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The dice cup: Selected prose poems
English, French (translation)
- GenresPoetry
122 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1917
14 people are currently reading
202 people want to read
About the author
Max Jacob
108Ìýbooks24ÌýfollowersAfter spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, France, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career. He was one of the first friends Pablo Picasso made in Paris. They met in the summer of 1901, and it was Jacob who helped the young artist learn French. Later, on the Boulevard Voltaire, he shared a room with Picasso, who remained a lifelong friend (and was included in his artwork Three Musicians). Jacob introduced him to Guillaume Apollinaire, who in turn introduced Picasso to Georges Braque. He would become close friends with Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Christopher Wood and Amedeo Modigliani, who painted his portrait in 1916. He also befriended and encouraged the artist Romanin, otherwise known as French politician and future Resistance leader Jean Moulin. Moulin's famous nom de guerre Max is presumed to be selected in honor of Jacob.
Having moved outside of Paris in May, 1936, to settle in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, Max Jacob was arrested on 24 February 1944 by the Gestapo, and interned at Orléans prison, (prisoner #15872). Jewish by birth, Jacob's brother Gaston had been previously arrested in January, 1944, deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, and gassed upon arrival with his sister Myrthe-Lea; her husband also deported and murdered by the Nazis. Following his incarceration at Orléans, Max was then transferred to Drancy internment camp from where he was to be transported in the next convoy to Auschwitz in Germany. However, said to be suffering from bronchial pneumonia, Max Jacob died in the infirmary of Le Cité de la Muette, a former housing block which served as the internment camp known as Drancy on 5 March.
Having moved outside of Paris in May, 1936, to settle in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, Max Jacob was arrested on 24 February 1944 by the Gestapo, and interned at Orléans prison, (prisoner #15872). Jewish by birth, Jacob's brother Gaston had been previously arrested in January, 1944, deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, and gassed upon arrival with his sister Myrthe-Lea; her husband also deported and murdered by the Nazis. Following his incarceration at Orléans, Max was then transferred to Drancy internment camp from where he was to be transported in the next convoy to Auschwitz in Germany. However, said to be suffering from bronchial pneumonia, Max Jacob died in the infirmary of Le Cité de la Muette, a former housing block which served as the internment camp known as Drancy on 5 March.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 10, 2016
Mr. R. K.'s Wallpaper
The ceiling of hell is held together by big gold nails. Above is the earth. Hell is big twisted luminous fountains. For the earth there is a slight slope: a field of wheat cropped close and a little sky in onion skin, where a cavalcade of frenzied dwarfs goes by. On all sides a pine wood and an aloes wood. You are appearing, Mlle Suzanne, before the revolutionary tribunal for having found a white hair in your dark hair.
Not the easiest book to find, but worth the search as it’s one of the better collections of prose poems ever written. The sensibility throughout is playful (even impish) with touches of melancholy. The predominate organs at work here are eyes, and it’s this visual sense that make even the most fragmented of these poems accessible. Jacob had a front row seat in the alembic that produced Cubism, literally sharing a bed with Picasso, and his poetry is the verbal equivalent of that visual art. But his is a cubism of tangible images, humor, and narrative (many read as extremely concentrated novellas). His cubism doesn’t break down and reconstruct language at the word level, like Stein say, so even though his poetry is a compound of shards, each shard is striking and tangible in and of itself; and as we are by now so accustomed to radical fragmentation in our arts, his once radical poetry is very accessible, without losing one whit of its freshness (of course it doesn't hurt having a team of excellent poets doing the translating).
Superior Degeneration
The balloon rises, shining, and bears an even more shining point. Neither the sun casting its slanted ray like a bad monster casting a spell, nor the cries of the crowd, nothing can keep it from rising! No! It and the sky are but a single soul: the sky opens for it only. But O balloon, watch out! Shadows are moving in your gondola, O poor balloon! The balloonists are drunk.
October 3, 2012
Borrowing MJ's "sampled" shelf for this collection of fragmentary nonsensical pre-dada prose poems. I'm sure there's interesting theory underneath at least some of them, but they're not really convincing me to care enough to find out. The only miss from my Atlas Press collection so far.
Later: at Eddie's well-warranted advice, I read the rest, slower, a couple here and there, trying to make myself slow down and savor. They worked better in small doses -- there are a few in fact that I rather love. On the whole, I still have trouble getting strong sense of feeling or narrative space or mystery or ingenious construction from these (I'm bad at them), but when they click, they really do click. Here's a mysterious evocative one:
Later: at Eddie's well-warranted advice, I read the rest, slower, a couple here and there, trying to make myself slow down and savor. They worked better in small doses -- there are a few in fact that I rather love. On the whole, I still have trouble getting strong sense of feeling or narrative space or mystery or ingenious construction from these (I'm bad at them), but when they click, they really do click. Here's a mysterious evocative one:
Moon Poem
There are three mushrooms on the night and they are the moon. Once a month at midnight, they change their position as suddenly as the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock pops out to sing. In the garden there are rare flowers which are little men lying down, a hundred of them, reflections in a mirror. In the darkness of my bedroom there's a luminous shuttle wobbling to and fro, then another... phosphorescent blimps, reflections in a mirror. In my head there's a bee talking.
January 31, 2022
In any anthology of Modernism or the prose poem, the work of Max Jacob will be present. I’ve puzzled over his poems since I was a teenager. When I saw that a full translation of ‘The Dice Cup� existed, I ordered it at once, then was disappointed to see that it appears to be self-published. Bad news, I thought.
I am very often wrong -- but only rarely do my errors terminate in delight. This is a terrific book. A true labor of love. Rosenthal deserves both gratitude and praise. Sure, yes, Ashbery’s translations of Jacob are glorious -- BUT -- Ashbery translated only 30. Here are approximately 300. And it turns out to matter a lot to have everything.
For a month I read these poems every morning. I recommend reading them that way, a few at a time, playing with them, staring at them, taking your time. The anthologies tend to choose the same few poems, as if to say, “Here is a perfect prickly example of Modernism�. I found the book as a whole to be -- more enjoyable than I expected, more companionable, glimpses of Picasso, yes, but also Rimbaud and Baudelaire and Mallarme. The poems, taken as a whole, felt so different to me from the textbook selections.
In fact, I got so excited, reading this book, with too much coffee, before heading to work on the farm, that I decided, “I must learn everything I can about Max Jacob!� I ordered the Rosanna Warren biography, expecting it to be on the dry side, academic. Wrong again! If you enjoy this book, read that one too. Buddies with Picasso, visions of Christ, seducing policemen, trying and failing to survive as a Jew in Vichy France -- it’s a riveting, scandalous, and important life.
It turns out we really NEEDED a full translation of ‘the Dice Cup�. As Max Jacob’s body of work was varied and vast, I hope Rosenthal will continue to publish translations, either with the support of a press or independently. In the meantime, I’m catching up with Max Jacob’s frenemies -- Reverdy and Apollinaire. I couldn’t ask any more of a book -- it turned out to be the first step of an adventure.
I am very often wrong -- but only rarely do my errors terminate in delight. This is a terrific book. A true labor of love. Rosenthal deserves both gratitude and praise. Sure, yes, Ashbery’s translations of Jacob are glorious -- BUT -- Ashbery translated only 30. Here are approximately 300. And it turns out to matter a lot to have everything.
For a month I read these poems every morning. I recommend reading them that way, a few at a time, playing with them, staring at them, taking your time. The anthologies tend to choose the same few poems, as if to say, “Here is a perfect prickly example of Modernism�. I found the book as a whole to be -- more enjoyable than I expected, more companionable, glimpses of Picasso, yes, but also Rimbaud and Baudelaire and Mallarme. The poems, taken as a whole, felt so different to me from the textbook selections.
In fact, I got so excited, reading this book, with too much coffee, before heading to work on the farm, that I decided, “I must learn everything I can about Max Jacob!� I ordered the Rosanna Warren biography, expecting it to be on the dry side, academic. Wrong again! If you enjoy this book, read that one too. Buddies with Picasso, visions of Christ, seducing policemen, trying and failing to survive as a Jew in Vichy France -- it’s a riveting, scandalous, and important life.
It turns out we really NEEDED a full translation of ‘the Dice Cup�. As Max Jacob’s body of work was varied and vast, I hope Rosenthal will continue to publish translations, either with the support of a press or independently. In the meantime, I’m catching up with Max Jacob’s frenemies -- Reverdy and Apollinaire. I couldn’t ask any more of a book -- it turned out to be the first step of an adventure.
February 11, 2008
I learned nothing from this book and return to it regularly to learn even less.
January 12, 2022
A definitive Yahtzee. This dizzying assortment of bizarre and entrancing tableaus is like taking a stroll through a carnival funhouse of distorted mirrors. Wonderfully surreal yet riddled with intentionality and meaning, I little suspected to perceive as many parallels to Bukowski or Burroughs in something so romantic and distinctly European. The struggling and oppressed find kinship across oceans, forge sister cities in the most distant locales it seems� The section of micro poems around a third of the way in are particularly exemplary. They’re not haikus precisely (a few may actually be, as Jacob expressly mentions great admiration for the form in his introduction) but evoke a similar punchiness and compact nature quite effectually, as slimmed down versions of what the author accomplishes elsewhere exhibited like showpieces with the greatest economy and commendable focus, as slices of fillet mignon. A fantastical triumph, not quite like anything I’ve seen before. Highly recommended for those who have a taste for the daring and not rigidly literal. The closing preface by the translator wrestling with the riddle of the prose poem is also a tremendously noteworthy achievement and a significant piece of writing and examination in and of itself, I would highly encourage professors out there trying to communicate this challenging to comprehend concept to their students utilize it everywhere applicable enthusiastically.
December 20, 2009
A book to live with, even if -like me- you dislike prose poetry. Nobody does it better.
July 23, 2024
Prose poems sitting somewhere between Dada and surrealism, but not really fitting in with either. Interesting and ahead of their time, but I think I prefer prose poems more like Baudelaire's.
August 10, 2019
The Dice Cup is a very good collection of prose poems from an underrated and almost forgotten writer. Many of them are dreamlike. It's too bad he wasn't accepted by the surrealists.
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December 25, 2009
A bit disappointing. Years ago I read the edition edited by Michael Brownstein and liked it a lot. This time, I find the charm wears thin pretty quickly, except for a very few of the poems that still strike me as briiliant.
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