Author James Brook Published in 2000 |
PoetryStanzas on the Death of Guy Debordby James Brook |
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contemplando --Jorge Manrique, Coplas por la muerte de su padre 1.wages murder the first caress 2.the photograph in evidence 3.the diagram of the village 4.we had the dream of water 5.a bitter draft from a broken cup 6."C'est un homme 7.from the rubble of information NotesGuy Debord (1931-1994), filmmaker, writer, and revolutionary, was one of the founders of the Situationist International. He is best known as the author of The Society of the Spectacle (1967)[translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Zone Books: New York 1994]; his other books include Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988)[translated by Malcolm Imrie, Verso: London 1990] and Panegyric (1989)[translated by James Brook, Verso: London 1991]. Debord made the first French translation of Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la muerte de su padre (Jorge Manrique, Stances sur la mort de son père, Editions Champ Libre: Paris 1980). The text of the sixth stanza is taken verbatim from the fourth canto of Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont, a favorite writer of Debord's: "A man or a stone or a tree is going to begin the fourth canto." The penultimate line of the seventh stanza is from Debord's Mémoires (privately printed in 1958; reprinted by Belles Lettres: Paris 1993), the last line of which reads: "Je voulais parler la belle langue de mon siècle." [I wanted to speak my century's beautiful language.] In his collage text, this was the only line that Debord himself authored. May 1995
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