{"id":2039,"date":"2023-02-05T22:01:49","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T04:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=2039"},"modified":"2024-02-06T11:56:14","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T17:56:14","slug":"translators-dispatch-lindsay-turner-on-liliane-giraudon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/?p=2039","title":{"rendered":"Translator\u2019s Dispatch: Lindsay Turner on Liliane Giraudon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Read four poems by Liliane Giraudon, translated by Lindsay Turner<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its French edition, Liliane Giraudon\u2019s Sphinx <\/em>(La sphinge mange cru<\/em>, \u00c9ditions Al Dante, 2013) is a slim red volume. I can\u2019t think of this book in a jacket of any other color, although it may not be red when the English translation comes out from Litmus Press next fall. Sphinx <\/em>is a book that practically drips with the blood of its enemies. It\u2019s delicately marbled, like good meat. Like all of Giraudon\u2019s work, it is enigmatic without ever being coy. It\u2019s allusive, anchored in the classical past and in a more recent past of personal memory, but it\u2019s firmly on the side of the living and our problems. It is completely fierce and absolutely lovely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of experimental French writing\u2019s most powerful and most undersung figures, Giraudon was born in Marseille in 1946. She continues to live and work in Marseille, and her writing is inseparable from the place, shaped by the vibrant community of poets and writers and artists Giraudon has herself shaped, as well as by the city\u2019s gritty and diverse cosmopolitanism. Giraudon\u2019s (many) books have, since 1982, been primarily published by France\u2019s \u00c9ditions P.O.L. Giraudon has also been instrumental as an editor for influential reviews such as Banana Split, Action Po\u00e9tique, <\/em>and If; <\/em>she performs and collaborates widely, including with (for example) Nanni Balestrini, Henri Deluy, Jean-Jacques Viton, and many others. Two of her books (Pallaksch, Pallaksch <\/em>and Fur<\/em>)were published in English by Sun & Moon Press in 1994 and 1995, respectively. In addition to Sphinx, <\/em>Giraudon\u2019s collection Love is Colder than the Lake <\/em>is also forthcoming in 2023, translated by me and Sarah Riggs, from Nightboat Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experimental, capacious in its reference, ranging across and dwelling in between prose and poetry\u2014sometimes, too, between writing and drawing\u2014Giraudon\u2019s work is difficult to pin down but also utterly distinctive. While \u201cexperimental\u201d writing, in France as in Anglophone spheres, can sometimes mean the renunciation of personality or voice, I have the sense that for Giraudon, linguistic opacity, fragmentation, or excess serve alternately to reveal or shield the personal, as well as to locate the personal in a world that is as opaque, confusing, fragmented, excessive, disjointed, and\u2014yes\u2014beautiful as this world is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The poems in this selection come from roughly the middle of Sphinx. <\/em>They\u2019re part of a series of short untitled poems that stage a \u201cshe.\u201d Sometimes she does things, sometimes she has memories. Is she the Sphinx? Her world is both mythical and domestic. Sometimes she poses questions or makes utterances that chill us\u2014us, in the present\u2014to the bone. In addition to this series, the book also has an \u201cIntroit\u201d and a final poem called \u201cAfter\u201d: there is, in other words, the structure of a narrative. But I\u2019m resisting calling Sphinx <\/em>the story that comes most easily to hand, a contemporary re-writing of the Sphinx myth. (I\u2019m bad at mythology, but the Sphinx\u2014not the Egyptian statue but a female figure, sibling to the Chimera, the Hydra, et al.\u2014has been plaguing the city of Thebes; she kills herself or is killed by Oedipus after Oedipus solves her riddle in order to gain the throne promised by Creon to whoever can figure it out.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sphinx is here in the book for sure, as are Oedipus and Creon. Thebes comes up. There’s also Jocasta, Electra, and a host of other Greeks. And then there\u2019s Schiller, Chekhov, Proust\u2014the Europeans, a party of Giraudon\u2019s own making. But looming over all these figures are the timely utterances of the poems’ speaker: \u201celsewhere the people\u2019s assembly has voted \/ declaring young women the same as illegals\u201d; \u201cto organize pessimism is a revolutionary act\u201d; \u201cand the women?\u201d This is the Sphinx\u2019s expanded world, and we\u2019re living in it, as is \u201cshe.\u201d \u201cA dramatization of the present,\u201d Giraudon writes in one of the poems. \u201cNot History.\u201d In our world, who keeps her secrets, haunts our city, and flexes her claws? Who sees what we sometimes can\u2019t? Who gives us her ragged record of the way things are? She does, here, in these poems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In its French edition, Liliane Giraudon\u2019s Sphinx (La sphinge mange cru, \u00c9ditions Al Dante, 2013) is a slim red volume…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}