A note on Valery Larbaud by Bill Zavatsky:
Valery Larbaud was born in Vichy, France,
in 1881. His father was the wealthy proprietor of a mineral water springs, and
the family fortune freed Valery to pursue literature. His poetic influences
included Walt Whitman, whom Larbaud translated. After years of work he
published in 1908 a book called Poems by
a Wealthy Amateur, the first appearance of Barnabooth, and then in 1913
expanded it into A. O. Barnabooth, His
Complete Works, Being a Story, His Poems, and His Diary. Barnabooth, who
never existed, mirrors Larbaud in his wealth and in his planetary search for a
spiritual center. Often in frail health, but after publishing many books,
Larbaud suffered a stroke in 1935 that left him partially aphasic. He died in
1957.
The Mask
I always write with a mask upon my face,
Yes, a mask in the old Venetian style,
Long, with a low forehead,
Like a big muzzle of white satin.
Seated at my desk and raising my head
I look at myself in the mirror opposite
Me and three-quarters turned, I see me there,
That childish bestial profile that I love.
Oh, that some reader, my brother, to whom I speak
Through this pale and shining mask,
Might come and place a slow and heavy kiss
On this low forehead and cheek so pale,
All the more to press upon my face
That other face, hollow and perfumed.
— Valery Larbaud
Translated from the French by Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky
from The Poems of A. O. Barnabooth by Valery Larbaud
(Boston: Black Widow Press, 2008
Line 9: some reader, my brother: This phrasing recalls Charles
Baudelaire’s poem “Au lecteur” (“To the Reader”), which addresses a “hypocrite
lecteur,—mon semblable, mon frere ("hypocritical reader — my double — my brother"). — BZ