The Savantasse of Montparnasse

by Allen Mandelbaum

Book by Mandelbaum, Allen

Genres: Poetry

203 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1987

About the author

Allen Mandelbaum was an American professor of Italian literature, poet, and translator. A devout Jew, Mandelbaum is highly knowledgeable of Christianity.

His translation of the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri appeared between 1980 and 1984 — published by The University of California Press and supported by the notable Dante scholar Irma Brandeis. He subsequently acted as general editor of the California Lectura Dantis, a collection of essays on the Comedy; two volumes, on the Inferno and Purgatoria, have been published.

Mandelbaum received the National Book Award for his translation of Virgil's Aeneid, and is also the recipient of the Order of Merit from the Republic of Italy, the Premio Mondello, the Premio Leonardo, the Premio Biella, the Premio Lerici-Pea, the Premio Montale at the Montale Centenary in Rome, and the Circe-Sabaudia Award.

In 2000, Mandelbaum traveled to Florence, Italy, for the 735th anniversary of Dante's birth, and was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor of the City of Florence, in honor of his translation of the Divine Comedy. In 2003, he was awarded The Presidential Prize for Translation from the President of Italy, and received Italy's highest award, the Presidential Cross of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity.

Allen Mandelbaum died on Oct. 27 in Winston-Salem, N.C. He was 85. His son, Jonathan, said he died after a long illness.

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very difficult book. Overall, the poetry was pretty good, with a few moments of brilliance and a large number of very confusing sections. I found this because I had read Mandelbaum's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses and absolutely loved it--he mentioned this book in the afterword because he invokes Ovid as his guide (like Dante invokes Virgil) at the beginning of this long poem. Unfortunately, his brilliance in translation is far too readily apparent in The Savantasse of Montparnasse; there are unexplained, unglossed passages and words in at least all of the following languages: Latin, French, and German (with possibly other languages as well). I do not speak any of these languages, and the passages in languages other than English--in this English-language work--often seem to appear for little to no reason and give the impression of a man trying to display his brilliance, rather than one trying to write a beautiful and moving account of a pseudo-intellectual (the best approximation for savantasse I could find) Frenchman. The actual poetry is, for the most part, enjoyable and rhythmic. In "Boatsongs", Mandelbaum writes, "the river will erode (as talk/erodes--in time--a text) their rock" and in "The Lied of Legal Tender", we get,

Too many hands had passed it on
to him.
It had become a coin

adulterated and defaced:
the force--
inherited from Shem--

to fornicate and propagate,
accumulate,
propitiate

the gods of grove and hearth and place--
the Lesser gods--
and then the Great.

There were some truly fabulous bits. One such was the repetitious, numerical obsession of "Precepts of Frau Perforce", which begins,

i.
My maiden name was Claritas.

ii.
I married Herr Perforce because
I had to.

and later comes to

xiv.
A beaten rug sheds slow gold in the sun.

xv.
A beaten man sheds blood

and then "liv. My maiden name was Claritas." Another fantastic section is "Before the Brush", which cautions, "forget the jacaranda's/hectic; draw a/possumhaw." or "The Branch That Bears Two Ayres":

against
the green

linoleum, its life
is white

offering.

The poem follows the life of the "savantasse" in a Paris co-op, or apartment, or something, known as Montparnasse and fights with the philosophical difficulties of him and his friends. This "savantasse" is was a real man that Mandelbaum's son knew, and that is apparent in the highly specific descriptions and the level of understanding Mandelbaum assumes of his readers. We are expected to know these folks almost before we begin reading, but Mandelbaum gives us all sorts of details--like filling someone in on all the details of the life of a casual acquaintance prior to being thrown into a more intimate situation. Perhaps in twenty years, after I have obtained a PhD and perhaps speak one or more of these languages, I will reread this poem and find it to be fabulously enlightening, or humorous, or wise, whatever was Mandelbaum's goal, but for now, the self-conscious displays of intelligence, the strangeness of the tone, and my lack of understanding of the protagonist prevented me from having as much enjoyment from this volume of generally decent poetry as much as its smattering of brilliance may brilliance might otherwise create.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Allen Mandelbaum (1925–2011) is best remembered as a translator – another reviewer here knew his English rendering of Ovid, while for me he was responsible for one of the great English translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy. But Mandelbaum was also a poet of original works, with an idiosyncratic style. On one hand, he had an interest in the traditional meters and rhyme schemes of the classical and medieval masters he translated. At the same time, his verse is comparable to Joycean modernism in terms of the demands on the reader: one is expected to have a solid grounding in the humanities in order to get his literary references, and his foreign-language words and expressions and obscure English vocabulary. The Savantasse of Montparnasse is a book-length work made up of poems that all center on one and the same character: a man Mandelbaum knew in bohemian circles in Paris in the 1970s. The French word savantasse refers to a person who flaunts knowledge but possesses it only superficially, and its English equivalent sciolist also figures herein.

Very quickly we get a pretty detailed sketch of this protagonist: he has worked as a typesetter, he makes tea on a samovar, and his lodgings are decorated with a Chinese scroll and knick-knacks from the Indian subcontinent, this being the era of the hippie trail. In his life are various women, whom Mandelbaum refers to with peculiar – and frankly annoying – pseudonyms: Frau Perforce (a German arrival in Paris), Maud Maraud, Angélique Abri, Soudaine Souplesse. I read this book after a Jacques Rivette kick, and I personally imagined this motley crew as the sort of young people who hung out at the books-and-imported-clothes shop in Out 1: Noli Me Tangere.

Yet those details of the character given at the start, are simply repeated again and again for the next hundred-pages-plus. Sure, they are brought up each time in new meters, rhyme schemes, and wordplay, but the effect is repetitive and tiresome. The same expressions like “scuffed sabots”, used like kennings, soon wear out their welcome. And Mandelbaum’s poetry is so often the verse equivalent of purple prose:

The undemanding afternoon
(the jets of sun that warmed his tan
tarboosh, his jacaranda, and
the solitary almond branch
that overlooked the dormant oud
and devious charanga flute
that flanked his fallible divan)
incited him outdoors and soon
his scuffed sabots had helped him speed
beyond the languid Rue Lebouis

One can admire Mandelbaum’s effort and dedication in working within the classical tradition. But as I read this, I couldn’t help think that just as savant has its pejorative counterpart in savantasse, the poet Mandelbaum can well be accused of being a poetaster.