Childe ROLAND
to the Dark Tower Came.
Quel rapport y a-t-il entre
le Roland, de Childe Roland, de
Robert Browning,
cité dans la postface du Pistolero, et
Roland de Gilead?
Le titre du poème de Robert
Browning Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came est tité d'un vers du Roi Lear de Shakespeare (un
des trois derniers vers de la scène 4 de l'acte III) : Edgar
(qui feint la démence) dit à la fin d'une
tirade:
"Child
Rowland to the dark tower came.
His word
was still "Fie, foh and fun,
I smell
the blood of a British man"
[Traduction d'Armand
Robin: "Le jeune Roland vint
au noir donjon.
Ses mots de passe
étaient: hi, ho et hon,
Je flaire le sang d'un
Breton". (GF
Flammarion).]
Childe
Roland est une vieille
ballade écossaise. Roland est le fils du roi Arthur. Sa soeur,
Burd Ellen, est enlevée par les fées et conduite au
château du roi des fées. Aidé des conseils de
Merlin l'enchanteur, Childe Roland parvient à
pénétrer dans le château et à
délivrer sa soeur.Le poème de Browning est paru dans
Men and
Women en 1855: un chevalier
errant traverse un paysage cauchemardesque à la recherche de
la Tour Noire, qu'il finit par atteindre et au pied de laquelle il
sonne comme un défi. Browning a toujours refusé
d'expliquer le sens de son oeuvre, disant simplement qu'elle lui
était venue comme dans un rêve. L'ensemble reste
énigmatique, mais d'une grande beauté formelle."
Merci
à Bernard Briandet qui a fourni cette information et
qui a joint à son information le texte intégral du
poème de Browning, que les curieux pourront trouver à
la fin de cette rubrique.
Le poème étant
très long, je ne fournis que la traduction de la partie qui se
rapporte à la question posée (strophes 3, 4 et strophe
finale)::
"... Si pour
faire comme il disait
J'abandonnais
ma route pour m'engager
Dans le
sentier sinistre où comme chacun sait
Se cache la
Tour Noire. Et cependant, docile,
Je pris la
direction qu'il me montrait: non par forfanterie,
Ni espoir
ravivé d'apercevoir enfin le but tant
désiré,
Mais par joie
d'entrevoir une fin quelle qu'elle fût.
Car pour
avoir erré dans le vaste monde
Et pour avoir
durant toutes ces années,
Je ne
possédais plus que l'ombre d'un espoir,
Impuissante
à porter le poids intempestif
De la joie
qu'eût causé un succès si tardif.
En
vérité, c'est à peine si j'essayai de
réprimer le bond
Que fit mon
cĻur en voyant se dessiner la défaite.
.../...
Ils
étaient là, silhouettes obscures au fond des
montagnes,
Venus
assister à mes derniers soupirs, cadre vivant
Pour un
tableau nouveau! Dans un embrasement
De la
lumière crue, je les vis
Et les
reconnus tous. Mais sans trembler
J'embouchai
ma trompe et sonnai
«Le
Chevalier Roland s'en vint à la Tour Noire!»"
Pour répondre plus
précisément à la question posée, les
rapports entre le Roland de Childe Roland et
Roland de Gilead sont les prénoms ; le statut de
«childe» est le futur chevalier de famille noble, avant
l'adoubement, situation de Roland dans le premier volume de
La Tour
Sombre); l'évocation de
Cuthbert; et surtout l'idée de la quête. Et, pour
l'instant, le sens de la quête de Roland est aussi incertaine
que le sens du poème de Browning... dont voici le poème
intégral en anglais.
Childe ROLAND to the Dark Tower
Came.
*
My first
thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary
cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to
watch the working of his lie
On mine, and
mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression
of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at
one more victim gained thereby.
What else
should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to
waylay with his lies, ensnare
All
travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the
road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break,
what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime
in the dusty thoroughfare,
If at his
counsel I should turn aside
Into that
ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the
Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as
he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope
rekindling at the end descried,
So much as
gladness that some end might be.
For, what
with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my
search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into
a ghost not fit to cope
With that
obstreperous joy success would bring-
I hardly
tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart
made, finding failure in its scope.
As when a
sick man very near to death
Seems dead
indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and
takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one
bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier
outside ("since all is o'er,' he saith,
'And the blow
fallen no grieving can amend'),
While some
discuss if near the other graves
Be room
enough for this, and when a day
Suits best
for carrying the corpse away,
With care
about the banners, scarves and staves-
And still the
man hears all, and only craves
He may not
shame such tender love and stay.
Thus, I had
so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure
prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times
among 'The Band' - to wit,
The knights
who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps -
that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the
doubt was now--should I be fit?
So, quiet as
despair, I turned from him,
That hateful
cripple, out of his highway
Into the path
he pointed. All the day
Had been a
dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling
to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to
see the plain catch its estray.
For mark! no
sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to
the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing
to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe
road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round!
Nothing but
plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go
on; nought else remained to do.
So, on I
went. I think I never saw
Such starved
ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers -
as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle,
spurge, according to their law
Might
propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think;
a burr had been a treasure-trove.
No! penury,
inertness and grimace,
In some
strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
Or shut your
eyes,' -said Nature peevishly-
'It nothing
skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last
Judgment's fire must cure this place,
Calcine its
clods and set my prisoners free.'
If there
pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its
mates, the head was chopped - the bents
Were jealous
else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's
harsh swarth leaves -) - bruised as to baulk
All hope of
greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their
life out, with a brute's intents.
As for the
grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy -
thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which
underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff
blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood
stupefied, however he came there-
Thrust out
past service from the devil's stud!
Alive? he
might be dead for aught I know,
With that red
gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes
underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went
such grotesqueness with such woe:
I never saw a
brute I hated so -
He must be
wicked to deserve such pain.
I shut my
eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man
calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one
draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I
could hope to play my part.
Think first,
fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
One taste of
the old time sets all to rights!
Not it! I
fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its
garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow,
till I almost felt him fold
An arm in
mine to fix me to the place
That way he
used. Alas! one night's disgrace!
Out went my
heart's new fire and left it cold.
Giles then,
the soul of honour--there he stands
Frank as ten
years ago when knighted first.
What honest
men should dare (he said) he durst.
Good - but
the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands
In to his
breast a parchment?his own bands
Read it. Poor
traitor, spit upon and curst!
Better this
present than a past like that;
Back
therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no
sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the
night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked :
when something on the dismal flat
Came to
arrest my thoughts and change their train.
A sudden
little river crossed my path
As unexpected
as a serpent comes.
No sluggish
tide congenial to the glooms -
This, as it
frothed by, might have been a bath
For the
fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath
Of its black
eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
So petty yet
so spiteful! All along
Low scrubby
alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched
willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute
despair, a suicidal throng:
The river
which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that
was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
Which, while
I forded,--good saints, how I feared
To set my
foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or
feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows,
tangled in his hair or beard!
It may have
been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it
sounded like a baby's shriek.
Glad was I
when I reached the other bank.
Now for a
better country. Vain presage!
Who were the
strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage
trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a
plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats
in a red-hot iron cage -
The fight
must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What kept
them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print
leading to that horrid mews,
None out of
it : mad brewage set to work
Their brains,
no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his
pastime, Christians against Jews.
And more than
that - a furlong on - why, there!
What bad use
was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not
wheel - that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies
out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's
tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to
sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
Then came a
bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh,
it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and
done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing
and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and
off he goes!) within a rood--
Bog, clay and
rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
Now blotches
rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches
where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into
moss or substances like boils;
Then came
some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a
distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at
death, and dies while it recoils.
And just as
far as ever from the end!
Nought in the
distance but the evening, nought
To point my
footstep further! At the thought,
A great black
bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past,
nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed
my cap - perchance the guide I sought.
For, looking
up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the
dusk, the plain had given place
All round to
mountains - with such name to grace
Mere ugly
heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they
had surprised me, - solve it, you!
How to get
from them was no plained case.
Yet half I
seemed to recognise some trick
Of mischief
happened to me, God knows when -
In a bad
dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this
way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up,
one time more, came a click
As when a
trap shuts - you're inside the den!
Burningly it
came on me all at once,
This was the
place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like
two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the
left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
Dotard,
a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life
spent training for the sight!
What in the
midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round
squat turret, blind as the fool's heart
Built of
brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole
world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the
shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes
on, only when the timbers start.
Not see?
because of night perhaps? - Why, day
Came back
again for that! before it left,
The dying
sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills,
like giants at a hunting, lay -
Chin upon
hand, to see the game at bay -
'Now stab and
end the creature--to the heft!'
Not hear?
when noise was everywhere? it tolled
Increasing
like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the
lost adventurers my peers -
How such a
one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was
fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost!
one moment knelled the woe of years.
There they
stood, ranged along the hillsides - met
To view the
last of me, a living frame
For one more
picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them
and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the
slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.
'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.'
Robert
Browning, Men and Women, (1855.)
Merci à Bernard
Briandet qui m'a communiqué le texte de ce
poème.
Roland Ernould
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