Around the speck of shadow we call us, pinhead, abysmal pivot, the wind, a very good wind, spreads out the tablecloth of life. Light surrenders there and we don’t really know what is beginning, if hell is repairing itself, or how the dew will visit the cracks of time.
THE PEAK
Between the fingers of words so clear
That lightness passes through
Traces of smiles blossom
Partridges run between the olive trees
You eventually stopped crying
Even though old sobs bubble up sometimes
Stow your shoulders in the calm
And no matter that you’re missing a bow-stem
In the hour when everything becomes gaze
This beauty is no arable province
from Saxifrage Life
Gabrielle Althen
translated from the French by Oscar Duffield
These poems are from Gabrielle Althen’s 2012 collection Vie Saxifrage, whose title derives from an intrepid Mediterranean flower with herculean roots that can burrow through rock. This peculiar plant is emblematic of Althen’s interest in paradox, and attention to and appreciation of small things, qualities which permeate both this collection and her poetic voice more broadly.
Like the titular saxifrage, these lovely poems are small, dense, and disconcertingly powerful. Althen’s writing is heavily influenced by René Char, whose work was famously aphoristic. Translating such painstakingly constructed miniature word-portraits feels like untying a knot or solving a riddle.
Another metaphor that comes to mind is wandering through tiny labyrinths: where each word meets the next, a juncture of possibilities affects the meaning of the whole. At these continual crossroads, unanswerable questions such as “What word might Althen have used had she been writing in English?” functioned like Ariadne’s threads, helping guide me through the poems’ complexity and ambiguity.
Like the titular saxifrage, these lovely poems are small, dense, and disconcertingly powerful. Althen’s writing is heavily influenced by René Char, whose work was famously aphoristic. Translating such painstakingly constructed miniature word-portraits feels like untying a knot or solving a riddle.
Another metaphor that comes to mind is wandering through tiny labyrinths: where each word meets the next, a juncture of possibilities affects the meaning of the whole. At these continual crossroads, unanswerable questions such as “What word might Althen have used had she been writing in English?” functioned like Ariadne’s threads, helping guide me through the poems’ complexity and ambiguity.
Gabrielle Althen is, among other things, a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. She is Professor Emerita of comparative literature at Paris Nanterre University and has published over a dozen collections of poetry. Besides her own creative work, she leads discussions on art and poetry, and writes critical essays. She’s interested in painting and has written about the work of a number of visual artists, including Edouard Pignon and Javier Vilato. She also co-wrote the screenplay for Piotr Kamler’s film Chronopolis, presented at Cannes in 1982. She is on the reading committee of Siècle 21, works with many French and foreign journals, and is a member of two poetry panels. She currently lives between Paris and Vaucluse.
Oscar Duffield translates from French, Spanish, and Italian. He published an original poem in the Plum Creek Review and has been invited to share his work at three iterations of the Jed Deppman Translation Symposium at Oberlin College. He has been asked to contribute to the journal Reading in Translation. He attended Oberlin College, Ohio, where he studied comparative literature, literary translation, and music performance. He is currently working as a baker and an interpreter on guided tours of Yellowstone National Park and intends to pursue graduate studies in literary translation.
