Au Café de Flore

Simone, please be quiet

and let me enjoy my pipe.

But Jean-Paul, something

must have happened to Godot,

we've been waiting for him for ages.

Simone, please be quiet,

ta gueule, fiche-moi la paix,

you're giving me nausea,

I'm trying to concentrate...

does essence precede existence

or is it the other way round?

I can't get my head round

all this existentialism merde.

Don't ask me, Jean-Paul.

You think you've got problems,

I've got this great title:

"The Second Sex" but I'm

foutue if I know what it means.

Simone, I'll say to you

what I always say

to people who come to me

with their problems: inventez!

Dis donc, I've just thought

of a clever slogan:

"Hell is other people."

You could put it on my headstone...

It's a joke, Simone.

Godot's not coming, is he? Merde alors!

He's probably engagé

like all good existentialists.

Simone, I think you're jealous

'cos he's with that putain Juliette.

You miss her, don't you?

                   ......

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

some are waiting for Godot although he undoubtedly will never come...Lawrence Ferlinghetti was constantly waiting for a rebirth of wonder...which probably never came for him either, although at 101 he is still hanging on...maybe still waiting.
love the conversation here...almost like two people having conversations with themselves...just glad someone else is in the same room so they can pretend to really be communicating with each other.
splendid work, Gerald..
j.

[Gerald Parker]

Thanks for liking this, Jacob. I enjoyed writing it. Gerald.

[Eilis]

I was going to just admire this one because I like the satirical tone but have some reservations about my complete understanding. It’s almost like a rewriting of Waiting for Godot, but with people of the living world.

I get that it’s Sartre and de Beauvoir, but I’m ashamed to admit I’m not well-versed enough in their writings to offer the full appreciation the poem merits. Well, that and I don’t speak or read French, so that is a stumbling block for me. I considered trying an online translator but that has steered me wrong more than once.

So, I’ll just tell you how it comes across to me with what information I do have, and maybe that will be helpful.

I recognize some of your references to the writings of the two philosophers. I have studied existentialism a little, mainly through Camus, and also some Sartre, but not enough to speak intelligently about him. So, I’ll just say the sense of the absurd comes through in your tone, but more as a more literal idea of absurdity. The two brains wrestling with ideas that seem to be bouncing from one to the other.

I read that the two were a couple, and you offer a sense of that here, but also, an indication that they aren’t really on the same wavelength. Or perhaps it’s more that they are so used to each other that they’ve entered the ignoring each other stage.

I don’t know. But, I found this poem to be one I would study to better understand. If I was assigned it in a course I wouldn’t rest until I could fully explain and understand it.

My favorite part is the tone which comes over as somewhat playful but also satirical. That and the way it feels like a scene from a play. I really enjoyed this, Gerald. In spite of my ignorance on some points, I found it easy to enjoy it, but, like I said, I would work to better understand it.

[Gerald Parker]

Thanks for commenting on this, Eilis. Someone I know on another site wrote a short poem from Godot's point of view, explaining why he was keeping people waiting. His poem mentioned the Café de Flore, which is what triggered the "inspiration" for my poem. The French bits are mostly expletives and don't add to the meaning of the poem. I remember a lecturer telling us that when a man went to see Sartre to ask whether he should enlist and fight in the war or stay and look after his ailing mother, Sartre's only reply was "Inventez." I had to include this and his famous "Hell is other people." I could not think of enough to include about de Beauvoir but I remembered that their relationship was very open and that they made no attempts to hide their many affairs.