preface & 8 translations
“Blinded by a Burst of Laughter: Translating the Impossible.”
Our book, A Flea the Size of Paris (Black Widow Press, 2020), comprises the very first English-language translations of a unique corpus of absurdist poems from medieval France, the fatrasies and fatras. Describing these poems, it's best to avoid the term “nonsense,” given that word's sticky associations with snarks, jabberwockies and monty pythons. A better term was proposed in 1432 by the poet Baudet Harenc, to distinguish between two styles of fatras: the “possible” (realistic, rational, cogent) and the “impossible” (irreal, irrational, disjunctive). The fatrasies and fatras are indeed poems of the impossible, unfolding like the fevered hallucinations of a diligent, torturously overworked grammar student.
A fatrasie is a suite of eleven stanzas of eleven lines each. Within each stanza, 6 lines of 5 syllables are followed by 5 lines of 7 syllables. The first 6 lines are set in a see-saw, even nursery rhyme rhythm. The latter 5 lines break this cadence, so that line 7 functions as a volta, sounding an abrubt shift of rhythm and manner. It's as if the fatrasie stanza, as medievalist Giovanna Angeli has said, is a collage of two distinct stanza-forms.
A handsome headless man
laid on a great feast
for a hairy cunt
Just then a window
stuck out its noggin
& noticed the crack
Bad things were about to happen
when the dream of a donkey
brayed Hey Help Fire Fire
Everyone wants the altar
where we all got fucked to burn
Uns biaus hom sans teste
Menoit molt grant feste
Por .i. com velut
& une fenestre
A mis hors sa teste
Si vit le fendu
Ja fust grant max avenu
Qant li songes d’une beste
S’escria Hareu le fu
Trestout voloit ardoir l’aitre
Pour ce c’om i ot foutu
A fatras is a one-stanza poem, modelled on the fatrasie. It uses the same rhyme scheme of aab aab babab, but it is monometric, set in lines of 7, 8, or 10 syllables. Distinctively, each fatras opens with a couplet written in a courtly, even clichéd register. (It was long assumed that these couplets were all borrowed from well-known poems or songs of the day, but few sources have been identified.) 9 newly written lines are then “stuffed” (fatras then meant “stuff” or “to stuff,” only coming to mean “mess” later) into the couplet, to make a poem of 11 lines + 2.
Gently she comforts me
the one who stole my heart
Gently she comforts me
a half-dead tabby cat
who sings every Thursday
a hallelujah so shrill
that the latch of our gate
says the tariff is his
& made a wolf so brave
he ran off despite his rank
to murder God in heaven
then said Friend I bring you
the one who stole my heart
Doucement me reconforte
Celle qui mon cuer a pris
Doucement me reconforte
Une chate a moitié morte
Qui chante touz les jeudis
Une alleluye si forte
Que li clichés de no porte
Dist que siens est li lendis
S’en fu uns leus si hardis
Qu’il ala maugré sa sorte
Tuer Dieu en Paradis
Et dist Compains je t’aporte
Celle qui mon cuer a pris
Consistently, across the fatrasies and fatras, each line introduces a newly absurd frame-shift. Fatrasies, in particular, are built, line by line, of sharp contrasts, pragmatic impossibililties, and tight semantic contradictions. If there is an internal compositional rule, it is that the content of each line should be a total (surreal) surprise, while the whole should be grammatically correct. Fatras make a little bit more sense than fatrasies, and have more narrative continuity - but not all that much. What the fatras have which the fatrasies lack, most of all, is the framing device of the initial couplet, which gives them, as Angeli has said, “a head and a tail.”
The fatrasie, elder of the two forms, was invented by Philippe de Rémi (d. 1265) sometime around 1250, when Rémi was a knight at the court of Artois, in Arras. (Arras is about 100 miles north of Paris.) Rémi, a self-taught, amateur poet, and sire of Beaumanoir, wrote two major romances: La Manikine and Jehan et Blonde. Although Rémi is known for the economic and the psychological realism of his romances, the fatrasie wasn't the only impossible form he invented: he's also credited with a form called the resverie (reverie) or the oiseuse (birdsong, twittering). Rémi's original 11-stanza fatrasie was followed, sometime between 1280 and 1300, by a larger group, of 55 stanzas (5 x 11), composed by an anonymous collective of Arras poets.
71 fatras survive in total. Among these, the 30 “impossible” fatras collected with the works of Watriquet de Couvin are, by far, the most important. Born in the Hainaut region of what is now Belgium, Watriquet (known by his first name) became a prominent poet at the court in Paris, and seems to have been a royal advisor. Active 1319-1330, Watriquet was among the first European poets to supervise editions of his own collected works, mostly made up of formally varied didactic poems known as dits. Given Watriquet's social standing, not to mention his acute moral snobbery, it's not only curious that he wrote the often scabrous fatras, but that he wrote them in collaboration with an otherwise unknown man named Raimmondin, believed to have been a jongleur (vagabond poet-performer).
Watriquet and Raimmondin performed their fatras for king Philippe VI, in Paris, on Easter Sunday of 1329 or 1330 - almost exactly 690 years ago. The performance was probably realised in a mix of song and chanted recitation. Given the content of the poems, the atmosphere may well have been loud, drunken, rowdy. Some later, unknown censor was offended enough by the fatras that their sole surviving copy bears the scars of aggressive redactions, while a distinct second set of Watriquet's fatras appears to have been torn out (of a different manuscript) and completely destroyed. Note the date of the Watriquet-Raimmondin performance: 13 or 14 years later, in 1343, fleabitten rats would carry the first wave of the Black Death to Europe. The cultural mood which produced the extravagantly perverse, hilarious fatras would soon be extinguished.
Less is known about the contemporary reception of the fatrasies, but some guesses can be made. Arras in the 13th century was a wealthy mercantile town, where poetry was popular and fashionable. In Arras, like many French towns of the time, there were organisations called puys, through which poetry contests and elaborate public poetry events were organized. Among the puys, some of the best-loved poetic forms were collaborative, competitive forms such as the adjudicated jeu parti (two-part game). A jeu parti involved two poets competitively trading stanzas, a little like a medieval rap battle. It seems that, once word spread in town of Rémi's marvelous invention, the fatrasie form was adapted for use in contests of this same type, resulting in the unsigned Fatrasies d'Arras.
For modern readers, the fatrasies and fatras were first unearthed by philologist Achille Jubinal in the early 1830s. But it is only with the emergence of Dada/Surrealism that the fatrasies and fatras found their first truly sympathetic public in many centuries, when some translations by Georges Bataille were published in La Revolution surrealiste no.6 (March 1926). Since then, the cultural afterlife of the fatrasies and fatras has been bound up with the legacy of Surrealism. Bataille's translations continued being reprinted (often without attribution) for decades after, decades during which French medievalists were almost unanimous in contempt for the fatrasies and fatras. In 1868, editing Watriquet's complete works, Auguste Scheler set the tone, calling the fatras “insipid” non-sequiturs that did not even reach the low level of “mental debauchery.” It is only a century later, in the 1960s, after the American scholar Lambert C. Porter published the first comprehensive edition of the corpus (gathering most of the 71 surviving fatras, and all of the fatrasies), that specialists in the field broadly begin to revise their received opinions about the poems.
How were these poems written? The fatras appears to be an improvistory form. As Patrice Uhl has observed, the rhyme scheme and phrasal structure seems designed to facilitate instant invention. As collaborator, and in performance, Raimmondin's role may have been to provide (and to sing) the framing couplet, and perhaps also to provide the rhyme words, as a challenge to Watriquet to extemporize on the spot. Watriquet probably chanted the new lines that he “stuffed” into the framing couplet.
In composing the Fatrasies d'Arras, one poet may have been responsible for each line, or each for a section, and/or for providing rhyme-words, before passing it along to the next poet to carry on, until they had 11 stanzas. The anonymous collective of Arras could therefore have numbered as few as 2 poets, or as many as 55. Fatrasies thus resemble chain poems, if not serial poems, and have been sometimes compared with the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) of Surrealist method. And take note again of Angeli's self-conscious use of a formal term from Surrealist practice in describing the fatrasie stanza: a collage.
In these impossible poems, the very devices that emblematize, and constitute, rational order facilitate a step-by-step descent into a bottomless, apocalyptic absurd. Bataille prefaced his own translations with a brief note that can still resonate for readers today: “Many poets must have written fatrasies that have not survived: those of which a few fragments follow here have escaped the contempt of generations, just as they had once escaped the brain of someone blinded by a burst of laughter.”
Quatre rat a moie
Faisoient monnoie
D’un viez corbillon
.I. moines de croie
Faisoit molt grant joie
De foutre .i. bacon
Entendez a ma raison
Se ne fust La Pommeroie
Qui chevauchoit .i. gojon
Pendus fust par la courroie
Karesmes par .i. coillon
Four rats in a haystack
were minting gold coins
from a rusty ploughshare
A monk made of chalk
rose to his glory
fucking a pork hock
Hear my final summation
If not for La Pommeraye
who was riding a gudgeon
Lent would have been strung up
with his money-belt by one ball
Fatrasies d'Arras 3.11 (32)
Uns biaus hom sans teste
Menoit molt grant feste
Por mengier cailliaus
Molt est fiere beste
Cil qui l’en arreste
.I. juedy a Miaus
& .iiii. asnesses sans piax
Demenoient molt grant feste
Por aus tolir lor drapiaus
Illueques chantoit de geste
Une cuve en deus tonniaus
A handsome headless man
laid on a great feast
just to eat pebbles
It took a proud beast
to call off this show
one Thursday at Méaux
Four skinless donkeys
had the time of their lives
peeling off all their clothes
so a tub on two barrels
could sing songs of their deeds
Fatrasies d'Arras 4.2 (34)
Rose de vendoise
Sor la riviere d’Oise
Chevauchoit une ais
Molt menoit grant noise
.I. faisiaus d’ardoise
Parmi .i. tarquais
Tuit li herenc de Qualais
Burent plain pot de cervoise
Chiez l’evesque de Biauvais
Qui confessoit une aisele
Des pechiez qu’elle avoit fais
A rose of fish-skin
straddled a plank
on the river Oise
A cheese-basket of slate
inside a quiver
made a heap of noise
Every herring in Calais
drank big jugs of small beer
at the Bishop of Beauvais’
who was confessing an armpit
of all the sins it had done
Fatrasies d'Arras 4.3 (35)
A champ et a vile
Sa quenoille file
Sans piez et sans mains
Molt savoit de guile
Cil qui d’Abevile
Chevauchoit a Rains
.I. grans homs qui estoit nains
Qui amenoit bien .x. mile
De singes touz chapelains
Davinés ou croiz ou pile
Li premiers fu deesrains
Through country & town
her distaff spun
with no hands or feet
Whoever would ride
Abbeville to Reims
must know all the tricks
A dwarf who was a giant
herded ten thousand at least
chimpanzees all of them priests
Call it either heads or tails
the first will be last in line
Fatrasies d'Arras 4.4 (36)
Uns biaus hom sans teste
Menoit molt grant feste
Por .i. com velut
& une fenestre
A mis hors sa teste
Si vit le fendu
Ja fust grant max avenu
Qant li songes d’une beste
S’escria Hareu le fu
Trestout voloit ardoir l’aitre
Pour ce c’om i ot foutu
A handsome headless man
laid on a great feast
for a hairy cunt
Just then a window
stuck out its noggin
& noticed the crack
Bad things were about to happen
when the dream of a donkey
brayed Hey Help Fire Fire
Everyone wants the altar
where we all got fucked to burn
Fatrasies d'Arras 4.10 (42)
Doucement me reconforte
Celle qui mon cuer a pris
Doucement me reconforte
Une chate a moitié morte
Qui chante touz les jeudis
Une alleluye si forte
Que li clichés de no porte
Dist que siens est li lendis
S’en fu uns leus si hardis
Qu’il ala maugré sa sorte
Tuer Dieu en Paradis
Et dist Compains je t’aporte
Celle qui mon cuer a pris
Gently she comforts me
the one who stole my heart
Gently she comforts me
a half-dead tabby cat
who sings every Thursday
a hallelujah so shrill
that the latch of our gate
says the tariff is his
& made a wolf so brave
he ran off despite his rank
to murder God in heaven
then said Friend I bring you
the one who stole my heart
Fatras of Watriquet and Raimmondin 2
Amis se vous ne voulez boire
Je vous prie que vous humés
Amis se vous ne voulez boire
Dist la paireure d’une istoire
Il couvient que vous devinés
Se ma dame a talent de poire
Et puis remascherés la poire
Dont je fui hersoir desjunés
Tant c’uns mors chiens & traïnés
Fera en lui saint Jehan croire
Et dira Se vous ne junés
Sire vesci mon cul qui foire
Je vous prie que vous humés
Friend if you need a drink
please slake your thirst right here
Friend if you need a drink
said the sire of an anecdote
the moment has come to divine
if my Lady wants to fog the air
& thus remasticate the pear
I ate for breakfast late last night
so that a dog’s tortured carcass
would make Saint John revere him
& say Sir if you’re not fasting
here is my ass on holiday
please slake your thirst right here
Fatras of Watriquet and Raimmondin 12
Presidentes in tronis seculi
Sunt hodie dolus & rapina
Presidentes in tronis seculi
Ce dist uns eus armez de cuir boilli
En cop de ***** si grant medecine a
C’une charrete jusqu’a Mes en sailli
Qui engendra le seigneur de Seulli
La Maselaine dont uns cos se disna
Mais uns harens touz s’en desgratina
Quant il fu mors pour ce c’on li toli
La pater nostre qui li adevina
Qu’avec les angles in gloria celi
Sunt hodie dolus et rapina
Presidentes in tronis seculi
Sunt hodie dolus & rapina †
Presidentes in tronis seculi
so said an eyeball armored in leather
one cup of ***** was such good medicine
a cart who begot the Lord of Souilly
jumped from here all the way out to Metz
& dined with a dupe on St Madelaine’s day
But a kipper scraped off his own scales
after his death because someone revoked
the paternoster which promised him that
with the angels in gloria celi
sunt hodie dolus & rapina
† Masters who reign over the world
today deceit & plunder prevail
Fatras of Watriquet and Raimmondin 26
Ted Byrne is a poet, essayist and translator who lives in Vancouver. He was a member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective for many years. For the past decade he has been an active member the Lacan Salon, and more recently of the Meschonnic Study Group. His most recent book is Duets, a book based on translations from the sonnets of Louise Labé and Guido Cavalcanti (Talonbooks, 2018). Previous books include Aporia (Fissure-Point Blank, 1989), Beautiful Lies (CUE books, 2008), and Sonnets : Louise Labé (Nomados, 2011).
Poet, literary scholar and interdisciplinary artist, Donato Mancini holds a PhD from the Department of English at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he worked under Janet Giltrow. His books of poetry include Buffet World (2011), Fact 'N' Value (2011), and Loitersack (2014). Same Diff (2017) was nominated for the 2018 Griffin Prize. Two earlier books, Æthel (2007) and Ligatures (2005) were each nominated for Canada's ReLit Award. Published critical writings include the monograph You Must Work Harder to Write Poetry of Excellence (2011), a discourse-analysis of poetry book reviews, and Anamnesia: Unforgetting (2012), on poly-temporality in the archive of cinema. A longtime resident of Vancouver, Mancini just completed a two-year research fellowship in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore.