It Then

by Danielle Collobert, Norma Cole (Translator)

Poetry. Translated from the French by Norma Cole. The first English translation of this French poet, now an influence on many young American poets, who died at the age of 37 in 1978. Beverly Dahlen comments: "Collobert's dash is a materialization of the gap within speech and the rush to close even as one discloses it... the page bears the record of these bursts of language ...Collobert insists on being without a subject, ' as if being were radically different from, absolutely divided from its subject. And like an archeologist she preserves the fragments of this ruined subject against time, to reproduce the duration' ...appalling in the intensity of their imagination of the literal body transmuted into writing." Michael Palmer comments: "She enunciates the words for desire and for loss the other words with harrowing intensity. IT THEN explores the limits of the phenomenal body and of speech by the agency of a prose which defies category."

Genres: Poetry, France

125 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Born in Rostrenen in 1940, Danielle Collobert left Bretagne for Paris at the age of eighteen where she worked in an art gallery and self-published her first poems in a book entitled Chants des guerres (1961). Both of Collobert’s parents, and her aunt, who survived deportation to Ravensbrück, were members of the Résistance during World War II. Herself a supporter of Algerian independence, Collobert joined the FLN (the Algerian National Liberation Front), precipitating her exile in Italy, during which time she completed work on Meurtre, first published in 1964 by Éditions Gallimard with the unwavering support of Raymond Queneau. She worked for Révolution africaine, a short-lived journal created at the end of the Algerian war. Collobert’s extensive travels, to Czechoslovakia, Indonesia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, Greece, Egypt, etc., did not prevent her from becoming a member of the group formed around Jean-Pierre Faye and the journal, Change. Her other works include Dire I et II (1972), a radio play the following year, Polyphonie, aired by France Culture, Il donc (1976) and Survie (1978). Upon her return from a trip to New York, Danielle Collobert took her own life in a hotel in Paris on her thirty-eighth birthday. Her complete works, in two volumes, edited by Françoise Morvan, augmented by several unpublished texts, were published by P.O.L. in 2005. Collobert’s works available in English include In the Environs of a Film (Litmus Press, 2019), Murder (Litmus Press, 2013), Notebooks, 1956-1978 (Litmus Press, 2003) and It Then (O Books, 1989).

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Notes after first reading)

Text is divided into three parts: (1) introduction of the body; trapped, isolation, orientation of the body within its container, 'this restricted space'; somewhat recalls the experience of the creature in Beckett's novel The Unnamable; (2) frustration at 'useless waiting for healing'; 'awaiting a word-cure'; (3) application of 'word-cure'; transposing body into text, experience into words, culminating in the text (It then — migrated / transcribed).

The writing of the body, description of the visceral process of writing about (often painful) experiences, committing them to the page, these experiences of the body, the physicality of this process, and the incompatibility of fitting words to experience:

'sometimes — a form
contradiction — to glide the body into word — trading
form
from blood to drawing
never'

But also how the body cannot explain itself without words:

'mute body
traded for articulation
the utterance'

'a container of identity'

'a place then — to dream up a place where identity happens'

'It then — its breath — the story of words — the written
object — its rhythm — how it means to beat in speech — to
melt words to recognize there the edge of a body perhaps'

Collobert has a way of writing around experiences, of leaving the heart untold, but instead circling around and probing at the edges. Implicit horror and violence pervade the text, and yet the use of the impersonal pronoun 'it' leaves a certain distance between the reader and the text, allowing one to touch the edges of the isolation and pain without fully absorbing it.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reminiscent of late Beckett - with more violence - its own syntax - words where there are no words - transcribed - in the body

[Myhte · Rating 5 out of 5]

it is going to unfold - it unfolds - climbs back up towards
which surface - touches its body - listens to its breathing
- directs it - tries to breathe without tiring - rhythm to
maintain for the remaining waking

interruption in sleep - inertia - short moments of peace when it will doubtless be stretched out on its side - arm bent under head - clear vision of a semblance of absence in the world

dull shocks of the first tangled words - to stoke the pain -
great fire - with all the words possible - unforeseen -
from words to cries - oscillating movements body's rocking
- to and fro - body stretched - looking in the shadow for
traces of words - to redo the apprenticeship - syllables
one by one unearthed - washed - polished - to reach the
bright sound - perceptible to other bodies

at each voice the startle
long shudder of overpopulated memory
words pulled out of chaos - out of clay - looming up of
the deposit of the unsaid

old traces of having been - recognition - in the confusion
- without memory - scattered voices - imprecise -
flowing from breath - come torturing of summons - pain
- in chance hearing

the voices irreplaceable losses - distant jamming - absence of reference - dissolved - absence of faces - loss
of bodies - disappeared gazes and mouths - buried in
motionless images - uncertainty of rhythms - of sounds
in the extent - displacement of voices in the intensity of
the breath - moving ladder of speech - seeking the precision of a body - in the blur - limit of landing at the
heart - weakening of the beats - faint survival of voice print

to hear from afar
it hears the far-off
the gaps in time

slow and sweet arrival of the voice -
phrase to roll calmly into memory - bright and distinct
knowing of moments moving - drowned in the voice -
still the absence

motionlessness in the rehearsing of a word
- to pronounce clearly - aloud - for all - at last outside
- kneeling - in the word - at last gives way

arms around shoulders - sides meeting - head leaning -
brings facing other body - bellies meeting - as if already
naked - accepted

to take back its words
to withdraw its gestures
at the least obstacle to change voices

a first word - choice
phrase for a first word
sequence - as always
necessity the sweetness of saying- to know
words for the story

worn out words - body long worn out - at the same time - same rhythm

word between
two motions - to remember the word - no - seeks another now - for this interval of time - what it says -
could say - still perhaps to be said

in the margin - the voices hear each other

flooding the aqueous surface - will spill over from the body flaming - one day - without doubt

even now - perhaps
forever lost that one
for other shapes to come - dissolution
possible words to dissolve
it collects the syllables

at the edge of the words
on the track
imprecise threshold of coherence
fake grip
border always in motion
coming and going of the shore
skidding of the madness silence

how much time like this
it holds on
how much time resting
is going to start up again - knows it - at the edge already
the first words are waiting - speech being reborn - hitch
still looking for its post

obstructed by darkness silence
reduced to inertia sleep
leaves last the dreams

in its ruins rummages - what it finds - dissolved
dust in the day - in the light
barely glimpsed disappeared the images
remains the monoliths
the great stones
marks of time
sudden condensations of the pain

hands open - like mouth - already seen - open
to speak

a place then - to dream up a place where identity happens

of its words then - has recourse
hopes not to reach
covering itself over with the saying
final - the term of its voice

It then - its breath - the story of words - the written
object - its rhythm - how it means to beat in speech - to
melt words to recognize there the edge of a body perhaps

finally accepts the future form -
already inscribed inside the words - sees itself written -
in the end - last word
last sign writes light
last of the written - walled up - tomb - if tried the
inscription on the door - whereas behind the body of dust
- the imaginary written absolute - a noun name
a noun name subject
absent the body
no identity of any kind anywhere in the dust

silence - a mute landscape
mute body
traded for articulation
the utterance

It then - migrated
transcribed

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Punishing little collection of fragmentary, self-annihilating poetry. Ostensibly a collection of poems, the three numbered sections read as a single long work with subtle movements, wherein Collobert hammers the same themes (bodily detachment, unromantic desire, and dissolution) using the same format throughout (short, jagged phrases punctuated only with a brutal em dash). Quite the mental flense.

[Dusty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I can talk about this book without standing and wildly gesticulating.

[Goldfinch Bolton · Rating 5 out of 5]

So damn good. Fragmentary and endlessly hard hitting while never revealing too much

[Joshua Minsoo Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the lassitude of existence, captured in three seamless sections that transpose body to text, obsessed with the cruel limitations in both flesh and page-bound experience. The em dash skewers words together, acting as a needling presence. Its repeated usage creates urgency, insistence, and it transforms each syllable and phrase into a texture deeply felt. When we read a page with no dashes at all, the words spill over in grief-ridden acceptance. Didn’t feel shaken or swallowed by these poems, though, as much as identity with the numbness needed to write it.

[Ronaldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, fascinating style. It's like the poems consistently land within this space that is after an action. Like, after a kiss, after a hug, an orgasm and meditates on the emptiness that doesn't satisfy Collobert nor dissuade her enough from reaching out again. It's a very fascinating rhythm.


Here, you see someone consistently trying for deep intimacy and meaning with other people and making it to the moment where it should happen, where it often does happen for other people, but finding it to terribly alienating— yet, being compelled to do it over and over again.


This is strongly communicated through this one:

"without coherence memory - body which offers itself once more to the blows - without dressing the wounds - without catching its breath"


A comment Georges Bataille made in "Guilty" I think helped me identify what her poetry seem expresses: "Poetry is an arrow aimed at something. If I've taken good aim, what's important (what I want) isn't the arrow—or goal—but the instant the arrow is lost, dissolved, in the night air: so even the memory of the arrow is lost."


Certainly this moment of " instant of loss" is found repeatedly her poems.


I think one of the strongest poems is this one:

"body grip — word grip — asks the other body for the unexpressed — birth of uncertainty — already overwhelmed — will never be said — knows it — hopeless waiting to touch being"

[M.V.]

Eksempel på at noen ting ikke egner seg på norsk, og hvor mye melodi som kan gå tapt i en oversettelse. Noen passasjer er like nydelige som de burde være:

en kropp der - som øver seg opp i smerte - som om den ikke fikk nok av denne lidelsen - i hvert øyeblikk - i strømmer - i en voldsom bølge - prøver det latterlige i å øve på det

[Pin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A ghost whispering 'til the ghost whisper 'til the ghost 'til the whisper...

[Karolina · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a trip

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What it learns in the descent — in the uncoiling — in the distance — the words — to say — how — to say — if possible — when assailed by desire

uncertainty of meaning
endless remove
impossible discourse
to wrench itself in order to say — without — restraint — to undo itself — to wreck itself — in the extraordinary amputation — tenacious — of the words

[Epifras]

Dikter som handlar om nästan ingenting, eller det mest undflyende. Smärtan och tystnaden som lämnar spår och ger upphov till talet men som självt inte kan vara tal. Vad finns innan orden. Vad finns efter orden. Jag älskar det.

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 Appelsiner

[Stora Råttan · Rating 4 out of 5]

iakttagande av och varandet i en andning utan slut som jag själv och allt annat finns i. lär läsa om. bra efterord som för omväxlings skull faktiskt ger nåt.

[Isir Eline Braathen · Rating 4 out of 5]

jeg liker henne!! vil lese mord igjen

[Ethan P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art is, best as i can figure, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 Experience.
Here, Collobert¹ explicates, through disembodiement, the sense by and extent to which sensation—the pain of sensation—constitutes embodied Experience.
I guess you could call it prose, if you wanted.
__

¹ —As realized here, by Cole's aparent success in preserving Collobert's impression alltogether with its form, in this 1989 english translation—

[James Debruicker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear gods this is a hard read. It's sort of about pain, or masturbation, or self-mutilation, or all of the above? It's INTENSE, and I imagine would be amazing as a spoken piece.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

dark and fleshy.

[Zack]

it was great!