Context
"Adieu Adieu Trrrrrraou dé kiou" from Grabinoulor
Pierre Albert-Birot
Ninety years after its original publication in the French journal SIC, Pierre Albert-Birot’s Grabinoulor still has much to say to us about social politics, art, and culture. Its most lasting message, however, is that of joy, the sheer pleasures of language and its infinite possibility. Albert-Birot reminds us that literature’s greatest value lies in its ability to stand before convention and proclaim, "in a resounding and meridionally-accented voice": Adieu adieu trrrrrraou dé kiou!*
On a shut-in November evening Grabinoulor’s feet were sploshing about in the Paris mud and that evening he distressed his shoes no end they were quite astonished at having to plough through such black mud when such white snow was falling for Grabinoulor’s shoes are full of logic even when his feet are inside them nevertheless although he was perfectly conscious—which is something that happens even to people who are not in the least conscientious—of how humiliating this state was for his shoes and indirectly for himself too he couldn’t do anything that evening other than place his feet on the ground as there was so little space between the earth and the sky and that was why even though he was Grabinoulor it took him a long time to reach the theatre which high-flown declamators were supposed to transport with all its listeners to the environs of the infinite but a gentleman with a nose a mouth round cheeks spectacles ears and a fine mirror-like pate simply by speaking brought the ceiling down on to the head of everybody sitting in the theatre and it was Grabinoulor who was the most inconvenienced by this nevertheless ladies and gentlemen in full possession of their senses—although being in possession of one’s senses doesn’t always mean that one is sensible—came on ostensibly to make some allegedly poetic revelations but the smart suits of the men-readers remained smart suits and the pretty little dresses of the women-readers remained pretty little dresses during and after just as before and the carved Cupids—for the tenderest representation of love may be carved in the hardest stone—on the stage boxes didn’t change places and the colour of the seats remained the same whereas everyone knows that when seats are really deeply affected they change colour and when the audience left it the theatre was still in the same boulevard where white snow that made black mud was still falling which was why they were talking animatedly of the price of butter and the increase in rail fares as for Grabinoulor he opened his umbrella yes really you must imagine as best you can Grabinoulor under an umbrella the fact remains though that they—the umbrella and Grabi—found themselves no one knows either where or when confronted by public opinion whose belief was that the end of the world was nigh not on account of the unfortunate slight planetary impingements predicted for the following Wednesday at five fifteen pm but because of the feminine fashion that was guilty of relying too openly on the beauty of the human body well Grabinoulor realized in time that public opinion is nothing but a hideous toothless old woman that people are in the habit of passing off for an irresistible beauty and he recognized that the world was in perfect and reassuring health since it was virgins who were asked by fashion to reveal the breasts which they have and not grandmothers who only have the remains of them and that was why full of confidence in the future he didn’t stay any longer that day than any other day with the old woman with three stumps of teeth and he passed by he walked turned disappeared reappeared and took the train (unless it was the train that took him) now while he was traveling incognito on a suburban line in a bottom class carriage it so happened that at one station a market woman who was truly formidable both because of the fiery colour of her face and the height and width and thickness of her meat got in and settled down comfortably and forever you might have thought in Grabinoulor’s compartment opposite a narrow little old woman and Grabinoulor claimed that from that moment on the compartment was completely transformed although he couldn’t say precisely what had changed then when the train was just about to move off they saw this mass with its pyrogenic head lean out of the window and shout in a resounding and meridionally-accented voice Adieu trrrrrraou dé kiou then the entire mass came back and flattened itself on the seat or rather flattened the seat laughing a magnificent belly laugh but it quickly became serious and addressing the little old woman said at least you didn’t understand what I said just now oh I’m glad you didn’t understand it wasn’t very polite you know Madame what I said just now but I well you know I’m someone who just can’t help making jokes and even though the train had started she leant out of the window again and fired off her joyous cry at the people in the fields ‘Oy you lot Adieu trrrrrraou dé kiou’ and that day the train took much less time getting to Paris even though according to the mechanical assurance of the clocks in the stations it wasn’t running any faster so in the evening of that day Grabinoulor found himself cooped up somewhere or other with five or six poets which is as dangerous as watching an experiment in a laboratory of pyrotechnics because the poet is a species of mankind who projects coloured lights of a very beautiful effect when he is on his own but who has the strange characteristic of sending out nothing but asphyxiating or explosive waves the moment he is in the presence of another individual of the same species and when six of them find themselves nose to nose the atmosphere immediately becomes unbreathable or full of sparks which is why it might perhaps be reasonable in order to preserve oneself if not from the explosion at least from the asphyxia to wear a boar’s-head mask during these gaseous meetings but Grabinoulor is a being who is both violent and free and who has a horror of anything that restricts and disfigures him and if he reluctantly agrees to hide his flawless body under some costume that is both a great liar and full of sadness exactly as if he were ashamed of this beloved body at least he has so far stubbornly refused to put any sort of mask over his face Adieu adieu trrrrrraou dé kiou which is why that evening he felt some slight seasickness which might also be called salonsickness but when he was back on the friendly asphalt he breathed in the fresh air deep down into his thorax Adieu adieu trrrrrraou dé kiou and even though this joyous refrain produced the sound of a fairground orchestra within the immensity of himself he could still hear the last breath of a fine painter* who had just died far too soon after his birth in one of those big houses in the City built especially to go and die in and he could also hear the sound made not so long before by the fragile girl with the long pigtails when her little body with the big child-carrying belly flattened itself on the cobblestones after the death of the painter had precipitated her from a sixth-floor window and these muffled sounds created a silence in Grabinoulor and he aged a notch but he continued on his way because he could still hear the monumental woman shouting out between two hearty laughs Adieu adieu trrrrrrrraou dé kiou
Translator's Notes:
* ‘Adieu adieu trrrrrraou dé kiou’
‘trrrrrraou dé kiou’ means, literally, ‘arsehole’—more or less. Added to the ‘Adieu adieu’ it forms a popular catch phrase, pronounced in a merry meridional accent, which is not particularily ‘vulgar’.
* Modigliani, who died in the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris in 1920. His companion, Jeanne Hébuterne, pregnant with their second child, committed suicide on the day of his funeral.
The First Book of Grabinoulor by Pierre Albert-Birot was translated by Barbara Wright © 1986.
