Phantomas no. 2, 1954
After years of combing the intertubes we have finally procured this slim volume, the first issue of the long-running (187 numbers in all) artists' journal published after its editors split with Raymond Queneau's Temps Mêles.
More important, it contains a "hidden track" in the form of a poem by Marcel Broodthaers that isn't listed in the table of contents and is written under the pseudonym Chateau d'If. The title of the poem, "Adieu, Police!" and the pen name, borrowed from a French prison on the isle of d'If near Marseille, and the content of the poem itself all suggest an idea similar to that expressed by Albert Camus in his novel The Stranger: that being in prison can be a kind of freedom that liberates the mind. Here's a stab at a translation:
So Long, Police!
I wanted to be an organ player
in the army of silence
but I played hopscotch
on the blood-pink dew.
My ship sank at anchor
and its rotten wood went up in flames
at the bottom of the waters.
So I played zanzi*
and, from setback to setback,
I arrived at winter solstice.
I was the scarecrow of commerce.
The sea took me back
in the raiment of drowned princes;
since then all my friends have been seals.
Then I played poker
and I appeared running,
burning my books and friendship
in the jaws of oblivion
and, laughing at the crimes
of the sergeants and the Bluebeards,
I became Fantômas.
Dressed in water and war,
I grew up under Paris skies.
*slang for a game of chance played with three dice
More important, it contains a "hidden track" in the form of a poem by Marcel Broodthaers that isn't listed in the table of contents and is written under the pseudonym Chateau d'If. The title of the poem, "Adieu, Police!" and the pen name, borrowed from a French prison on the isle of d'If near Marseille, and the content of the poem itself all suggest an idea similar to that expressed by Albert Camus in his novel The Stranger: that being in prison can be a kind of freedom that liberates the mind. Here's a stab at a translation:
So Long, Police!
I wanted to be an organ player
in the army of silence
but I played hopscotch
on the blood-pink dew.
My ship sank at anchor
and its rotten wood went up in flames
at the bottom of the waters.
So I played zanzi*
and, from setback to setback,
I arrived at winter solstice.
I was the scarecrow of commerce.
The sea took me back
in the raiment of drowned princes;
since then all my friends have been seals.
Then I played poker
and I appeared running,
burning my books and friendship
in the jaws of oblivion
and, laughing at the crimes
of the sergeants and the Bluebeards,
I became Fantômas.
Dressed in water and war,
I grew up under Paris skies.
*slang for a game of chance played with three dice