The Fight with the Angel

Jacques Prévert to J.-B. Brunius
translation by Kelly Nuxoll


Don't go in there
it's been rigged
the match is fixed
lit by the flash of magnesium bulbs
they'll chant the Te Deum at the top of their lungs
and before you can even get to your feet
they'll clang the bell with all their might
they'll throw the sacred towel in your face
and you won't have time to strip him of his feathers
they'll press forward
and he'll strike below the belt
and you'll fall to the floor
arms stupidly outstretched
on the sawdust
and you'll never love again.


Even though I know it's dangerous, I'm tempted to read real lives as literature. The nuances—Jacob would say the grit—of reality gets polished over, and a complex person is reduced to a character type. I'd like not to mythologize Jacob; I'd like not to rob him of anything that made him remarkable, or anything that made him ordinary. Jacob himself commented in an email that "nothing is as fatuous as real life." By fatuous I think he must have meant miraculous and touching. Jacob's dedication to describing things as they really were, without gloss or sentimentality, could only have come from a profound love of the actual.

However, no life is so strange as never to be reincarnated, in some form, on the page. When I came across this poem last summer, I thought I recognized my friend in it: his boxer's build, the funny way one leg twisted in the socket when he walked, his battle with an unnamed adversary—a demon or a deity or himself. Prévert's poem, and its allusion to the Biblical story of Jacob, gave words to clarify how I saw my friend and how I felt about his death. At its best, literature's trick of recognition makes us not so alone, providing companions and a common tongue. I took solace in noticing that Prévert dedicated his verse to a friend; perhaps there are a host of Jacobs in the world, all blessed, all beloved, all struggling with the angel.