who’s standing up and gathering his Tesco bags —
Definitely at the end of the race;
Does he even know Jesus-Christ died for him?

He stands up, gathers his bags
Hobbles along to the end of the platform
And there, taking full advantage of that corner to the stairs,
Disappears.

Poem

Les hirondelles s’envolent, rasent lentement les flots, et montent en spirale dans la tiédeur de l’atmosphère. Elles ne parlent pas aux humains, car les humains restent accrochés à la terre.
Les hirondelles ne sont pas libres. Elles sont conditionnées par la répétition de leurs orbes géométriques. Elles modifient légèrement l’angle d’attaque de leurs ailes pour décrire des spirales de plus en plus écartées par rapport au plan de la surface du globe. En résumé, il n’y a aucun enseignement à tirer des hirondelles.

Parfois, nous revenions ensemble en voiture. Sur la plaine immense, le soleil couchant était énorme et rouge. Soudain, un rapide vol d’hirondelles venaient zébrer sa surface. Tu frissonnais, alors. Tes mains se crispaient sur le volant gainé de peau. Tant de choses pouvaient, à l’époque, nous séparer.

•

The swallows take their flight, skimming the waves slowly, then fly in a spiral into the warming atmosphere. They do not speak to humans, for the humans remain stuck on the earth.
The swallows are not free. They are conditioned by the geometry of their repeated orbits. They slightly modify the angle of attack of their wings to describe spirals that grow further and further apart in relation to the blueprint of the earth’s surface. In short, there is nothing to be learned from swallows.

Sometimes, we would come back together in the car. Over the immense plain the sunset was enormous and red. Suddenly there was a quick flight of swallows and its surface was sliced. You shuddered, at that moment. Your hands were tight on the snake-skin cover of the wheel. So many things could, at the time, make us part.

Poem

Au Service du Sang

Je ne pars plus vraiment en voyage
Car je connais l’endroit
Et je connais mes droits,
Et j’ai connu la rage.

Au service de l’humanité,
Assis dans la cité,
Je connais bien ma chambre
Je sens la nuit descendre.

Les anges qui s’envolent
Dans la splendeur des cieux
Et qui retrouvent Dieu,
Les femmes qui rigolent.

Attaché à ma table,
Assis dans la cité,
La lente intensité
De la nuit implacable.

La nuit dans la cité,
La lente immensité,
La vision très cruelle
Détachée sur le ciel
D’une forme qui bouge
Qui palpite, qui est rouge.

Au service du sang,
Des dégoûts peu conscients,
Des fins d’amours cruels
Des éclats du réel;

Tout cela pourquoi faire?
L’idée d’une vision
La fin d’une chanson
Les hommes qui désespèrent

Qui attendent la rage
Et les corps éclatés
Qui s’accroupissent, blessés,
Dans l’espoir du carnage.

J’apporte l’aliment
De la haine finale,
Je fais frotter mes dents
Et je ressens le mal.

Je connais bien les ruses
De la chair écrasée
On me dit que j’abuse,
Je me sens justifié

Par l’humaine souffrance,
Par les espoirs déçus
Par l’écrasement dense
Des journées superflues.

Je ne suis pas serein,
Mais je suis dans ma chambre
Les anges me tiennent la main,
Je sens la nuit descendre.

•

In the Service of Blood

I no longer go on trips, really
Because I know the place
And I know my rights,
And I’ve known rage.

In the service of humanity,
In middle of the estate,
I know my bedroom well
And feel the night descend.

Angels take flight
In the glory of heaven
They will find God,
And the women have fun.

Tied to the table,
Sat in the estate,
The slow intensity
Of the relentless night.

At night in the estate,
The slow immensity,
The very cruel vision
Torn off from the sky
Of a shape that moves
Pulsating, and red.

In the service of blood
The sleepy disgust,
The cruel love endings
The blown up pieces of the real;

And all of that for what?
The idea of a vision
The end of a song
The men losing hope

Waiting for rage
For exploding bodies,
Squatting, wounded,
Hoping for carnage.

I bring the ingredient
For final hatred,
My teeth are grinding
Evil seeps in.

I know the tricks
Of a crushed flesh
I overdo it, I’m told
But I feel exonorated

By human suffering,
By hopes dissatisfied
By the dense crushing
Of superfluous days.

I am not serene
But I am at home,
Angels are holding my hand
I can feel the night coming.