l’Ere nouvelle

Working Translations

E. Armand, “Scènes de Noel / Christmas Scenes” (1901)

December 24, 2022 Shawn P. Wilbur

A church or a temple. Light, many lights. Candles that illuminate vast crucifixes, or a Christmas tree laden with toys, a fir tree whose evergreen branches evoke the image of eternity. Organs whose sonic flights seem an echo of celestial hymns. Carols that remind us of those with which our mothers rocked us to sleep… Handsome gentlemen in frock coats, tight at the waist, with eight shining gleams; polished, pomaded, combed, varnished, tied. Beautiful, elegant, fragrant ladies, studded with jewels, real or fake, whose slightly raised skirts reveal an expensively shod foot at the end of a finely arched ankle… Good, honest families in their Sunday best, made respectable, troops of children whose happy faces the symbolic tree illuminates… Ease, comfort, joy!… all that is good. […]

Working Translations

E. Armand, “L’abîme / The Abyss” (1910)

August 21, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

All the avant-garde sociétaires — social-democrats, revolutionaries of every shade, various communists — say that the individual is a “product of the environment.” It would be more precise to say that individuals are products of their environment. And to add that the individual is more specifically the outcome of an ancestral line whose origin goes back to the animal night. Taking into account that in certain individuals the characteristics of temperament and constitution of a particular ancestor essentially dominate. […]

Working Translations

E. Armand, “Ouragan / Hurricane” (1906)

July 24, 2020 Shawn P. Wilbur

Heaps of ruins. Pyres. Blood. Tears. Harrowing cries. Desparate appeals, interspersed with terrifying silences. Pitiful supplications, mad laughter.

Murmurs, quivering, hazy and indistinct. Raucous noises, like the waves when they crash into the rocks.

It is the wind of liberty that whispers. […]