Jules Romains
Jules Romains Poems
THESE last few days I have not had one letter;
No one has thought of writing, in the town.
O! I was not expecting anything;
I can exist and think in isolation,
...
The shop-keepers on their chairs
Have marked out God along the walls,
And when the sky becomes dark,
I saw some one who raised my arm.
...
For years the snow has been falling,
The sky is so leaden and low,
That men of high stature
Are almost afraid of knocking against it
...
The self-deceit of having wrought the light.
PEOPLE arrive to worship in their church.
...
Beings have molten forms and lives together.
THE sunshine cannot make the barracks glad.
Its seeming happiness is real pain;
...
O MULTITUDE!
Here in the hollow of
The theatre, and docile to its walls,
Thou mouldest to its carcase all thy flesh,
...
I DID not wish to come into this street.
My heart, to be contented, needed now
A boulevard to a Cathedral's base.
...
I WISH for nothing more
Than my emotion of now;
There is nothing one is bound to know,
And if my chest inflates,
...
A GROUP dies on the causey; I am pleased
As any little lad that pelts with earth.
And now men are dispersing, keeping step;
Suddenly seems one of their steps to kindle;
...
Jules Romains Biography
Jules Romains, born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule (August 26, 1885 – August 14, 1972), was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement. His works include the play Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine, and a cycle of works called Les Hommes de bonne volonté (Men of Good Will). Jules Romains was born in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil in the Haute-Loire but went to Paris to attend first the lycée Condorcet and then the prestigious École normale supérieure. He was close to the Abbaye de Créteil, a utopian group founded in 1906 by Charles Vildrac and René Arcos, which brought together, among others, the writer Georges Duhamel, the painter Albert Gleizes and the musician Albert Doyen. He received his agrégation in philosophy in 1909. In 1927, he signed a petition (that appeared in the magazine Europe on April 15) against the law on the general organization of the nation in time of war, abrogating all intellectual independence and all freedom of expression. His name on the petition appeared with those of Lucien Descaves, Louis Guilloux, Henry Poulaille, Séverine... and those of the young Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre from the École normale supérieure. During World War II he went into exile first to the United States where he spoke on the radio through the Voice of America and then, beginning in 1941, to Mexico where he participated with other French refugees in founding the Institut Français d'Amérique Latine (IFAL). A writer on many varied topics, Jules Romain was elected to the Académie française on 4 April 1946, occupying chair 12 (of 40). He served as President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers from 1936 to 1941. In 1964, Jules Romains was named citizen of honor of Saint-Avertin. Following his death in Paris in 1972, his place in the Académie française was taken by Jean d'Ormesson. Jules Romains is remembered today, among other things, for his concept of Unanimism and his cycle of novels in Les Hommes de bonne volonté (The Men of Good Will), a remarkable literary fresco depicting the odyssey over a quarter century of two friends, the writer Jallez and politician Jerphanion, who provide an example in literature of Unanimism.)
The Best Poem Of Jules Romains
Letters
THESE last few days I have not had one letter;
No one has thought of writing, in the town.
O! I was not expecting anything;
I can exist and think in isolation,
My mind, to blaze and sparkle, does not wait
Till someone throws a blackened sheet to it.
Yet I am short of a familiar pleasure;
My hands are happy when I break a letter;
My skin is thrilled to touch the paper where,
Among the folded pages, lingers yet
The immaterial presence of another.
And for three days that I have had no letter
I have been gliding slowly into vague
Uneasiness, embarassment of being,
As if I were ashamed of my own self.
Intangible remorse weighs on my heart,
Which was not far from thinking itself good.
My arms are heavy, lax; I dare not smile:
The air seems to be angry when I breathe it.
The love around me, and the strength within me,
Disperse. The town, forgetting me, rebukes me.
No one is thinking of me anywhere,
No more I am save in my wretched frame.
There is an evil tingling in my soul,
An itching in my brain, my fingers' ends.
As if ...- what have I done to merit it!-
The city's blood were ebbing out of me.
Translated by Jethro Bithell
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