Barbara Wright
Introduction
RAYMOND QUENEAU 2003 CENTENARY
I was born on the twenty-first of Febr'ary
In nineteen hundred and three
In Le Havre. My parents, haberdashers both
Were as happy as could be
is more or less how Raymond Queneau's 1937 "novel in verse", Chine et Chien, begins. So we are celebrating his centenary, and there is much to celebrate.
As Martin Esslin wrote in 1962: "Queneau is that rarest of rare phenomena in an age of specialists and watertight compartments of culture; a truly universal, encyclopaedic mind, a poet who is also a philosopher, mathematician and scientist, the editor of a brilliantly conceived attempt at presenting a complete synthesis of twentieth-century culture, the Enyclopedie de la Pleiade."
Absolutely true. But what makes him such a joy to read is that his erudition is not only always shot through with humour, but also couched in such a discreet way as to make it possible for you not to have to dwell on it if you don't want to, but simply read his novels for the story.
Queneau died in 1976. He was a lovely man. I was asked to translate him by pure chance, but I got to know him quite well, and translated about ten of his books. Here are extracts from some of them.
Page(s) 1-2
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The