Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ODE TO CHARLES FOURIER, by ANDRE BRETON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ODE TO CHARLES FOURIER, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Fourier what have they done with your keyboard
Last Line: You embraced unity you show it not as lost but as totally attainable
Subject(s): Fourier, Charles (1772-1837)


Frourier what have they done with your keyboard That responded to everything with a chord
Setting by the movements of the stars from the capers of the smallest boat
on the sea to the great sweep of the proudest three-master
You embraced unity you showed it not as lost but as totally attainable
And if you named "God" it was to infer that this god came under the evidence of the senses (His
body is fire)
But what has forever caused socialist thought for me really to break cover Is that you felt the
need to differentiate the comma at least in quadruple
form
And to transfer the treble clef from the second to the first line in musical
notation
Because it's the whole world that must not only be overturned but prod-
ded everywhere in its conventions
And there's no control lever to be trusted once and for all
Not more than a single dogmatic commonplace which does not totter
when confronted by ingenuous doubts and demands
Because the " Veil of Bronze" has survived the rent you tore in it And covers even more completely
scientific blindness
No one has ever seen a molecule, or an atom, or an atomic link and it's unlikely anyone ever will
(Philosopher). Prompt proof to the contrary: in swaggers the molecule of rubber.
A scientist though provided with black glasses loses his sight for having observed at several
miles' distance the first atomic bomb tests (The newspapers).


Fourier I salute you from the Grand Canyon of Colorado
I see the eagle soaring from your head
Bearing in its claws Panurge's sheep
And the wind of memory and the future
Slips through the feathers of its wings the faces of friends
Among them many who have no longer or who have not yet a face
Because conscious reactionaries and so many apostles of social progress who are in fact grim
immobilists (you tarred them both with the same brush) persist in more and more vain opposition


I salute you from the Petrified Forest of human culture
Where nothing has been left standing
But where great gleaming fires whirl and prowl Calling for the deliverance of foliage and bird
From your fingers comes the sap of blossoming trees
Because with the philosopher's stone at your disposal
You heeded only your first impulse which was to offer it to men
But between them and you there was no intercessor
Not a day passed but you confidently waited for him an hour in the gardens of the Palais-Royal
Attractions are proportionate to destinies
In testimony of which I come to you today
I salute you from the Nevada of the gold-prospector
From the land promised and kept
To the land rich in higher promises which it must yet keep
From the depths of the blue ore mine which reflects the loveliest sky
For always beyond that bar-sign which continues to haunt the street of a ghost town-
Virginia-City-"The Old Blood Bucket'


Because the festival sense is less and less present in our minds
Because the most vertiginous motorways do not make us cease to your pavement for zebras
Because Europe ready to explode in a cloud of dust has found it of expedience to take measures of
defence against confetti
And because among the choreographic exercises you proposed multi It is time perhaps to omit those
of the rifle and the incense-burner


I salute you at the moment when the Indian dances have just come to an end
At the heart of the storm
And the participants group themselves in an oval around the brasiers strong with the smell of pine
for shelter from the much-beloved rain
An oval that is an opal
Raising to the highest pitch its red fires in the night






Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net