David Gascoyne by Gertrude Hermes, 1956 © National Portrait Gallery
First published in 2014
by Enitharmon Press
10 Bury Place
London WC1A 2JL
www.enitharmon.co.uk
Distributed in the UK by
Central Books
99 Wallis Road
London E9 5LN
Text © Estate of David Gascoyne 2014
Preface, selection and editorial matter © Roger Scott 2014
ISBN: 978-1-907587-37-5
Enitharmon Press acknowledges the financial assistance of Arts Council England and for this publication it is particularly grateful for the support of Dr Roger Scott and the beneficiaries of the estates of David and Judy Gascoyne.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in Bembo by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire and printed in the UK by Gomer Press Ltd
CONTENTS
UNCOLL. = uncollected poems; titles in italics are unpublished
Bibliography
Editor’s Preface by Roger Scott
Introductory Notes by David Gascoyne
Acknowledgements
POEMS WRITTEN AT SCHOOL (1929)
Storm UNCOLL.
October Night UNCOLL.
From ROMAN BALCONY (1932)
Roman Balcony
Fading Avenues
Vista
Roman Ghosts
Summer’s Echo
Rain Clouds
Prison
Transformation Scene
The Bridge
Psychological Fragment
Exhaustion
Seaside Tragedy
The New Isaiah
OTHER EARLY POEMS (1932–1935)
Sonnet to Alida Monro
Hinterland
By the Sea: Traditional Form & Modernist Forms UNCOLL.
Seaside Souvenir
On the Terrace
Slate
Susan: a carving by Eric Gill UNCOLL.
from ‘Ten Proses’
2. ‘In New York and other cities’
3. ‘Shafts of pale light are directed’
8. ‘They were hardly to be expected here’
10. ‘The world of De Chirico’
From ‘Automatic Album Leaves’
1. ‘The Room is not very large’
In Perpetuum Mobile
Hommage à Mallarmé UNCOLL.
Oleograph UNCOLL.
Night-Piece UNCOLL.
End of Peace UNCOLL.
Perpetual Winter Never Known UNCOLL.
‘Not having knife-edge to my ermine cape’
Landscape
Speculation
Sonnet: ‘Progressing forward …’ UNCOLL.
‘They Spoke of a New City’ UNCOLL.
‘The Roots of Evil’ UNCOLL.
Germinal
Gnu Opaque
Marrow
Baptism
Future Reference
MAN’S LIFE IS THIS MEAT (1936)
The Chariot
‘The cold renunciatory beauty’
‘Light of the sun over the arctic regions’
Morning Dissertation
The Unattained
Reintegration
No Solution
Direct Response
The Last Head
Purified Disgust
Charity Week
Reflected Vehemence
The End is Near the Beginning
Lost Wisdom
Unspoken
Yves Tanguy
‘The Truth is Blind’
The Cage
Educative Process
Antennae
Lozanne
Salvador Dalí
The Diabolical Principle
The Rites of Hysteria
And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis
SURREALIST AND OTHER POEMS (1936–1938)
A Sudden Squall
Competition UNCOLL.
‘The entrance to that valley stands alone’ UNCOLL.
Phenomena
The Very Image
Asylum
The Perpetual Explosion
The Light of the Lion’s Mane
The Great Day
The Very Image
The Cubical Domes
The Symptomatic World
The Supposed Being
Eau Sifflé (for Georges Hugnet) UNCOLL.
Goût du jour UNCOLL.
Cafard UNCOLL.
Récupération UNCOLL.
Fool’s Paradise UNCOLL.
Symptomatic World UNCOLL.
Elegiac Stanzas I.M. Alban Berg UNCOLL.
‘Chorus’ to ‘Procession to the Private Sector’ UNCOLL.
The Hills and in the light, daily
Compline for the Occident: a cantata for choir and solo voice
The Moon Over London UNCOLL.
An Unfinished, Post-Auden Pre-War Proem (for J.S.)
Three Verbal Objects
‘transparency of the vegetable world …’ UNCOLL.
Two Untitled Fragments
Phantasmagoria
From HOLDERLIN’S MADNESS (1938)
Figure in a Landscape
Orpheus in the Underworld
Tenebrae
Epilogue
POEMS 1937–42 (1943)
MISERERE
Tenebrae
Pieta
De Profundis
Kyrie
Lachrymae
Ex Nihilo
Sanctus
Ecce Homo
METAPHYSICAL POEMS:
Concert of Angels
Elsewhere
World Without End
Inferno
Lowland
Mountains
Winter Garden
The Wall
The Fortress
Dichtersleben
I.M. Benjamin Fondane
Mozart: Sursum Corda
Cavatina
Artist
Insurrection
Legendary Fragment
Eve
Venus Androgyne
The Dark’s Fidelity
Post-Mortem UNCOLL.
Amor Fati
Signs
The Hero
The Fault
The Descent
The Open Tomb
The Plummet Heart
The Three Stars
Epode
PERSONAL POEMS:
Sonnet: From Morn to Mourning
The Fabulous Glass
Camera Obscura
Apologia
Epilogue to an Episode
The Writer’s Hand
Dead End
The Sacred Hearth
To a Contemporary
An Elegy
From a Diary
Odeur de Pensée
Fête
Chambre d’Hôtel
Jardin du Palais Royal
Noctambules
Souvenirs de Paris (I): A La Fenêtre
Epilogue 1940–1
Sonnet: The Uncertain Battle
Lines
The Anchorite UNCOLL.
TIME AND PLACE:
Snow in Europe
Zero
An Autumn Park
The Conspirators. Prelude to an Unfinished Narrative
Come Dungeon Dark (III)
Farewell Chorus
Spring Mcmxl
A Wartime Dawn
Walking at Whitsun
Oxford: A Spring Day
The Gravel-Pit Field
Requiem
Strophes Elégiaques à la Mémoire d’Alban Berg<
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A VAGRANT AND OTHER POEMS (1950)
A Vagrant
Innocence and Experience
Photograph
Reported Missing
A Tough Generation
The Other Larry
Eros Absconditus
The Goose-Girl
Beware Beelzebub
Rondel for the Fourth Decade
September Sun 1947, updated 1983
The Post-War Night
Demos in Oxford Street
Evening Again
Three Venetian Nocturnes
1. Barcarolle
2. Lido Gala Fireworks
3. On the Grand Canal
Birth of a Prince
Rex Mundi
Fragments towards a Religio Poetae
The Second Coming
A Little Zodiak for Kathleen Raine
After Twenty Springs
LIGHT VERSE
An Unsagacious Animal
Le Déjeuner sur L’Herbe: a Pastoral
The Decay of Decency
With a Cornet of Winkles
Three Cabaret Songs
ENCOUNTER WITH SILENCE: POEMS, 1950 (1998)
Give Up Dead Words
Stele
Terminal
Fragment from an unfinished / unpublished poem
Untitled: ‘Mist and damp …’
Saturnalia
The Bomb-Site Anchorite (fragment)
MAKE-WEIGHT VERSE
A Post-Card from Venice to T.S.E.
Who Are the Orthosexual?
L’homme assez moyen (pas très sensual)
OTHER POEMS 1950–1956
‘Dear Thomas Eliot’
‘The Porch before these poems is the entrance into Night’
‘The Hand that in the Darkness’
‘The Son of Man is in Revolt’
‘When I am able to think at night’
Qu’est-ce que la Décadence? UNCOLL.
Yes, You UNCOLL.
Yes, thank you. Now I can start the day UNCOLL.
Remembering the Dead
Haiku: Urban Autumn After the War UNCOLL.
‘My own sophistry’ UNCOLL.
Ambiguous Haiku UNCOLL.
Cartesian Haiku UNCOLL.
‘Rain globules on glass’
‘And tell me, how is Christ preached now …’
Metropolis by Night UNCOLL.
Night-Watchers’ Ruminations UNCOLL.
Night Thoughts UNCOLL.
Sentimental Colloquy
Elegiac Improvisation on the Death of Paul Eluard
NIGHT THOUGHTS (1956)
The Nightwatchers
Megalometropolitan Carnival
Encounter with Silence
LATER POEMS 1956–1995
The Grass in the Waste Places
Half-an-Hour
On ReReading Jacob Boehme’s ‘Aurora’
Three Verbal Sonatinas
Speechlessness
Whales and Dolphins
Prelude to a New Fin-de-Siècle
Variations on a Phrase
Rare Occasional Poem
Dodecatribute to Miron Grindea at 75
Arbres, Bêtes, Courants d’Eau: Improvisation (for Salah Stétié), UNCOLL.
Haiku for [Salah] Stétié, Hague Haiku UNCOLL.
Thalassa: the Unspeakable Sea
Entrance to a Lane
A Further Frontier
A Sarum Sestina
November in Devon
Three Remanences
A Summer Evening at Caesar’s Tower (Drafts)
Ivy UNCOLL.
APPENDIX A:
UNPUBLISHED POEMS, drafts and fair copies
Sonnet to Alida Monro
Hinterland
The Very Image
Asylum
The Perpetual Explosion
‘The Hills, and in the light, daily’
Compline for the Occident: a cantata for choir and solo voice
Two untitled fragments
Come Dungeon Dark (Part III)
Dark’s Fidelity
Epilogue to an Episode
Dead End
Souvenirs de Paris: A la Fenêtre
Epilogue 1940–41
‘Dear Thomas Eliot’
‘The Porch before these poems is the entrance into night’
‘The Hand that in the Darkness’
‘The Son of Man is in Revolt’
‘When I am able to think at night’
Haiku: ‘Rain globules on glass’
‘And tell me, how is Christ preached now?’
A Summer Evening at Caesar’s Tower
APPENDIX B:
DRAFTS, POEMS IN FACSIMILE, TYPESCRIPTS
Elegiac Stanzas I.M. Alban Berg, typescript
Ex Nihilo, handwritten
Mozart: Sursum Corda, typescript
The Plummet Heart, handwritten
Apologia, typescript
Epilogue to an Episode, typescript 1 & 2
Dead End, typescript
An Elegy, last page
From a Diary, pages 1 & 2
Chambre d’hôtel
Noctambules, page 1
Epilogue 1940-41
Sonnet: The Battle
An Autumn Park, typescript
The Gravel-Pit Field
Poems published 1941, Notes handwritten
Requiem, A1 & typescript page 1
A Vagrant, page 1
Rondel for the Fourth Decade, typescript
Barcarolle
Stele
Terminal
Elegiac Improvisation in honour of Paul Eluard, page 1
Entrance to a Lane
APPENDIX C:
NOTES TO THE POEMS
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
POETRY
Roman Balcony and Other Poems (London: Lincoln Williams, 1932)
Man’s Life Is This Meat (London: Parton Press, 1936)
Hölderlin’s Madness (London: Dent, 1938)
Poems 1937-42 (London: Editions Poetry London, 1943; reprinted 1944, 1948)
A Vagrant and Other Poems (London: John Lehmann, 1950)
Night Thoughts (London: André Deutsch, and New York: Grove Press, 1956; Paris: Alyscamps Press, 1995)
Collected Poems, edited by Robin Skelton (London: Oxford University Press & André Deutsch, 1965; reprinted 1966, 1970, 1978, 1982, 1984)
Penguin Modern Poets 17, with Kathleen Raine and W.S. Graham (London: Penguin Books, 1970)
The Sun at Midnight : Poems and Aphorisms (London: Enitharmon Press, 1970)
Three Poems (London: Enitharmon Press, 1976)
Early Poems (Warwick: Greville Press, 1980)
La Mano del Poeta, bi-lingual selection of poems, edited by Francesca Romani Paci (Genoa: Edizioni San Marco del Giustiniani, 1982). Awarded the Premio Biella-Poesia Europa 1982
Five Early Uncollected Poems (Leamington Spa: Other Branch Readings, 1984)
Collected Poems 1988 (Oxford University Press, 1988; reprinted 1988)
Extracts from ‘A Kind of Declaration’ & Prelude to a New Fin-de-Siècle (Warwick: Greville Press, 1988)
Tankens Doft, selection of poems, edited by Lars-Inge Nilsson (Lund: Ellerströms, 1988)
Miserere: Poems 1937-42 (Paris: Granit, 1989)
Poems of Milosz (London: Enitharmon Press, 1993)
Three Remanences (London: privately printed, 1994)
Selected Poems (London: Enitharmon Press, 1994)
David Gascoyne selection, edited by Roger Scott with Nicholas Johnson, in Maggie O’Sullivan, David Gascoyne, Barry MacSweeney, Etruscan Reader III (Newcastle-under-Lyme: Etruscan Books, 1997)
Encounter With Silence, Poems 1950, introduction by Roger Scott (London: Enitharmon Press, 1998)
The Entrance to that valley stands alone, pamphlet poem c. 1936 (London: Enitharmon Press, 2001)
Poems by David Gascoyne, selected and introduced by Judy Gascoyne (Warwick: Greville Press Pamphlets, 2001)
Poems by George Herbe
rt, selected and introduced by David Gascoyne, edited by Roger Scott (Warwick: Greville Press Pamphlets, 2004)
PROSE
Opening Day (novel; London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1933)
A Short Survey of Surrealism (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1935; London: Frank Cass & Co., 1970; San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1982)
Thomas Carlyle (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1952; reprinted 1963, 1969)
Paris Journal 1937-1939, with a preface by Lawrence Durrell (London: Enitharmon Press, 1978)
Journal, 1936-37 (London: Enitharmon Press, 1980)
Journal de Paris et d’ailleurs, 1936-1942, translated by Christine Jordis (Paris: Flammarion, 1984)
Rencontres avec Benjamin Fondane (Cognac: Arcane 17, 1984)
Collected Journals 1937-42, introduced by Kathleen Raine (London: Skoob Books Publishing, 1991)
Exploration, preface and trans. into French of ‘Death of an Explorer’ and ‘Self-Discharged’ by Michèle Duclos (Bordeaux: Editions Dufourg-Tandrup, 1992)
Lawrence Durrell (London: privately printed, 1993)
The Fire of Vision: David Gascoyne and George Barker, edited and introduced by Roger Scott (London: privately printed, 1996)
Selected Prose 1934-1996, edited by Roger Scott, with an introduction by Kathleen Raine (London: Enitharmon Press, 1998)
A Short Survey of Surrealism, with a preface by Dawn Ades and introduction by Michel Remy (London: Enitharmon Press, 2000)
April: A Novella, edited and introduced by Roger Scott (London: Enitharmon Press, 2000)
Letter to an Adopted Godfather [Henry Miller], edited and introduced by Roger Scott (Etruscan Books, 2012)
TRANSLATIONS
Salvador Dalí, Conquest of the Irrational (New York: Julien Levy, 1935)
Benjamin Péret, A Bunch of Carrots: Twenty Poems (London: Roger Roughton, 1936; trans. with Humphrey Jennings; second edition published as Remove Your Hat, 1936)
André Breton, What Is Surrealism? (London: Faber, 1936)
Paul Eluard, Thorns of Thunder, Selected Poems edited by George Reavey (London: Europa Press & Stanley Nott, 1936; trans. with Samuel Beckett, Denis Devlin, Eugène Jolas, Man Ray, George Reavey and Ruthven Todd)
Collected Verse Translations, edited by Alan Clodd and Robin Skelton (London: Oxford University Press, 1970)
André Breton and Philippe Soupault, The Magnetic Fields (London: Atlas Press, 1985)
Benjamin Péret, Remove Your Hat & Other Works (London: Atlas Press, 1986, trans. with Humphrey Jennings and Martin Sorrell)
Pierre Jean Jouve, The Unconscious, Spirituality, Catastrophe (Child Okeford: Words Press, 1988)
Three Translations (Child Okeford: Words Press, 1988)
Pierre Jean Jouve, The Present Greatness of Mozart (Birmingham: Delos Press, 1996)
Selected Verse Translations, edited by Alan Clodd and Robin Skelton, with an introduction by Roger Scott (London: Enitharmon Press, 1996)