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Surfaces of Sense
prose-work, Quebec, tr Fiona Strachan
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
Published January 1, 1989
2 people are currently reading
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About the author
Nicole Brossard
101 books65 followersBorn in Montreal (Quebec), poet, novelist and essayist Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. In 1965 she cofounded the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour and in 1976 she codirected the film Some American Femnists. She has published eight novels including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert, Baroque at Dawn, an essay "The Aerial Letter" and many books of poetry including Daydream Mechanics, Lovhers, Typhon dru, Installations, Musee de l'os et de l'eau. She has won the Governor General award twice for her poetry (1974, 1984) and Le Grand Prix de Poesie de la Foundation les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase-David, which is for a lifetime of literary acheivement, was attributed to her in 1991. That same year she received the The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn have been translated into Spanish. In 1998 she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay titled She would be the first sentence of my new novel/Elle serait la premiere phrase de mon prochain roman(1998). In 1989, a book of her poetry in translation, Installations, was released, translated by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. Nicole Brossard lives in Montreal.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 27, 2022
Not for a moment had I imagined that this book, which I hoped would be published in the autumn, could have been written in this way, in the pure chance of my encounters with Gertrude from America and Yolande from Here, who - they have never met except at this moment, to make real-life gestures with as much finesse as in books - incite me to bring about metamorphoses.
* * *
Of course it is necessary to remain detached so as not to be, one day - in a frenzy, before we even so much as suspect it - committed to the beacons of America, to a literary climate which lays claim to all right. There must be urgent matters for us if we are to survive, if we are to cross into the tribes of Sirens and Northern Lights.
ALL FICTIVE ESCAPES ARE SO REAL.
So intense when the scenes intended to condition us are no longer sufficient and the lens focuses pm the interior, inviting memory to spring up in all possible forms: global aesthetics / an overwhelming passion which nothing can encompass. Which is already no longer fiction. But instead the fictional exception of a certainty, hardly out of place in the ultraviolet light.
* * *
In slow motion inside the spiral, life passes by like a stock of picture post cards: of skies, of the lace-work of the skyscrapers; or else cards showing the bawdy, roaring twenties, cracked under the mica film.
Realism seen with wife-angle vision. I imagined myself looking into the spiral, seeing it slow down. I imagined this was going to have an effect on me ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Strangely enough, I imagined the opposite, the first symptoms of delirium running through the ultraviolet light. I imagined: simulation. Yolande said: the opposite. Some kind of Russian roulette of propositions among the evidence of everyday life. Coffee. Theorem. The cafe, like a goal to be realized in the heart of the cities. Curve. Geometry. I often stop to tihnk through these mechanisms.
* * *
while our lips perform
the whole mouth strives egg-shaped
to produce convincing, harmonious sounds by
blowing: on the skin on all skin surfaces
(frost, burn - as on a fig
my mouth here.................)
the curious sensation that numerous
mouths are truly describing the peculiarity of life for
in the City, each celebration is inevitably
accompanied by laughter and the bursting of an eggshell
* * *
I often stop to think about these workings: adrift. When this happens, I am inclined to see myself reading from a prepared script; simply becuase there are so many words to hold me captive, and they so exasperate me to the point of memory gaps the gaps are said to be white or black I say that the gap is a luminous cavity and that the bonds created in its nerve-centre are caused by the brilliance of the spectrum, the exuberance of the metaphors, the release, the drifting: the unknown, the unwritten, the respiratory tissues, the wear and tear of delirium rat-a-tat-cat
identical reality, her outlines, the circles under the eyes. Straining to distinguish in the darkness cat
* * *
to write: to renew the process. Style: the body fibre upon fibre vibrating with an inner force but its entire synthesizing process whether it be a feeling of arrogance or a row of teeth in the shadows when you remember that the world went that way.
* * *
the echo: quite unexpected and flagrant in conflagration. The body shock absorber on the brink of the cliff. The body trampoline bouncing in the air. The body imagines the liquid place liquefying its own image. A few cells, a few seconds in the heart of the lapse of memory.
the body must be thought of in minute detail. Apart from the story, without delirium, without a prepared text. So as not to obstruct it in the ultraviolet light.
- pg. 8
* * *
Of course it is necessary to remain detached so as not to be, one day - in a frenzy, before we even so much as suspect it - committed to the beacons of America, to a literary climate which lays claim to all right. There must be urgent matters for us if we are to survive, if we are to cross into the tribes of Sirens and Northern Lights.
ALL FICTIVE ESCAPES ARE SO REAL.
So intense when the scenes intended to condition us are no longer sufficient and the lens focuses pm the interior, inviting memory to spring up in all possible forms: global aesthetics / an overwhelming passion which nothing can encompass. Which is already no longer fiction. But instead the fictional exception of a certainty, hardly out of place in the ultraviolet light.
- pg. 12
* * *
In slow motion inside the spiral, life passes by like a stock of picture post cards: of skies, of the lace-work of the skyscrapers; or else cards showing the bawdy, roaring twenties, cracked under the mica film.
Realism seen with wife-angle vision. I imagined myself looking into the spiral, seeing it slow down. I imagined this was going to have an effect on me ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Strangely enough, I imagined the opposite, the first symptoms of delirium running through the ultraviolet light. I imagined: simulation. Yolande said: the opposite. Some kind of Russian roulette of propositions among the evidence of everyday life. Coffee. Theorem. The cafe, like a goal to be realized in the heart of the cities. Curve. Geometry. I often stop to tihnk through these mechanisms.
- pg. 24
* * *
while our lips perform
the whole mouth strives egg-shaped
to produce convincing, harmonious sounds by
blowing: on the skin on all skin surfaces
(frost, burn - as on a fig
my mouth here.................)
the curious sensation that numerous
mouths are truly describing the peculiarity of life for
in the City, each celebration is inevitably
accompanied by laughter and the bursting of an eggshell
- pg. 33
* * *
I often stop to think about these workings: adrift. When this happens, I am inclined to see myself reading from a prepared script; simply becuase there are so many words to hold me captive, and they so exasperate me to the point of memory gaps the gaps are said to be white or black I say that the gap is a luminous cavity and that the bonds created in its nerve-centre are caused by the brilliance of the spectrum, the exuberance of the metaphors, the release, the drifting: the unknown, the unwritten, the respiratory tissues, the wear and tear of delirium rat-a-tat-cat
identical reality, her outlines, the circles under the eyes. Straining to distinguish in the darkness cat
- pg. 48
* * *
to write: to renew the process. Style: the body fibre upon fibre vibrating with an inner force but its entire synthesizing process whether it be a feeling of arrogance or a row of teeth in the shadows when you remember that the world went that way.
- pg. 54
* * *
the echo: quite unexpected and flagrant in conflagration. The body shock absorber on the brink of the cliff. The body trampoline bouncing in the air. The body imagines the liquid place liquefying its own image. A few cells, a few seconds in the heart of the lapse of memory.
the body must be thought of in minute detail. Apart from the story, without delirium, without a prepared text. So as not to obstruct it in the ultraviolet light.
- pg. 62
Displaying 1 of 1 review