[53] Baudelaire… Rimbaud drank too: Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), French Symbolist poet associated with decadence, author of Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil); Francois Villon (b. 1431), French lyric poet whose rowdy and sometimes criminal life included time in prison; and Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), French Symbolist poet who sought mystic revelation through a “derangement of all the senses” (trans.).
[54] banda dance: suggestive Haitian dance, associated with voodoo ritual; also known as the “guede” dance; possibly related to the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial zarabanda or sarabande, banned in Spain in 1583 for its obscenity (trans.).
[55] Boisrond-Tonnerre: Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre (1776-1806), Haitian historian who wrote the 1804 Independence Act of Haiti (trans.).
[56] seche: French slang for cigarette (trans).
[57] “Bugger me!”: This conversation is part of a larger discussion about francophonie. Rene’s conclusion is that a poet who writes in a loan-language is a loan- poet (poet on layaway). His exclamation “bougre de bougre” highlights the historicity of language. “Bougre” is a seventh-century term that is short for the Latin word for Bulgarian, a term that first meant heretic, then sodomite and then dummy. A few lines down, when Rene asks “What the fuck would a great French poet be doing in this mudhole?” the French word used for mudhole is bled, a slang word coined by the French military in Algeria, which in turn comes from a local Arabic word (blad) for town (trans).
[58] imitor patrem: Latin for “I imitate my father,” a sarcastic allusion to Catholic catechism (trans).
[59] This is no call: A butchered quotation from “La crosse en l’air” (1936), by the French poet Jacques Prevert (1900-77):
Rassurez-vous braves gens
ce n’est pas un appel a la revolte
c’est un eveque qui est saoul et qui met sa crosse en l’air
comme ca… en titubant…
There is no call for alarm
this is no call for rebellion
just a drunk bishop waving his white cross in the air
like so… staggering about…
[60] “Green Calf” Street: Vauvert and veau vert (green calf) are homophones in French (trans).
[61] rue de l’Enfer: Hell Street (trans).
