Some Thing Black

by Jacques Roubaud, Rosmarie Waldrop (Translator)

In 1983 Jacques Roubaud’s wife Alix Cleo died at the age of 31 of a pulmonary embolism. The grief-stricken author responded with one brief poem (“Nothing”), then fell silent for thirty months. In subsequent years, Roubaud―poet, novelist, mathematician―composed a series of prose poems, a collection that is a profound mediation on the experience of death, the devastation it brings to the lover who goes on living, and the love that remains. Despite the universality of this experience, no other writer has so devoted himself to exploring and recording the many-edged forms of grief, mourning, bewilderment, emptiness, and loneliness that attend death. No other writer has provided a kind of solace while facing with honesty and hardness the intricate ways in which the living are affected by such a loss. Some Thing Black is an ongoing monologue from Roubaud to his wife, as death assaults the mind’s failure to comprehend absence. Roubaud both refuses to and cannot surrender his wife to the past (“I always wake up in your voice, your hand, your smell”). The death, having occurred in an instant of time, goes on in him (“But inside me your death proceeds slowly, incomprehensibly”). While acknowledging “death calls for a poetry of meditation,” Roubaud is enraged at the limitations of language and words to affect the biological reality. Rather, all that language can do is clarify the exactness of his grief and to recall precisely the image of her life and death. But such recollection―the sight of her dead body, her photographs, her things, the rooms they lived in―becomes a “memory infinitely torturous.” And his most anguished recollection is of their making love (“These memories are the darkest of all”), and a sense of guilt for somehow not having prevented her death (“I did not save you from that difficult night”). This is a brave and honest book that does not disguise that pain of loss. Its nobility, grace, and humanity rest in its refusal to falsify death’s harsh presence (“This dirty rotten life to be mixed up with death”) and in its acceptance of the mind’s limitations (“I do not understand”). This moving, compassionate, uncompromising book is one of the most significant works of our time. Included in this edition is a portfolio of photographs made by Roubaud’s wife in 1980 entitled “If Some Thing Black.”

Genres: Poetry, France, Literature, French Literature, Death, Grief, Love

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Jacques Roubaud was a French poet, writer and mathematician.

Reviews

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very difficult to write about this volume of poetry. If you have ever lost someone you love than you know that it is best to keep those emotions at a certain distance when it is possible, if it is possible. Roubaud did not pick up a pen for thirty months after the death of his wife Alix, and the result are these meditations on loss, grief, and the limited consolation literature can provide. These are not easy reads, but they are overwhelmingly beautiful and profound. Again, this book hurts to read, but some essential things are rooted in painful experiences. And even in the dark heart of the Black Thing (finding a way to live on after the death of your love), light finds space to break through:

A Day in June

after an epithalamium by Georges Perec

The sky is blue or soon will be

The sun winks miles above the Île de la Cité

And the whole world listens to Heinrich Biber’s Sonatas of the Rosary

Ink and image in solidarity, allies

Like oblivion and record

At the beginning of the nineteenheavenlies

And the jet black of early youth
and adulthood’s blue turquoise

And the yellow abalone of nothingness which may not be
mentioned or thought
and Resurrection’s white shell

Were all wound around the gentle noise of this day

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Searing and yet placid. There's an ill adjusted peace on display, a rounded resignation. I found myself aware that I didn't read Cancer Ward until last month because for 15 years people I cared about were dealing with the illness and I had to maintain a distance.

That is not an act of severing but instead a downcast pivot. Roubaud's poetry made me wary initially. I didn't wish to be the victim of backshadowing. Such precaution was unnecessary. These verses are artful and human. Cornel West is correct we can't lose ourselves in abstractions of death we must confront corpses, out denigrating corporeality. I felt Roubaud's pain but couldn't imagine it. I do wish he would abandon instant coffee.

[Pétrus Borel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok

[Shashank · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the first collection of poems I read back when I was 21. Almost 11 years later(2013) I still remember the experience well, and occasionally open the book every few years. Its tone and images have stuck with me.

In the collection, the poet, Roubauld paints a view of grief, reflecting and being haunted by the death of his wife, Alec Cleo, who died at the young age of 31.

Some of these poems are quite raw but they transcend being simply confession by the sheer artistry. Much experimental poetry tends to be cold or dry; here we have someone experimenting with meaning and words because of the difficulty of words to hold grief, to express loss, to give oneself a will to live. Knowing that words can't quite accomplish these tasks gives the poems a haunted feeling, as if they were reminders of what can only be lived.

There is a great diversity of techniques and approaches in this book, including a lot of halts and silences that move in unexpected directions and surprising phrases.

The title phrase occurs multiple times throughout the collection, like an echoing voice, one such instance:

"Some thing black which closes in locks shut pure, unaccomplished"

The book also includes a collection of photographs by his wife, Alex Cleo, called some thing black and they clearly influenced some of what he wrote.

"I can not write about you with more truth then you have done"

I recommend this book wholeheartedly; one of the unique qualities it contains is its persistence in grief and its concrete emotionality:

"The phone will ring. The voice which the man who is alone because of a death will hear is not that of the woman he loves. It's some other voice, any voice. He will hear it. This does not prove he is alive."

[Raquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tão bonito…

A escrita de Roubaud é profética. O autor conhece na perfeição o sabor da saudade e da desolação. A escrita é ampla como um deserto, mas cheia de profundidades ocultas. Ainda assim, a beleza e a abundância são possíveis.

Um escritor de grande sensibilidade.

"Onde estás:
quem?
Sob a lâmpada, cercada de escuridão, disponho-te:
Em duas dimensões
A escuridão cai
Sob os ângulos. como uma poeira:
Imagem sem espessura voz sem espessura
A terra
que te esfrega
O mundo
do qual já nada te separa
Sob a lâmpada. na noite. cercado de escuridão. contra a
porta..."

--

"Onde a tua inexistência era tão forte. ela transformara-se
numa forma de ser.
Em mim reinava a desolação. como se conversasse em voz
baixa.
Mas as palavras não tinham força para atravessar.
Atravessar apenas. pois não havia o que atravessar.
Viramo-nos para o mundo. viramo-nos para nós mesmos.
Não queríamos habitar nada.
Eis o núcleo habitual do infortúnio..."

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ten-part poetry cycle was written by Oulipo legend Mr. Roubaud in memory of his young wife Alix Cléo, a Canadian photographer who died of an embolism aged 31. Her own book Alix's Journal, also available from Dalkey, is a collection of moody B&W photos and compliments this volume, creating a chilling portrait of death and its permanent imprints. The poems here use various complex constraints and stark free verse to express the impact of loss, nagging absence, and the begrudging afterness. Several photographs from the Journal round off the volume, creating what is perhaps the most moving Oulipo production in English, and a beautiful memorial to an unrealised talent.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the light. I verified your irreality. it gave birth to
monsters. and absence.

The hand of your watch went on moving. in your loss of
time I found all of myself included.

It was the last moment we would be alone.

It was the last moment we would be.

This patch of sky. henceforward. was my inheritance. from
which you'd pulled the clouds. and to believe in it.

Your hair turned absolutely black.

Your mouth closed, absolutely.

Your eyes smashed into the view.

I had entered into a night with an edge. beyond which
there could be nothing.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

     It might come into my head to compare you to a dark body at an enormous distance, nearly infinite, emitting a dark light which keeps coming at me.

     Entering my sleep as X-rays do the flesh, my waking riddled like a cloudbed with intense, swift radiation.

     It might, but I won't give in to it.

-Jacques Roubaud, from "Méditation de la comparaison (Meditation on Comparison)," trans. by Rosmarie Waldrop

I read this book as part of my ongoing project of reading books of poetry written by poets who happen to also be mathematicians. (See, additionally, my notes on Antipoems by Nicanor Parra.) The copy I found is translated into English by poet Rosmarie Waldrop. At some point, I must also get my hands on a version in the original French so that I can compare.

Quelque chose noir (Some Thing Black) is just one of several books Roubaud was inspired to write by the sudden death of his wife, photographer Alix Cleo Roubaud, from a pulmonary embolism at age 31. While other books Roubaud wrote exploring this theme (Le grand incendie de Londres, La boucle, Mathematique) are in prose, Quelque chose noir is prose poetry. This means Roubaud plays with spacing, capitalization (he often drops the first capital letter in a sentence), typography, repetition, and neologisms (e.g., Waldrop's translation of "Un jour de juin d'après un épithalame de Georges Perec (A Day in June)" includes the felicitous coinage "At the beginning of the nineteenheavenlies," and I'm now dying to know how this phrase reads in the original French).

As befits a mathematician, both Roubaud's thought and the language with which he expresses it are precise, and also grounded in the building blocks of science: vectors and cells, pulse and periodicity, identity and isomorphism. Roubaud's language also embodies a deep understanding of his late wife's field, photography: indeed, it's the black and white of her exposed film that gives the book's title one of its many layered meanings.

Rather like being a science-fiction author, a big part of being a mathematician consists of proposing and conducting thought experiments: "What if there were a ring of numbers like the integers (...-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3,...), which had to obey all the rules that rings must obey, except that, in addition to all the integers, it also included the square root of -5? What would this ring be like? Would long division be possible in it? Could each of the elements in the ring be factored into prime numbers in a unique way?" Et cetera. Or, more broadly speaking: "What if there existed a world just like the one we live in, except that this one little thing were different? And if this world had to remain internally consistent? What would this alternate world be like?" As a way to grapple with his grief and bereavement, Roubaud runs several such thought experiments in these prose poems, as in "Une logique (A Logic)" which, as translated by Waldrop, runs as follows:

     The world of one who would be two: not solipsism, bi-ipsism....

     In this world, if it could have been thought, another's thoughts would always have been thoughts of "the other of the two"

     Thoughts of the outside, in this world of ours, would have been of things appearing to our alternating consciousness, and only those perceptions of yours and mine which reached utopian fusion would really have existed on our twosome island:

     Fridge, stove, fading light, shouts, noises, children, not hostile, clamor, between us,          thought,          the kitchen table.

Here, the mathematics of 1's and 2's is used to conjure up the intimacy of married life and to make more stark the widower's isolation.

"Roman-photo (Photo-Novel)" puts forth another such thought experiment, this one based around the axiom "The novel consists of adventures told in the time they are happening," and traces the consequences of this axiom to their movingly bleak logical conclusion:

     There is someone, a man. He has no name. There is his young wife. Who is dead.

     The novel takes place in several possible worlds. In some, the woman is not dead....

     When there is only one world left, where she is dead, the novel is finished.

The book consists of 9 sections each consisting of 9 prose poems, each prose poem under 2 pages in length (many are exactly 9 lines long), followed by a single lineated poem at the end. The first three sections are perhaps the most lucidly written, the most "accessible," with subsequent sections being more dense and elliptical and difficult to sieve meaning from, though even there there are moments that stand out in their clarity, such as the poet's wrenchingly naked admissions of his persistent sexual desire for his dead wife ("Yet I desire.... In full daylight I plunge into these conflagrations" -- from the poem "Pornography"). But perhaps such cool, analytic judgments are not the "right" way to interact with this book, which does not seem to be trying to be literary, does not seem to be trying to be anything more than a naked unedited recording of one man's coping with death.

[cogitocattumbellumesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

c’était intense 🫡

Edit : les 5 étoiles c’est pour Alix Cleo, pas pour Roubaud le voleur

[ciel · Rating 5 out of 5]

French Wittgensteinian poetry? on mourning? longing? death? do u need more?

the nature of mourning is especially well reconstructed through obsessive re-iterations of the same images and lines; a hyper-fixation on the departed which is interrupted by the appearances of the 'real' window/ room that the narrator stares through.

language philosophy contemplations & silence work well to illustrate the absence & void the departed left. abruptness of silences between paragraphs as well as breaking up sentences create a sentiment of excruciating pain & difficulty underlying the utterances; while uninterrupted sequences express nostalgia structurally quite beautiful.

about 40 years late, but cher jacques roubaud, my most sincere condolences.

[Camille Brn · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai pas tout compris mais c'était profond

[pauline · Rating 2 out of 5]

c’est bien beau de faire des phrases poétiques mais par pitié un peu de clarté c’est quoi cette singerie

[M. Sarki · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not exactly enamored with Roubaud's poetry, but I am certainly taken by his wife, her life and work, her journal and pictures, realizing that it must have been hard to lose a woman like that and to deal with the loss on a daily basis. I am attempting to read his poems more as a journal instead of fine poetry, which in my opinion, the poetry is not. I do love the photographs at the back of the book, and only wish she could have lived longer in order to produce more work and perhaps find the happiness that eluded her.

I quit reading this mediocrity about half way and just skimmed the rest. The book did not ring authentic for me, though I do feel bad for all those involved in the life of Alix who lost her finally in the end so totally. But that doesn't make this a book worth finishing, it actually makes it worse.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fucking horrifying. I agree with some others here, it's not all great poetry.

Alix, perhaps for being female, was more in tune with life.

There's some of that of her here.

The sensorial stuff especially is like a cold knife inserted between the ribs. You know how they say that to grieve, focus on the physical sensation of the feeling.

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few months ago I read a book by Roubaud titled The Great Fire of London,which, in parts of it he spoke about the death of his wife. It was quite obvious that her death affected him very deeply and I later found out that he had also written a book of poetry about it. This is that book and it is extaordinary. It is very moving and, at times, heart wrenching. Most of the poems are about the finality and certainty of death, for example when he expresses the awareness he has that she is not waiting for him in some other world, as some people like to believe. Some of the poems are about dealing with life after her death like when he is making his morning coffee and realizing he does not have to try to not make any noise. At the end of the book there are several artistic black and white photographs of his wife posing, in the nude, in deep shadow with back lighting from a window. These photos made me aware of one poem that stood out for me and what it was about. It is titled: Meditation of 7/21/85

I looked at this face. which had been mine. in the most
extreme way.

Some. in moments like this. have invoked rest. or the sea of
serenity. it helped them perhaps. not me.

Your right leg had come up. and spread a little. as in your
photo titled the last room.

But this time your belly was not in the shadow. not a live
point in the darkest black. not a mannequin. a dead woman.

This image again for the thousandth time. with the same
insistence. can't help replaying forever. with the same keen
details. I don't see them diminish.

The world will choke me before this image fades.

I do not try to remember. I do not allow myself to evoke
her. no place escapes her.

Don't tell me: "her death is both the instant before and the
instant after you look. you can never see it."

Don't tell me: "hush."

[Pierre-Luc Landry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je ne peux pas dire que j’ai lu le recueil de Roubaud « comme il se doit », c’est-à-dire avec une attention toute particulière à la structure mathématique, à la contrainte d’écriture, à la forme. J’ai lu, plutôt, le récit d’un Roubaud désemparé face au vide laissé par Alix, sa femme, décédée 30 mois plus tôt. Ce livre brise le silence magnifiquement. Les fulgurances sont nombreuses. Et ce sont elles que j’ai pourchassées tout au long de la lecture, me voyant forcé de corner les pages et de griffonner dans les marges.

[ninon · Rating 3 out of 5]

recueil de poesies sur le deuil de sa femme ; j ai eu du mal a accrocher ( surement car j ai pas de femme ) mais en verite c est pas mal du tout

[Lucile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il décrit son impossible deuil, tout se répète sans cesse dans recueil. Les chiffres, les mots, les pauses, les blancs sont omniprésents, comme l'absence de sa femme. Et pourtant, ce recueil brise le silence provoqué par la mort. Il s'agit d'une tentative de saisir l'absence par l'écriture, de redonner une place à l'être aimé dans un entre-deux qui n'est ni vivant ni mort.
Les photographies de sa femme sont épuisées par le regard du poète qui n'arrive pas et ne pourra pas y retrouver le vivant. L'écriture présente comme les photos le négatif de la vie d'Alix Cléo Roubaud.
Il y a tout de même une progression dans ce deuil infaisable, Alix Cléo fait désormais partie intégrante de Jacques Roubaud. Elle existe à travers ses souvenirs et sa poésie. Elle n'est pas dans les photographies certes, mais il accepte au fur à mesure de la retrouver en lui. Il n'est plus obsédé par son image mais vit avec sa présence ténue, dans ses souvenirs. Il dit une dernière fois son amour et le recueil devient un long chant qui dit la douleur et tout ce qui était vivant chez elle. Il décrit inlassablement son dégoût de la mort qui ne peut se substituer au vivant.
Sinon formellement, c'est assez cool. C'est très libre et ça représente bien l'état du poète qui avait perdu pendant trente mois le courage d'écrire. l'écriture est fracturée, difficile, et laisse la place à sa femme. Je pense que je n'ai pas toutes les références scientifiques même si j'ai cherché ?
Une étoile en moins parce que c'est tout de même très opaque par moments.

[Valentine · Rating 3 out of 5]

« Toi. parceque tes yeux dans l’image, qui me regardent, en ce point, cette chaise, où je me place, pour te voir, tes yeux,

Voient déjà, le moment, où tu serais absente, le prévoient, et c’est pourquoi, je n’ai pas pu bouger de ce lieu-là. » (92)

[Pol-Edern LARZUL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dernier poète français. Je ne voudrais pas voir la femme perdue dans ma tasse de café ZAMA filtre supermarché FRANPRIX, on a beacoup parlé de l'absence d'Alix, mais on a pas regardé la médiocrité de la vie par l'absence. Sur l'écran noir de mes nuits blanches... Merci Roubaud

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

peut-être un endroit bizarre pour commencer avec Roubaud mais je suis quand même ému. la perte est une chose noire avec laquelle vous vivez jusqu'à ce qu'elle devienne une partie ambiante de vous. C’est la vie!

[Marine · Rating 5 out of 5]

vraiment y a pas grand chose de mieux que les poèmes d'amour

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Devastating.

Later: I included thoughts on both this one and Gerald Murnane's Border Districts in a two-part review, available at these two links:

https://walkingthewire.substack.com/t...
https://walkingthewire.substack.com/t...

[Lucie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacques Roubaud. Poète vivant. Veuf d'Alix Cleo Roubaud , la femme, la photographe, l'amie, l'amante, l'artiste.
Quelque chose noir ou le poème du deuil, jamais compris, jamais saisi, ressassé, rêvé, inventé, avalé, dégurgité... un long poème d'amour et de chair, de vie, surtout de vie. Beauté du chant - non pas celui du cygne mais de celui qui reste, confronté à l'absurdité du monde vidé de l'être aimé - absurdité et réalité de la mort. Absurdité et réalité de la langue qui dit le vide, le rien, le ce qui reste de l'amour.

[Mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

ouais ouais

[andjela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfect perfect perfect!
Unique and moving
Roubaud's poetic language and vision are unrepeatably original. He really managed to create something that touches the soul in a way it never expirienced before. I was astonished. I feel changed.

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that contains 100% pure, unadulterated grief. Excellent book.

[Edragone · Rating 2 out of 5]

nul ?

[Telarak Amuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I: Roubaud si avvicina cauto alla morte della compagna, a frammenti, come se fosse troppo immensa e terribile da essere subito affrontata in tutte le sue implicazioni: prima la mano, poi la gamba. Al contempo è anche visivamente efficace, perché ci porta nei suoi occhi, dischiudendoci davanti l’immagine della tragedia per gradi, come deve averla vista (o quanto meno come la rivede nel ricordo) lui. E la ripresa di formule di versi, di temi rispecchia il tormentoso ritornare del pensiero, incredulo, su quell’evento, su quell’angosciosa nuova realtà. Anche Roubaud ricorre, per quanto in maniera meno estrema, come Boyer a uno stile fortemente spezzato, di chi vede la propria realtà in frantumi, il senso polverizzarsi, lasciando solo gesti meccanici e pensieri angoscianti. Il suo tocco originale è una spezzatura all’interno del verso, composto spesso da due o tre parti separate da spazi bianchi.
II: La seconda parte si contraddistingue per la descrizione dell’inoperosità dell’autore, fisicamente abbandonatosi in casa, limitata a pochi gesti di routine, a uno sguardo che è in verità perso nel vuoto, o meglio nel passato, con cui mentalmente l’autore ricerca un dialogo, cerca i fili da tirare di senso, vedendoseli sgretolare tra le dita del pensiero. È una fase in cui l’unica reazione è il dolore e il senso di vuoto.
III: Continua il difficile dialogo con il passato, che, seppure non offra ancora fili solidi per il presente, comincia a consentire una pacificazione con il ricordo della compagna, che riemerge meno angosciante, vestito di una sfumatura consolatoria.
IV: Il confronto con la morte si fa più serrato e l’assenza della donna viene affrontata più di petto, lasciando emergere la malinconia; assenza anche del corpo dell’amata, dell’erotismo dell’intimità.
V: Assumendo un tono più filosofico, ad essere tematizzata in questa parte è proprio la morte: come concetto, come realtà, come negazione dell’essere. Come trasforma la morte la donna amata, cosa rimane ancora di lei? La poesia finale conclude, allineandosi a un filone assai classico, rispondendo proprio con la poesia, luogo in cui viene conservato il suo nome in tutta la sua purezza.
VI: La fotografia, già molto presente nelle parti precedenti, diventa qui la protagonista: traccia dell’assente, suo ricordo fisico e ricordo di una sua volontà, di un suo agire. Al contempo, tuttavia, piccola morte, cristallizzazione di qualcosa che, già un istante dopo, non sarà più e di altro che, invece, scomparirà, magari dopo anni. È già immagine archeologica, fin da subito. Per tale ragione affascina l’autore, intrecciandosi al discorso sui ricordi in generale: due luoghi dell’assenza, della rievocazione di qualcosa che non è più e, pertanto, contigui alla morte, o almeno a una sua possibilità.
VII: Come la fotografia, la voce registrata ha la stessa funzione di marcare un’assenza, di essere traccia di un non-essere, senza alcun potere consolante, ma solo interrogante; così come tutto quello che rimane dell’amata. E allora lei dove continua, dove permane ancora un suo esistere? Nel poeta, nella sua vita, intrecciata ad essa. Il problema rimane come vivere oltre, come ridare un senso a quella luce che fin dalle prime poesie scivola vicino al poeta senza scalfire il suo nero, insensato.
VIII: Infine arriva l’interrogazione delle parola, della sua capacità (o meglio incapacità) di esprimere il non-essere, tutta la complessità della donna amata, ma al contempo dell’esigenza di farlo, in quanto è l’unico filo che davvero può tessere di nuovo il suo essere (a differenza delle fotografie, delle registrazioni o di ciò che la donna amata ha scritto, certo parole sue, ma proprio perché private di chi le legittimava e significava con la sua presenza, vuotate dell’interno, segni immobili e muti, senza risposte).
IX: E infine, con la serie di poesie Nonvita, con il trascorrere del tempo, accettare la morte della donna amata, accoglierla nell’abisso di dolore che comporta, per finalmente provare i primi passi disorientati verso il futuro, nonostante tutto.
La poesia conclusiva si chiude su una nota di speranza, per quanto amara e malinconica, sulla presenza dell’amata impressa nel paesaggio, geografia mentale sovrascritta a quella fisica.
Libro che non spicca, non privo di interessanti spunti formali e contenutistici, di frammenti di verità coraggiosi e originale, ma troppo diluiti in un insieme non incisivo, che nasce a frammenti, ad appunti e non mi sembra che si elevi molto al di sopra di tale stato.

[alireine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je n'ai pas réussi à aimer ce que je lisais, même si les poèmes du début et certains de la fin m'ont paru très beaux et touchants.
Roubaud a bien sûr sa propre manière de vivre le deuil et on sent très bien sa peine à travers ce livre, pourtant cette manière de le transcrire, en s'attachant notamment à des considérations sur la lumière, l'espace et l'existence a trop versé dans la réflexion et l'intellectualisation pour me toucher. C'est notamment le cas dans la partie médiane du recueil où j'ai survolé plutôt que lu tant cela m'ennuyait