LIVING IN THE NOW WITH FRENCH POET JACQUES PRÉVERT

‘Sweet present of the present.’ Jacques Prévert.

Here's the 'secret' to living fully and mindfully. This is it---learn how to live in a 'small second of eternity'. That's the good advice from a certain Frenchman of yesteryear.

The greatest French poet of last century was Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) [pictured right and below]. His reputation in that regard was established with the publication of his book Paroles (a volume of his collected poems) in 1945.

Prévert was also a distinguished and innovative screenwriter (Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), Remorques (Stormy Waters))---a great exponent of French poetic realism---and a vehement anti-clericalist ('Our Father / Who art in heaven / Stay there / And we will stay on earth / Which is sometimes so pretty' [from his poem 'Pater Noster']). I have loved and enjoyed his poetry and fables for children for over 45 years. Actually, I first read a collaborated work of his, the whimsical children's book Bim (which was also made into a film written and directed by Albert Lamorisse of The Red Balloon (Le Ballon Rouge) fame), when I was a child. 

What I particularly love about Prévert's poems is his ability to capture a single moment, or a succession of single moments, of the eternal now---for all time. Take, for example, his poem ‘Alicante’:

Une orange sur la table

Ta robe sur le tapis

Et toi dans mon lit.

Doux présent du présent

Fraîcheur de la nuit

Chaleur de ma vie.

An orange on the table

Your dress on the rug

And you in my bed.

Sweet present of the present

Cool of the night

Warmth of my life.

‘Sweet present of the present.’ How much truth there is in those five words (well, four in the original French)! The present moment is the only moment we truly have. Some call it the eternal now, because it is always the present moment which is ever-renewing itself as---the present moment! The eternal now is the portal through which we experience the present moment, indeed every moment---but only one moment at a time.

So many of Prévert’s poems are set in Paris, especially the Paris after World War II. Many concern love ('Love is so simple,' he wrote). One finds in almost all of his poems that typically French post-War existential angst and disillusionment but there is also an almost surreal touch to some of his writings. As respects the latter, there is no surprise there as Prévert was once (albeit only for a short period) a member of the Surrealist movement. 

Here is Prévert’s poem ‘Paris de nuit’ (‘Paris At Night’). As you read the six lines of this poem you can actually see and feel the present moment renew itself into the next present moment and so forth:

Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit

La premiére pour voir ton visage tout entier

La seconde pour voir tes yeux

La dernière pour voir ta bouche

Et l'obscuritè tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela

En te serrant dans mes bras.

Three matches one by one struck in the night

The first to see your face in its entirety

The second to see your eyes

The last to see your mouth

And the darkness all around to remind me of all these

As I hold you in my arms. 

Could you not see and perhaps hear the three matches being struck one after the other? Well, I could. And that imagery of light and dark. There is the light of the present moment---and the darkness of all around it (the enormity of eternity, the great unkown).

The author (IEJ) in Guérande, France in 2014

Next is Prévert’s poem ‘Les prodiges de la liberté’ (‘The Signs of Freedom’, but often cited as ‘The Wonders of Life’):

Entre les dents d'un piège

La patte d'un renard blanc

Et du sang sur la neige

Le sang du renard blanc

Et des traces dans la neige

Les traces du renard blanc

Qui s'enfuit sur trois pattes

Dans le soleil couchant

Avec entre les dents

Un lièvre encore vivant.

In the teeth of a trap

The paw of a white fox

And on the snow, blood

The blood of the white fox

And in the snow, tracks

The tracks of the white fox

Who escaped on three legs

As the sun was setting

A rabbit between his teeth

Still alive.

Parc de Belleville, Paris, France

That poem, along with many others of Prévert, reminds me of the haiku poetry of Japan, particularly the poems of Bashō. There is a directness and an immediacy about the words and their flow---a directness and immediacy that is the very essence of the living of these days. It is the practice of the presence of mindfulness from one moment to the next. Take, for example, Prévert's 'haikuesque' poem 'L'Autumne' ('Autumn'):

Un cheval s'écroule au milieu d'une allée 

Les feuilles tombent sur lui 

Notre amour frissonne 

Et le soleil aussi. 

A horse collapses in the middle of an alley

Leaves fall on him

Our love trembles

And the sun too.

You get the same directness and immediacy of the present moment--frozen in time and space---in the poem 'La Belle Saison' (English title: 'Summer'):

A jeun perdue glacée 

Toute seule sans un sou 

Une fille de seize ans 

Immobile debout 

Place de la Concorde 

A midi le Quinze Août.

Lost, starving, frozen

Alone, and penniless

A sixteen-year old girl

Standing motionless

Place de la Concorde

August fifteenth, noon, more or less.

Saint-Marc-sur-Mer, France (photo taken by the author)

I'll leave you to read offline Prévert's much longer poem 'Déjeuner du Matin' (English title: 'Breakfast'). (‘He poured the coffee / Into the cup / He put the milk / Into the cup of coffee / He put the sugar / Into the coffee with milk / With a small spoon / He churned / He drank the coffee … .’ It is Prévert at his very best.)

Now, here is his poem ‘Le jardin’ (‘The Garden’):

Des milliers et des milliers d'années
Ne sauraient suffire 

Pour dire 

La petite seconde d'éternité 

Où tu m'as embrassé 

Où je t'ai embrassèe 

Un matin dans la lumière de l'hiver 

Au parc Montsouris à Paris 

A Paris 

Sur la terre 

La terre qui est un astre.

Thousands and thousands of years

would not be enough

to tell of

that small second of eternity

when you held me

when I held you

one morning

in winter’s light,

in Montsouris Park

in Paris,

on earth,

this earth

that is a star.

‘That small second of eternity’ ('that tiny instant of all eternity', in another translation)---that is all we have. In the immensity of all eternity our whole life here on earth is, yes, one small second. That is a very sobering reflection but know this: if you want to live fully then you must live each second as if it were your last. (Not to put too fine a point on it, it may well be your last. Who knows?) 

But there's much more to those words 'that small second of eternity', for the only life we can truly know and experience is that ever-so-ephemeral present moment---but it is more than sufficient ... provided we use it wisely. Here's some good advice on the subject from Prévert: 'Life is a cherry / Death is the pit / Love the cherry tree.' And this: 'Eat on the grass / Hurry up / Sooner or later / The grass will eat on you.' Get the message?

Remember this, my friends---‘that small second of eternity’ is of enormous importance. Indeed, it is of infinite importance. It was William Blake who wrote:

TO see a world in a grain of sand,

  And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

  And eternity in an hour.

Just as the entire world is in a grain of sand, so the immensity and infinity of all eternity is in each and every second of life---your life!

I will let Jacques Prévert have the final word. It's about happiness. 'Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.'

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HAIKU AND THE MINDFULNESS OF THE MOMENT

Recently I spent a week or so in Japan, meeting up again with some very dear Japanese friends of mine with whom I have been associated in a certain Buddhist denomination.

As was the case on my trip to Japan last year, I was once again the constant recipient of much love and great kindness.

Last year---as well as on this most recent occasion---I met up with a remarkable 86-year old Japanese man, Isao [pictured left, with daughter Sonomi], and his lovely wife Takeko.

Isao, a former school teacher, said this to me on my most recent trip to Japan:

'I am going to be 87 years [old] and even though I have sickness I’m happy because I appreciate everything, especially family, sickness, even death, too, I can appreciate through long experience of praying for others all the time. And I respect all religions, too. … Every day I try to appreciate my family and everything, and try to appreciate each moment and to pray for all people and animals and everything else. ...'

Each day Isao, a haijin (that is, a haiku poet or master), writes at least one piece of haiku. Whilst we were having tea together in a coffee shop, on my last day in Japan, he suddenly called for a piece of writing paper on which to inscribe a piece of haiku which had just come to him---in the magic of the moment.

This is the poem Isao wrote, quick as a flash, at the coffee shop:

The poem, translated into English, goes something like this:

With the influence of the wind

Each flower of cosmos will come

Out by each different way.

Beautiful sentiment.

Haiku is both a form of Japanese poetry as well as a spiritual practice that has managed to find its way into numerous religious and spiritual traditions including Christianity. Haiku is also a way of living mindfully, letting---please note that important operative word---the very livingness of life, in all its concrete directness and immediacy, to write itself. A ku is said to be the shortest sequence or set of words equal or corresponding to a complete thought. The word hai means playful or amusing, and also rambling (here, in the sense of writing as one feels inclined). Haiku describes, with choiceless (that is, non-judgmental and non-analytical [hence, very few adjectives, adverbs and other modifiying words]) awareness, the here-and-now---that is, that which is truly real.

Haiku---called hokku in the 17th century (and also called haikai)---was 'invented' by Buddhist monks who quite ingeniously combined, among other things, Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist thought in order to arrive at a means whereby words---despite their inherent limitations---could get as close as possible to saying what is truly real. One famous Japanese haiku poet Bashō (1644-1694), who found the sacred, the holy or the divine in nature, captured the very heart and essence of haiku and mindful living---the two are really one and the same---in these wonderful oft-quoted words:

'Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Your poetry issues of its own accord when you and the object have become one---when you have plunged deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there. However well-phrased your poetry may be, if the object and yourself are separate---then your poetry is not true poetry but a semblance of the real thing.'

As a form of Japanese poetry---and a very short form at that, always using a bare minimum of words---haiku is typically characterised (at least in its more traditional form) by four ordinarily readily discernible features, all four of which combine to ensure that any haiku records a direct and immediate experience of life:

·        first, the use of 17 on (also known as morae [‘beats’]) [NOTE: not syllables, but more like phonetic ‘sound units’] in a 3-part structure consisting of 3 phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively, traditionally (but not necessarily in all cases) printed in a single vertical line;

·       secondly, the inclusion of a kiru (‘cutting’), often taking the form of a sometimes jarring juxtaposition [cf the polarities and contradictions of 'real' life] of the highly realistic (as opposed to impressionistic and metaphoric) descriptions of two distinct and ego-less [i.e. no 'I's' or 'me's'] images or ideas (ordinarily directly drawn from the world of nature as their subject), with the presence of a kireji (a 'pause' or ‘cutting' word, letter or syllable, distinguishing the two images or ideas) between them, which may mark the end of any one of the three phrases;

·        thirdly, the inclusion of a kigo (a seasonal word or reference, ordinarily being the subject of the poem), usually drawn from a saijiki (an extensive but defined list of seasonal words); and

·       fourthly, the frequent use of free grammatical structure.

 

I should mention that more modern Japanese haiku are less likely to follow the tradition of 17 on or to take nature as their subject, but the use of juxtaposition as described above generally continues.

Here’s a good example of the literary form, translated into English, from the original lines penned by one of Japan’s greatest exponents of the form, the poet and painter Buson (1716-1784) [pictured below right]:

Ears of my old age;

The summer rains

Falling down the rain-pipe.

As a spiritual practice---and a way of life---haiku is the creative and experiential essence of the practice of mindfulness, with all its concrete directness and immediacy. As such, haiku superbly captures the extraordinary in the ordinary and sometimes mundane events and things of everyday life, and the writing of haiku helps to sharpen one's direct, unmediated and uninterrupted awareness of life unfolding naturally---please note that word---from moment to moment. 

Buson, mentioned above, is my favourite traditional haiku poet, for as I see it there has been no one better at capturing---for all time---the directness and immediacy of things-as-they-happen, and, perhaps more significantly, things-as-they-change, from one moment to the next. A good, well-written haiku cuts or pierces through the heart of reality, preserving for all time, but forever re-presenting, the actuality of some specific, perhaps now long-gone moment in spacetime.

Arguably, haiku---which is meant to be heard more than it is to be read--- is best written right after experiencing the event or happening the subject of the poem, with the juxtaposed images being directly observed everyday objects or occurrences, but that does not necessarily have to be the case. Also, as my friend Isao mentioned to me in Japan, haiku should be written having in mind the anticipated effect or impact on the reader. At least that is how he sees it.

Take, for example, this haiku of Buson, which, quite typically, contains two descriptive juxtaposed images (separated by a cut or kire) with a dramatic and sometimes totally unexpected ‘conclusion’:

The slanting sun:

The shadow of a hill with a deer on it

Enters the temple gate.

… and this one as well:

The coolness:

The voice of the bell

As it leaves the bell!

There are no firm rules for writing haiku in English. Strictly speaking, any writing of haiku in English is nothing more than an English imitation of a haiku. Certainly, there is no strict syllable (or the like) count as is found in traditional Japanese haiku---the Japanese monosyllabic phonetic system is clearly an advantage over the English system (at least for creating a sense of heightened directness and immediacy)---and there are no seasonal words as such in English, but many (but by no means all) writers of haiku in English limit themselves to 3 (or sometimes fewer) lines---roughly replicating the Japanese 3-part structure---of up to (but not necessarily) 17 syllables and generally include a cut or kire (sometimes in the form of a punctuation mark such as a dash or ellipsis, or an implied break, because English has no direct equivalent for the kireji) to contrast two distinct but often interconnected images. The important thing, it is said, is to try to replicate, or at least imitate, the ‘spirit’ of Japanese haiku. Brevity, directness, and immediacy are the hallmarks.

I promised Isao that I would write and send him some haiku in English. Here is my first, perhaps feeble, attempt:

The hot morning sun;

Romeo the ginger cat

Hisses at the dog.

Yes, he (Romeo) really did---just a moment or so ago.

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