Jacques Prévert's (賈克. 普維) Déjeuner du Matin (Breakfast)(早餐)

In a modern city like Hong Kong or Paris, breakfast is something everyone takes before leaving for work. Some take it at home. Some take it at a neighborhood restaurant. Some take it at the office. Some take more. Some take less. And some even do not need any breakfast. But for those who do, breakfast has become a daily ritual. What can we write about a perfectly ordinary breakfast. Let's see what Jacques Prevert (1900-1977), a Parisien poet and film script writer has to say.

Dejeuner du Matin      Breakfast in the Morning         早餐

Il a mis le café                 He put the coffee                 他把咖啡放

Dans la tasse                   In the cup                            進杯內

Il a mis le lait                   He put the milk                     他把牛奶放

Dans la tasse du café       In the cup of coffee               進咖啡內

Il a mis le sucre                He put the sugar                    他以小匙

Dans le café au lait           In the coffee with milk            把糖放

Avec la petite cuiller        With the little spoon                 進牛奶咖啡內

Il a tourné                       He stirred it                              他攪拌一下     

Il a bu le café au lait         He drank the coffe with milk     他喝下牛奶咖啡

Et il a reposé la tasse       He replaced the cup                  他把杯放回  

Sans me parler                  Without talking to me               沒與我說什麽

Il a allumé                        He lit                                         他燃着

Une cigarette                   A cigarette                                  一枝煙

Il a fait des ronds             He made rings                             他把煙

Avec la fumée                  with the smoke                            吹成煙圈

Il a mis les cendres           He put the ahses                         他把煙灰

Dans le cendrier               Into the ashtray                          放入煙灰缸

Sans me parler                 Without talking to me                  沒與我說話

Sans me regarder              Without looking at me             沒瞄我一眼

Il s'est levée                        He got up                                   他起身

Il a mis                               He put                                         他把帽子

Son chapeau sur la tête      His hat over his head                     放上頭

Il a mis                               He took                                        他拿起

Son manteau de pluie         His raincoat                                他的雨褸

Parce qu'íl pleuvait              Because it was raining               因正下雨

Et il est parti                       He left                                         他已離去

Sous la pluie                       Under the rain                              在雨中

Sans une parole                  Without a word                           沒說一句話

Sans me regarder                Without looking at me                沒瞄我一眼

Et moi j'ai pris                      And I put                                   而我把我頭放

Ma tête dans ma main           My head within my hand          我手中

Et j'ai pleuré.                       And I cried.                                 我哭了。

 

In this poem, he deliberately describes an action which has just happened to give it a sense of its proximity to the present. He repeats a verb "mettre" and uses it in all the possible senses of that verb. He uses the passé composé or the present perfect tense, a tense to  emphasize the recency of the action and its close relation to the present to increase the sense of its immediacy. He does not use the usual form of the word for breakfast "petit dejeuner" but uses a rather unusual form "dejeuner du matin" , meaning literally, " meal of the morning" to emphasize that the emotional situation that occurs in the morning or one of of the mornings.

Not only does he repeat the verb. He also repeats almost exactly the form of his short sentences. He keeps exactly the same sentence structure.  As in all literary writing, the repetition serves only one purpose: to build up the energy and the force of the contrast when that repetition is broken, more or less like adding heat to the water in the kettle being boiled, until it reaches the boiling point and turns into steam, something entirely different.

The repetitive structure of the sentence may serve another purpose. It may be intended also to emphasize the perfect ordinariness of the action described. It gives a sense of the monotony, the boredom, the dreariness of routine. He describes the action of the man slowly, step by step.

The poet does not use any adjectives. He does not use any adverb. He merely recites the facts. He does not use any emotive or emotional words. On the face of it, there is no emotion. There is no excitement. There is no joy. Ostensibly, there is no sorrow. There is no hope. Ostensibly, there is no despair. There is merely a series of actions. There is no sound. There is no sense of touch. There is no description of smell. There is no description of taste. There is no nothing except a relentless factual and apparently objective description. He presents. He does not summarize. He does not give his personal opinion on what happens. He lets what he presents speak for themselves.

The effect of the poem relies precisely on this lack of color, this lack of surprise. It describes the action of the man through a pair of eyes. The only time any surprise, if it can be so called, is the description that the man does not look upon the observer and that he does not talk to the observer, which subtly suggests what the observer was expecting.

Is the observer a man? Is the observer a woman? Is the observer a child? Is the observer a father? Is the observer a mother? Is the relation between the observer and the observed wife and husband or merely lovers. We do not know.

What is most surprising is that all the sentences are about positive actions except for three phrases, "without talking"and "without looking","without a word". The observer might just as well not have existed as far as the man is concerned. The observer has become invisible! Hence the last sentence, in which the observer cried because not of action but the absence of any action to acknowledge the observer's existence! The Chinese have a saying, "there is no sorrow greater than a heart which has died.". This is what apparently the poet is trying to describe! The boredom of the man is skilfully brought out without any adjective. It is shown by his action: he'd rather spend the time blowing rings with his cigarette smoke than look at the observer or even say a single word to the observer. The emotion of loss of any hope, of disappointment, of despair is concretely described and objectified by the lack of emotional response from the drinker of the morning coffee. He does not even look at the observer! That is the ultimate denial of the existence of the observer. 

I am sure that in a dysfunctional family where the love has gone out of the marriage, what this poem portrays may be the description of a perfectly "normal" morning. It is a morning without love. The relationship between the observer and the observed stopped at observation despite the fact that the two are apparently in close physical proximity to one another.

We do not know where the lack of drama took place. It could be at the dining room of the typical family or even inside a neighborhood a restaurant into which the two of them may have stepped before the man left for work or for some other purpose. The lack of any specificity may be intended to convey the feeling that it is something which could happen to any couple or at any place and on any perfectly "ordinary" morning. The scenario might probably have occurred in winter with a dull and dreary grey sky and light drizzle because France has what has been described as a Mediterranean type of climate with light rain in winter and little or no rain in summer.

Is Prévert suggesting that what is described is that condition of one particular family. Or is he suggesting that that may well be a universal condition of more than a few modern French families?  The extraordinary is embodied in the description of the ordinary. The emotion of desolation and  despair is emphasized by an absence:  the conspicuous absence of another emotion which the observer expected but did not find: love. Yet throughout the whole poem, the word has never been used at all. Prévert here uses a technique which all paper cutting artists and what all Taoists know: you can convey a presence by an absence: by cutting out instead of leaving in. You can make use of "emptiness" to create a "concreteness": here the concreteness or solidity of the powerful emotion of despair. He describes what occurs inside the human heart by delineating objectively its external manifestation: the silent sobbing of the observer!