PIERROT POLAIRE

IX. PIERROT POLAIRE

Un miroitant glaçon polaire,
De froide lumière aiguisé,
Arrête Pierrot épuisé
Qui sent couler bas sa galère.

Il toise d’un œil qui s’éclaire
Son sauveteur improvisé :
Un miroitant glaçon polaire,
De froide lumière aiguisé. 

Et le mime patibulaire
Croit voir un Pierrot déguisé,
Et d’un blanc geste éternisé
Interpelle dans la nuit claire
Un miroitant glaçon polaire.


IX. POLAR PIERROT

A glittering block of polar ice,
made needle-sharp by frigid light,
halts wrung-out Pierrot
as he feels his galley slip underwater.

He sizes up, with a flashing eye,
this salvor he had not foreseen:
a glittering block of polar ice,
made needle-sharp by frigid light. 

And the mime with a gallows face
believes he sees a disguised Pierrot,
and with a pale unending gesture
pleads for help in the clear night, from
a glittering block of polar ice.

NOTES (by line number, starting with the title).

2 miroitant : Participial form of the verb miroiter (a 16th century back-formation from miroir, a mirror), defined in DAf1878 as « Jeter des reflets », ‘To throw off reflections’. The current DAf is more specific: « Renvoyer la lumière en jetant des reflets changeants », ‘To send light back by throwing changing reflections’; an expansion that reflects, as it should, changing literary uses of the word. DAf does not credit sources, so I don’t know if here they include « leur mouve­ment perpétuel faisait miroiter la chambre de reflets changeants », ‘their perpetual movement made the room glitter with changing reflections’, from Th. Gautier’s orientalist Fortunio (Brussels, Société Belge de Librairie, 1838, p. 207). See III.12 and X.13 for other possible connections of Gautier to Pierrot Lunaire.

6 toise : The noun toise has denoted a French unit of length (about 2 meters), or a rod to measure that unit, since the 12th century. The verb toiser has meant to measure, in toises or with a toise, since the 16th century; its only figurative meaning in DAf1878 is « examiner avec attention pour apprécier son mérite, ou pour lui témoigner du dédain », ‘examine [someone] closely to determine [his] merit, or to show [him] disdain’: Pierrot disdains his unforeseen sauveteur.

7 sauveteur : DAf1835 is the first edition to define sauvetage, as « Action de retirer des flots et de recueillir les débris d’un naufrage, les marchandises et les effets naufragés », ‘Action of removing from the water and collecting the debris of a shipwreck, the wrecked cargo and equipment’. DAf1878 is the first edition to define « sauveteur », as « Celui qui prend part à un sauvetage », ‘One who takes part in a salvage’. DAf1878 extends the definition of sauvetage: « Il signifie aussi, L’action de retirer de l’eau des personnes en péril de se noyer […] », ‘It also means, The action of removing from the water persons in danger of drowning […]’. Since Pierrot’s galley is sinking, the « glaçon polaire » is at least proleptically his « sauveteur » in both the first sense (for which ‘salvor’ is the technical term in English) and the second (which might better be rendered ‘life-saver’).

10 mime patibulaire : Giraud is punning on mine patibulaire, one of two French fixed phrases equivalent to English ‘gallows face’ (the other, physionomie patibulaire, is synonymous but in a higher and thus more mocking speech register) that are the sole uses of patibulaire in DAf1694 (though the Académicien La Fontaine used it as a noun meaning ‘gallows’ in two fables published that year). DAf1798 adds figure to mine and physionomie, where it remains through DAf1935. From DAf1718 through DAf1878 the Académie glosses a man of whom the phrase is justly used as « un homme qui mérite d’être pendu », ‘a man who deserves to be hanged’. J.-F. Regnard, in his ‘Italian comedy’, Arlequin homme à bonnes fortunes (1690), makes Arlequin a con man (see VII.8; see also XXXVIII.4 for bonnes fortunes); in the following bit of dialogue, Arlequin applies the phrase to his mark (a medical doctor, M. Bassinet, valeted by Pierrot).

ARLEQUIN. Il y a encore pis que cela. Cet homme-là sera pendu avant qu’il soit vingt-quatre heures. Voyez cette mine patibulaire!

BROCANTIN. Pendu! Et comment connoissez-vous cela?

ARLEQUIN. Par le moyen des astres, & par les règles de la metoposcopie. Je n’y manque jamais, à une heure près, & si vous voulez, je vous dirai quand vous le serez.

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ARLEQUIN. It’s even worse than that. That man there will be hanged within twenty-four hours. Look at that gallows face!

BROCANTIN Hanged! And how do you know that?

ARLEQUIN By means of the stars and by reading the lines on his forehead. I’m never off at all, by an hour at most, and if you’d like, I’ll tell you when you’ll be for it.

But why has Giraud introduced gallows at all into this rondel? Proverb-ially, « On ne peut noyer celui qui doit être pendu », ‘A man can’t be drowned if he ought to be hanged’ (Le Roux de Lincy, Le livre des proverbes français [etc.], Paris, Paulin, 1842). Compare « il n’a pas les signes d’un noyé; il a la mine d’un pendu parfait », as Hugo renders Shakespeare’s “He hath no drowning mark upon him. His com­plexion is perfect gallows” (The Tempest, Act I, Scene 1).

11 croit voir : ‘Believes he sees’, i.e., visually hallucinates. Jules Verne described « folie polaire », ‘polar madness’, several times. Had Giraud read Verne?

12 éternisé : See XXXV.12.