MacLeish, Archibald: Vázlat Mme G. M. portréjához (Sketch for a Portrait of Mme. G M. Magyar nyelven)

"Her room," you'd say — and wonder why you'd called it
Hers, as though she hadn't seven others
Not counting the reception room beside
The front door in red paper with a view
Of Paris in a bottle and real snow
Made out of something else and through the window
The railroad cutting where the trains went by
To Marly-le-château-du-roy: but somehow
Whether you came to dinner or to see
The last Picasso or because the sun
Blazed on her windows as you passed or just
Because you came, and whether she was there
Or down below in the garden or gone out
Or not come in yet, somehow when you came
You always crossed the hall and turned the doorknob
And went in; — "Her room" — as though the room
Itself were nearer her: as though the room
Were something she had left for you to see —
The room triangular with morning sunlight,
The room half-globed and low above the lamps,
The room oblique and leaning to the fire.
And yet it was not hers, not hers by title,
Nor hers because she'd had the walls redone
In rose to match the color of her dresses,
Nor hers because Le Bal du Comte Orgel
Lay on a chair and she had picked the flowers,
Nor merely hers because she lived in it.
No one, — not the most precisely careless
Distributor of household knick-knacks, boxes,
Candlesticks, pillows, receptacles for ashes
Or photographs of children, — could have fixed
Its fine proportions in that attitude
Of gratified compliance worn by salons
Whose white-and-gold has settled into home;
And other men and women must have left
The touch of hands there — say, for one, old Gounod
Who'd written Mireille in the room and played
The airs from Baucis on the grand piano
And wasn't, you would understand, a man
To leave his mortal habitation empty
No matter how the doors had closed on him.
And yet you'd say, "Her room," as though you'd said
Her voice, Her manner, meaning something else
Than that she owned it; knowing it was not
A room to be possessed of, not a room
To give itself to people, not the kind
Of room you'd sit in and forget about,
Or sit in and look out from. It reserved
Something that in a woman you would call
Her reticence by which you'd mean her power
Of feeling what she had not put in words —
Which, in the room, was more perhaps the windows
And what there was beyond them that you saw
Only in shadows on the floor and ceiling
Than anything the room itself contained.
Sometimes toward twilight when the windows seemed
Faintly to let the half-light ebb away
And through that lapsing and last fall of day
The ancient dark a moment showed itself
And then was darkness — in that moment — then —
The room made probable, made real, became
As strangely visible as if it were
The shape of something she was thinking of.

And there were afternoons when the snow fell
Softly across the wind and in the mirrors
The snow fell softly, flake on flake, the vague
Reflected falling in the long dim mirrors,
Faint snow across the image of the wind, —
And there were afternoons when the room remembered,
When her life passed in the mirrors of the room.

 
"She was a person of extraordinary warmth," Archibald MacLeish, the poet, said as he reminisced about Mrs. (Sara) Murphy, who died of pneumonia last week at the age of 91. "All of us who knew her felt this warmth very strongly."
Nearly all of the other 50 or so people present at St. Luke's Episcopal Church here for services acknowledged that the generosity of Mrs. Murphy and her late husband, Gerald, had touched them and deeply affected their lives.
"Somehow, after you were exposed to Sara and Gerald, you became a better person, richer by the experience of having known them," said Ellen Barry, widow of Philip Barry, the playwright.
The Barrys, like Mr. and Mrs. MacLeish and dozens of young Americans in France during the nineteen-twenties, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, were befriended by the Murphys, who served as sort of literary godparents to what was known as the "Lost Generation." Mrs. Murphy was the model for Nicole Diver in Fitzgerald's "Tender Is the Night."
As Mr. MacLeish read the poem, his voice soft, strained with emotion, Mrs. Murphy's only surviving daughter, Honoria Donnelly, sat quietly in the pew with her three children. There were no tears today, just expressions on their faces that seemed to recall happier times.

„Az ő szobája”, mondod – de miért is?
Mintha nem lett volna még hét neki,
Nem számítva a főkapu melletti
Vörös tapétás fogadószobát,
Ahol Párizs látképe van egy palackban
S „igazi” hó, az ablakból pedig
A töltés, ahol a vonatok mennek
Marly-le-château-du-roy felé:
De bárhogy is, akár ebédre jöttél,
Akár az új Picassót látni, vagy mert
Arrajártodban ablakait a nap
Megvillogtatta, vagy csak épp benéztél,
S ő ott volt bár vagy lenn a kertben, elment
Vagy még nem jött meg, bárhogy is, ha jöttél,
A hallon át, az ajtó gombkilincsét
Úgy nyitottad: „Az ő szobája” – mintha
Őt képviselné, mintha a szobát,
Hogy lássad, neked hagyta volna itt –
A háromszög szobát reggeli fényben,
A lámpák alatt félboltíveset,
Ferde szobát, mely a tűz fele hajlik.
Nem jog szerint övé pedig, se attól,
Hogy átfestette rózsaszínüre
A falakat a ruhái szinéhez,
Hogy a Le Bal du Comte Orgel hevert
Egy széken, hogy ő szedte a virágot:
Nem attól volt övé, hogy benne élt.
Senki, még a családi gyertyatartók,
Nippek, dobozok, párnák, hamutálak
És gyerekfényképek leggondosabb
Hanyagságú elrendezője sem
Rögzíthette finom arányait
Otthonná tett fehér-arany szalónok
Hű lakályosságának jellegében;
És kezük nyomát nyilván mások is
Itthagyták – így mindjárt az öreg Gounod:
A Mireille-t írta ebben a szobában
S a Baucis-ból játszott a zongorán,
S nem az az ember volt, hidd el, aki
Üresen hagyja földi lakhelyét,
Ha becsukódtak is már az ajtók előtte.
Mégis azt mondanád: „Az ő szobája”,
Mintha azt: az ő hangja, modora,
Nem tulajdonjogát értve, hiszen
Nem volt birtokba vehető szoba,
Amit használsz csak, olyan szoba, melyről,
Ha leülsz benne, megfeledkezel,
Vagy ahonnan a kilátás jó. Ebben
Volt valami – nőben tartózkodásnak
Hívnád, úgy értve, róla nem fecseg bár,
Hallgatagsága szenvedélyt takar –
A szobában inkább az ablakok tán
S amire nyíltak, ami itt csak árnyék
Padlón, mennyezeten – mintsem magának
A szobának bármelyik részlete.
Alkonytájt olykor, ha az ablakok
Ernyedten tűrték a gyár fény apadtát,
Az elfolyó és végső szürkületben
Az ős-sötét egy percre megjelent,
Támadt sötétség – s akkor – ama percben –
A szoba megvalósult, látható lett,
Oly furcsán, mintha az öltene formát
Benne, amin ő épp gondolkozik.

S volt délután, mikor hullott a hó,
Puhán a szélben, s a tükrökben, ott
Hullott a hó puhán, pehely pehelyre,
Bizonytalan, homályos tükörhullás,
A szél képmásán át a lankatag hó –
S volt, mikor a szoba emlékezett,
Mikor élete a szoba tükreiben telt.