Manicure
Manicure Mário de Sá-Carneiro Drawing by Almada Negreiros
While polishing my nails I feel A sudden, inexplicable tenderness And fold everything into Me, piously. Yet here I am alone in a Café This morning, as usual, me and my forced yawns. Behind me tables, only tables — hard And boorish, foursquare in uncultured Gaucherie; quadrangular, free-thinking . . . Outside, a sunny day in May — A brutish, provincial, democratic day My delicate, refined, elegant, citified Eyes cannot withstand — they struggle to barely Tolerate the nausea. My whole sensibility Is offended by such days, yet they must Have their singer among my occasional peripatetic friends — Those natural brunettes with big mustaches Who write, join political parties, Attend republican congresses, Run around with women, like red wine, Pearmains, fried sardines . . . And with this feeling of polishing my fingernails, Painting them with parisian lacquer, I become more and more moved to compassion Till I cry out for Me . . . A thousand colors in the Air, a thousand vibrations throb, Distant misty planes Drop down sinuously, shifting streaks, flexing discs Come tenuously to draw up in me All the tenderness I could have lived, All the grandeur I could have sensed, All the mise-en-scene I ever was . . . This is like the weak obsession Of a smile reflected in empty mirrors Gradually focused in on me . . . Delicate flexures entwine . . . Fine crystalline quiver . . . Slinky, unattainable . . . Swift atmospheric spark . . . And all these things drive through space To me, numberless intersections Of multiple, free, lubricious planes.
There, a huge, serpentine, phantasmal Mirror gulfs all down through my past, Is my demolished present, My future already dust . . . ............................................. Putting aside my files, My scissors, my godets of varnish, Tools I use to polish my sensations — I let loose my eyes — to be maddened by the Air! O! Why can’t I deplete all aerial incrustation!? If only I could hammer away at this beauty — utterly baseless, in the end! — To sing all revolution, moldure, saturation Strewn expansive in a subtilized Stream of vibrations: — ever toward infinity! . . . Calottes hang under ruined ogives, Solid triangles in fractured naves! Spirals trail behind a vertical flight! Wonderful spheres in a tennis ball’s wake! How blondely aquiver, the player’s laughing mouth . . . Fanned scarlet garlands when a half-naked Russian ballerina flutters painted Salome hands On a great stage of Gold! — How lacy, other ballets! Ah! these precipial inflections, strident and blinding, These brutal vertices, divergent and grinding, Apache daggers pierce High chill dawns . . . And in stations and embarcaderos, The big, piled crates, The baggage, the bundles — pell-mell . . . I toss everything into the Air — I’m fashioned, I’m singled out for it In multiple interstices Wherever I feel my Soul wander! . . . — O futurist beauty of commodities! — O brown paper wrappers, I’d love to wear you like a toga! — Wooden crates, How I yearn to sink my teeth into you! And the spikes, the cords, the hoops . . . — But most of all, in my beauty-emboldened eyes,
The dance of glittering inscriptions On every article of drayage — Black, red, blue or green — Shouts of the present, of Commerce & Industry In cosmopolitan transit: F R A G I L ! F R A G I L ! 843 — AG LISBON 492 — WR MADRID Avidly I track new atmospheric Beauty; My gaze slithers constantly In frenzied absorption. What sortilege! Everything discharges A colossal, insinuating fluid Grotesquely aswirl — swift, Imponderable, elegantly frivolous light . . . — Look at the tables . . . Eia! Eia! Cabriolets fly straight to the Air In an instantaneous series of quads and spaces — But now, farther off, distant, removed lozenges . . . And the ranks plunge indistinguishably, And, mixed in with the tables, bellow insinuations Of pews — covered with crimson velvet, They carom all over the café . . . And, higher still, in oblique planes, Airy symbolisms of tenuous heraldry Dazzle chessmen at the feet of the chairs; Startled from horizontal sleep, They too arise in sarabande . . . My eyes annointed with Novelty, Yes! — my futurist, my cubist, my intersectionist eyes Will not stop quivering and lapping up all this glittering, Spectral, transferred, succedaneous beauty, All this Beauty-without-Support, Disconjunct, emergent, variable Always and free — in continuous mutation, Unfathomable divagation . . . — How much for my banal porcelain teacup?
Ah, exhaled forth in Greek amphoric curves, Rising in a spiral, ciliate vortex, A convex edge gushes gold . . .
[ Everything billows in the air! Everything exists there! ] Now, from the long polished glass falling to the street, Come theories of hyaline vertices Athrob with crystallization; misty, diffuse, Like sunbolts they pierce the broad pane, Dancing in the space they tint with fantasy, Knots, italics, arrows, wings, — in multicolor dust — APOTHEOSIS ............................................. A timbrel crash nearby: Sonorous smatterings! Just what the landscape needed . . . Acoustic waves subtilize it all the more: Here they come! here they come! They run agile, They glide away so gracefully, those elegant does of the Soul . . . A voice intones a telephone number: North — 2, 0, 5, 7 . . . And through the Air thrust algorithmic moldures: ASSUMPTION OF NUMERICAL BEAUTY!
Far away, a waiter drops a tray! No end to this marvel!
A new turbulence of silver-plated waves Widens in a rutile rustle of circular echoes, Like cold water splashing and refreshing the environs . . . — My eyes exhaust themselves in Beauty! Ineffable shadowy daydream — I compress my eyelids . . . I squint . . . ............................................. . . . And begin to recall jade rings On certain hands I once possessed — And behold, by sorcery, now clasped in the air . . . They remind me of kisses — carmine Marquetries arise . . . Sequined helices diverge . . . Crests open, rend edges . . . Small golden timbres entwine . . . Spirals shoot, crosses interlock, Star-shards, plumes aswarm . . . In pain, to hide my eyes from such riches, I shut them tight . . . In vain! There’s no defense: Through darkness: Planes, intervals, ruptures, vaults, declivities . . . — O, theatrical magic of the atmosphere, — O, contemporary magic — only we, We of today, can swell you with a roar! ............................................. Eia! Eia! Vibrationary turmoil sails ahead Like never before to overflow in iridescent rhythms! I feel myself translated through the air. Twining skeins! Eia! Eia! Eia! (How everything seems so different When irrealized in gas:
Free-thinking, fluidic Diluted tables; They’re all catholic like me, all monarchists like me!) ............................................. ............................................. Serene. A stranger sits in front of me And unfolds the Matin. My eyes, now momentarily tranquilized, Catch sight of distant characters, And all the new typographical sensibility Starts quivering before me. Eh-lá! Bold Norman of sensational headlines! Finely-calibrated italics of the daily columns! 12-point Roman, foursquare, bourgeois, comfortable, Gothics, cursives, uncials, britannics, capitals! Miniscule type of tiny classifieds! O, my Elsevier, your homoerotic curves! Typographical ornaments, vignettes, Thick black borders, Punctuation’s frivolous “puzzle”, Asterisks — quotation marks . . . accents . . . Eh-lá! Eh-lá! Eh-lá!
— All the ancient and modern abecedaries, Greek, Gothic, Slavic, Arabic, Latin —, Eia-hô! Eia-hô! Eia-hô! (Hip! Hip-lá! new onomatopoeic sympathy Gushes out of pure alphabetic beauty: Uu-um . . . kess-kress . . . vliiim . . . tlin . . . blong . . . flong . . . flak . . . Pâ-am-pam! Pam . . . pam . . . pum . . . pum . . . Hurrah!)
The stranger turns the page; He reads the latest flashes; Light as the page In a swirl of letters, The whole world rests in his hands! — Hurrah for you, typographic industry! — Hurrah for you, newspaper publishers!
Finally, he unfolds the advertising page . . . O, Advertising’s zebra-striped emotivity, O, futurist aesthetic — up-to-dateness of trademarks, Firms, signboards! . . .
Elegant artlessness of firms, LTD.
............................................. ............................................. All this, all this, all this and more! Again I gaze into the Air — All Beauty undulates there as well: Numbers and letters, firm, High reliefs, ornamentation! . . . — Words in liberty, sound unbound,
MARINETTI + PICASSO = PARIS < SANTA RITA PINTOR + FERNANDO PESSOA ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS !!!! Before I get up, a Parisian Marvel comes to mind — zinc Counters in bars . . . who knows why . . . — Un vermouth-cassis . . . Un Pernod à l’eau . . . Un amer-citron . . . Une grenadine . . . ............................................. ............................................. ............................................. I stand . . . And fall flat! Deep down and even more excessively, mirrors reflect Everything ashimmer in the air, With an even subtler beauty shining through . . . — O, dream unfettered, O, errant moonlight, I’ll never be able to sing in verse, As I’ve yearned till I’ve come molten Gold, All that Pure, That unattainable Beauty! I roll down myself like a flight of stairs . . . I neglect my hands, I forget all about lacquering my nails . . . And, gnashing my teeth, with distant eyes, Hatless, like a man possessed, I make my stand! I run down the street, leaping and shouting!
— Hilá! Hilá! Hilá-hô! Eh! Eh! Tum . . . tum . . . tum . . . tum tum tum tum . . .
VLIIIMIIIIM ... BRÁ-ÔH . . . BRÁ-ÔH . . . BRÁ-ÔH! . . .
FUTSCH ! FUTSCH ! . . .
ZING-TANG . . . ZING-TANG . . . TANG . . . TANG . . . TANG . . .
PRÁ Á KK ! . . . Lisbon, May 1915
(Lisbon, 1890 – Paris, 1916)
While polishing my nails I feel A sudden, inexplicable tenderness And fold everything into Me, piously. Yet here I am alone in a Café This morning, as usual, me and my forced yawns. Behind me tables, only tables — hard And boorish, foursquare in uncultured Gaucherie; quadrangular, free-thinking . . . Outside, a sunny day in May — A brutish, provincial, democratic day My delicate, refined, elegant, citified Eyes cannot withstand — they struggle to barely Tolerate the nausea. My whole sensibility Is offended by such days, yet they must Have their singer among my occasional peripatetic friends — Those natural brunettes with big mustaches Who write, join political parties, Attend republican congresses, Run around with women, like red wine, Pearmains, fried sardines . . . And with this feeling of polishing my fingernails, Painting them with parisian lacquer, I become more and more moved to compassion Till I cry out for Me . . . A thousand colors in the Air, a thousand vibrations throb, Distant misty planes Drop down sinuously, shifting streaks, flexing discs Come tenuously to draw up in me All the tenderness I could have lived, All the grandeur I could have sensed, All the mise-en-scene I ever was . . . This is like the weak obsession Of a smile reflected in empty mirrors Gradually focused in on me . . . Delicate flexures entwine . . . Fine crystalline quiver . . . Slinky, unattainable . . . Swift atmospheric spark . . . And all these things drive through space To me, numberless intersections Of multiple, free, lubricious planes.
There, a huge, serpentine, phantasmal Mirror gulfs all down through my past, Is my demolished present, My future already dust . . . ............................................. Putting aside my files, My scissors, my godets of varnish, Tools I use to polish my sensations — I let loose my eyes — to be maddened by the Air! O! Why can’t I deplete all aerial incrustation!? If only I could hammer away at this beauty — utterly baseless, in the end! — To sing all revolution, moldure, saturation Strewn expansive in a subtilized Stream of vibrations: — ever toward infinity! . . . Calottes hang under ruined ogives, Solid triangles in fractured naves! Spirals trail behind a vertical flight! Wonderful spheres in a tennis ball’s wake! How blondely aquiver, the player’s laughing mouth . . . Fanned scarlet garlands when a half-naked Russian ballerina flutters painted Salome hands On a great stage of Gold! — How lacy, other ballets! Ah! these precipial inflections, strident and blinding, These brutal vertices, divergent and grinding, Apache daggers pierce High chill dawns . . . And in stations and embarcaderos, The big, piled crates, The baggage, the bundles — pell-mell . . . I toss everything into the Air — I’m fashioned, I’m singled out for it In multiple interstices Wherever I feel my Soul wander! . . . — O futurist beauty of commodities! — O brown paper wrappers, I’d love to wear you like a toga! — Wooden crates, How I yearn to sink my teeth into you! And the spikes, the cords, the hoops . . . — But most of all, in my beauty-emboldened eyes,
The dance of glittering inscriptions On every article of drayage — Black, red, blue or green — Shouts of the present, of Commerce & Industry In cosmopolitan transit: F R A G I L ! F R A G I L ! 843 — AG LISBON 492 — WR MADRID Avidly I track new atmospheric Beauty; My gaze slithers constantly In frenzied absorption. What sortilege! Everything discharges A colossal, insinuating fluid Grotesquely aswirl — swift, Imponderable, elegantly frivolous light . . . — Look at the tables . . . Eia! Eia! Cabriolets fly straight to the Air In an instantaneous series of quads and spaces — But now, farther off, distant, removed lozenges . . . And the ranks plunge indistinguishably, And, mixed in with the tables, bellow insinuations Of pews — covered with crimson velvet, They carom all over the café . . . And, higher still, in oblique planes, Airy symbolisms of tenuous heraldry Dazzle chessmen at the feet of the chairs; Startled from horizontal sleep, They too arise in sarabande . . . My eyes annointed with Novelty, Yes! — my futurist, my cubist, my intersectionist eyes Will not stop quivering and lapping up all this glittering, Spectral, transferred, succedaneous beauty, All this Beauty-without-Support, Disconjunct, emergent, variable Always and free — in continuous mutation, Unfathomable divagation . . . — How much for my banal porcelain teacup?
Ah, exhaled forth in Greek amphoric curves, Rising in a spiral, ciliate vortex, A convex edge gushes gold . . .
[ Everything billows in the air! Everything exists there! ] Now, from the long polished glass falling to the street, Come theories of hyaline vertices Athrob with crystallization; misty, diffuse, Like sunbolts they pierce the broad pane, Dancing in the space they tint with fantasy, Knots, italics, arrows, wings, — in multicolor dust — APOTHEOSIS ............................................. A timbrel crash nearby: Sonorous smatterings! Just what the landscape needed . . . Acoustic waves subtilize it all the more: Here they come! here they come! They run agile, They glide away so gracefully, those elegant does of the Soul . . . A voice intones a telephone number: North — 2, 0, 5, 7 . . . And through the Air thrust algorithmic moldures: ASSUMPTION OF NUMERICAL BEAUTY!
Far away, a waiter drops a tray! No end to this marvel!
A new turbulence of silver-plated waves Widens in a rutile rustle of circular echoes, Like cold water splashing and refreshing the environs . . . — My eyes exhaust themselves in Beauty! Ineffable shadowy daydream — I compress my eyelids . . . I squint . . . ............................................. . . . And begin to recall jade rings On certain hands I once possessed — And behold, by sorcery, now clasped in the air . . . They remind me of kisses — carmine Marquetries arise . . . Sequined helices diverge . . . Crests open, rend edges . . . Small golden timbres entwine . . . Spirals shoot, crosses interlock, Star-shards, plumes aswarm . . . In pain, to hide my eyes from such riches, I shut them tight . . . In vain! There’s no defense: Through darkness: Planes, intervals, ruptures, vaults, declivities . . . — O, theatrical magic of the atmosphere, — O, contemporary magic — only we, We of today, can swell you with a roar! ............................................. Eia! Eia! Vibrationary turmoil sails ahead Like never before to overflow in iridescent rhythms! I feel myself translated through the air. Twining skeins! Eia! Eia! Eia! (How everything seems so different When irrealized in gas:
Free-thinking, fluidic Diluted tables; They’re all catholic like me, all monarchists like me!) ............................................. ............................................. Serene. A stranger sits in front of me And unfolds the Matin. My eyes, now momentarily tranquilized, Catch sight of distant characters, And all the new typographical sensibility Starts quivering before me. Eh-lá! Bold Norman of sensational headlines! Finely-calibrated italics of the daily columns! 12-point Roman, foursquare, bourgeois, comfortable, Gothics, cursives, uncials, britannics, capitals! Miniscule type of tiny classifieds! O, my Elsevier, your homoerotic curves! Typographical ornaments, vignettes, Thick black borders, Punctuation’s frivolous “puzzle”, Asterisks — quotation marks . . . accents . . . Eh-lá! Eh-lá! Eh-lá!
— All the ancient and modern abecedaries, Greek, Gothic, Slavic, Arabic, Latin —, Eia-hô! Eia-hô! Eia-hô! (Hip! Hip-lá! new onomatopoeic sympathy Gushes out of pure alphabetic beauty: Uu-um . . . kess-kress . . . vliiim . . . tlin . . . blong . . . flong . . . flak . . . Pâ-am-pam! Pam . . . pam . . . pum . . . pum . . . Hurrah!)
The stranger turns the page; He reads the latest flashes; Light as the page In a swirl of letters, The whole world rests in his hands! — Hurrah for you, typographic industry! — Hurrah for you, newspaper publishers!
Finally, he unfolds the advertising page . . . O, Advertising’s zebra-striped emotivity, O, futurist aesthetic — up-to-dateness of trademarks, Firms, signboards! . . .
Elegant artlessness of firms, LTD.
............................................. ............................................. All this, all this, all this and more! Again I gaze into the Air — All Beauty undulates there as well: Numbers and letters, firm, High reliefs, ornamentation! . . . — Words in liberty, sound unbound,
MARINETTI + PICASSO = PARIS < SANTA RITA PINTOR + FERNANDO PESSOA ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS !!!! Before I get up, a Parisian Marvel comes to mind — zinc Counters in bars . . . who knows why . . . — Un vermouth-cassis . . . Un Pernod à l’eau . . . Un amer-citron . . . Une grenadine . . . ............................................. ............................................. ............................................. I stand . . . And fall flat! Deep down and even more excessively, mirrors reflect Everything ashimmer in the air, With an even subtler beauty shining through . . . — O, dream unfettered, O, errant moonlight, I’ll never be able to sing in verse, As I’ve yearned till I’ve come molten Gold, All that Pure, That unattainable Beauty! I roll down myself like a flight of stairs . . . I neglect my hands, I forget all about lacquering my nails . . . And, gnashing my teeth, with distant eyes, Hatless, like a man possessed, I make my stand! I run down the street, leaping and shouting!
— Hilá! Hilá! Hilá-hô! Eh! Eh! Tum . . . tum . . . tum . . . tum tum tum tum . . .
VLIIIMIIIIM ... BRÁ-ÔH . . . BRÁ-ÔH . . . BRÁ-ÔH! . . .
FUTSCH ! FUTSCH ! . . .
ZING-TANG . . . ZING-TANG . . . TANG . . . TANG . . . TANG . . .
PRÁ Á KK ! . . . Lisbon, May 1915
(Lisbon, 1890 – Paris, 1916)
