Picasso As Playwright

by Jessie Roberts

Jerome Rothenberg is translating The Four Little Girls, the second of two plays Picasso wrote in the 1940s:

While there may be less razzle-dazzle here than in the better known Desire Trapped by the Tail, there was a pop, almost juvenile quality in the language, or in how I perceived the language, that I wanted to emulate in the version I was starting to transcreate. My sense of Picasso poète then & now, contrary to Gertrude Stein’s dismissal of him, was that what he offered was the real goods which his awesome reputation as an artist only tended to obscure.

An excerpt from a scene that takes place in a vegetable garden:

little girl i – singing – we’re not gonna go to the woods no more the laurel trees are down on the floor & the beautiful babe hey (she shouts) hey hey hey cause the cat has taken a bird from the nest in his mouth & he’s choking it now with his claws & dragging it back of the lemony cloud dipped in butter that melts on the edge of a wall that’s all bunged up with earth & a sun that’s covered with ash.

little girl iii – oh that’s just too dumb

little girl iv – go take your places down by the flowers the knitting yarn trailing all over the garden & hanging its rosary beads up like eyes & the full cups of wine in fine crystal the organs we listen to short little arms pitterpatting the cotton wool sky from somewhere in back of the big rhubarb leaves.

little girl i – go take your places your places life’s wrapping me up my passion’s like chalk on my coat it’s in tatters & full of black ink stains that flow down my throat from the blind hands that seek out the mouth of the wound.

little girl iii (hidden in back of the well) that’s it yes that’s it yes that’s it.

little girls i – ii – iv – dumb dumb – you’re so dumb – you’re two times as visible there – yeah yeah everyone sees you – you’re totally naked & covered with rainbows. Go fix up your hair it’s on fire it’s starting to burn up the string of bows scraped on the tangled-up hairdo of bells licked clean by the mistral.

little girl iii – that’s it – yes that’s it – that’s just it you can’t catch me alive & can’t see me – I’m dead.

little girl iv – don’t be such a jerk

(Image: House in a Garden, by Picasso, via Flickr user jmussuto)