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Je Nathanael
Poetry. JE NATHANAEL is an endangered text. Neither essay nor poem nor novel nor sex show, what it takes from language it gives back to the body. Through Nathanael, Andre Gide's absent, imagined and much desired apprentice in Les nourritures terrestres (Fruits of the Earth), this text explores ways in which language constrains the body, shackles it to gender, and proposes instead an altogether different way of reading, where words are hermaphroditic and in turn transform desire (consequence). Suggesting that one body conceals another, JE NATHANAEL lends an ear to this other body and delights in the anxiety it provokes. Nathalie Stephens writes in English and French, and sometimes neither. She is the author of several published works, including PAPER CITY, which is also available from SPD.
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 16, 2003
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About the author
Nathanaël
45 books23 followersNathanaël is a Canadian writer, literary translator and educator. Some of her works have been published under her legal name Nathalie Stephens. She lives in Chicago.
In 1970 Nathanaël was born as Nathalie Stephens in Montreal. She studied Literature at the Lumière University Lyon 2 and the York University, Toronto. Since 2002 she is member of the Québec Union of Writers. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Furthermore, she is a contributing editor to the French online magazine Recours au poème and the American magazine Aufgabe.
Nathanaël writes intergenre, poetry, prose, and essays — in English and French — which have been translated into Bulgarian, Basque, Greek, Portuguese, Slovenian and Spanish. Her book Underground was finalist for a Grand Prix du Salon du livre de Toronto in 2000. L’injure was shortlisted for a Prix Trillium and the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2005....s’arrête? Je won the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2008.
Nathanaël has translated John Keene, Trish Salah, Reginald Gibbons, Bhanu Kapil, R. M. Vaughan et al. into French and Hervé Guibert, Danielle Collobert, Hilda Hilst, Édouard Glissant and Catherine Mavrikakis into English. Her translation of Danielle Collobert’s novel Murder was shortlisted for a Best Translated Book Award 2014. She has been awarded with fellowships from the PEN American Center (2012) and the Centre National du Livre de France (2013) for her translation of Hervé Guibert’s The Mausoleum of Lovers.
(from Wikipedia)
In 1970 Nathanaël was born as Nathalie Stephens in Montreal. She studied Literature at the Lumière University Lyon 2 and the York University, Toronto. Since 2002 she is member of the Québec Union of Writers. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Furthermore, she is a contributing editor to the French online magazine Recours au poème and the American magazine Aufgabe.
Nathanaël writes intergenre, poetry, prose, and essays — in English and French — which have been translated into Bulgarian, Basque, Greek, Portuguese, Slovenian and Spanish. Her book Underground was finalist for a Grand Prix du Salon du livre de Toronto in 2000. L’injure was shortlisted for a Prix Trillium and the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2005....s’arrête? Je won the Prix Alain-Grandbois in 2008.
Nathanaël has translated John Keene, Trish Salah, Reginald Gibbons, Bhanu Kapil, R. M. Vaughan et al. into French and Hervé Guibert, Danielle Collobert, Hilda Hilst, Édouard Glissant and Catherine Mavrikakis into English. Her translation of Danielle Collobert’s novel Murder was shortlisted for a Best Translated Book Award 2014. She has been awarded with fellowships from the PEN American Center (2012) and the Centre National du Livre de France (2013) for her translation of Hervé Guibert’s The Mausoleum of Lovers.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 24, 2023
Wow so many things to think about here. A book in total flux and in love and hate with itself. Makes me rethink “good” writing a lot. Very very special and debatable
March 5, 2021
"All bodies are guilty of something. All of them. I have decided not to travel any more. Not to dip my feet into the river either. I water the plants. Nobody kisses me. I am a hundred years old."
Some books, some of my favourite books even, I am very nervous to discuss: I'm worried that I won't be able to properly articulate what I loved about it, that I will have read it differently than anyone else, that I will be wrong in why I enjoyed it (as though that is even possible). But these are also often the books I most want to talk about! Because they are challenging, they are meant to provoke discussion, they are trying to be hard to talk about. They want their readers to think, think hard, think differently, think newly. And I love to be asked to think, to engage.
Je Nathanaël is one of those books. It's a short book of sort-of-poems, of short poetic sections that challenge the capability of language to really capture or describe experience, identity, desire. It is a story and a question and a statement, an exploration of how language fails us, how we are much more than we can say or write. Written in French and translated to English by the author, this edition -- a 15th anniversary edition -- also includes incredibly interesting additions from the author (a postface) and from the scholar Elena Basile (an afterword). In fact, I'm now very interested in a book mentioned in Basile's bio: Queering Translation/Translating the Queer (eds Brian Baer and Klaus Kaindl).
This is a book that will not meet its reader, but will demand the reader climb as many steps as necessary to meet the text. It isn't inaccessible, though: once you're there, it is patient and slow and insistent, it will carry you through its interrogation. It is gentle, somehow, while being entirely abrasive at the same time. I can't wait to read it again.
Some books, some of my favourite books even, I am very nervous to discuss: I'm worried that I won't be able to properly articulate what I loved about it, that I will have read it differently than anyone else, that I will be wrong in why I enjoyed it (as though that is even possible). But these are also often the books I most want to talk about! Because they are challenging, they are meant to provoke discussion, they are trying to be hard to talk about. They want their readers to think, think hard, think differently, think newly. And I love to be asked to think, to engage.
Je Nathanaël is one of those books. It's a short book of sort-of-poems, of short poetic sections that challenge the capability of language to really capture or describe experience, identity, desire. It is a story and a question and a statement, an exploration of how language fails us, how we are much more than we can say or write. Written in French and translated to English by the author, this edition -- a 15th anniversary edition -- also includes incredibly interesting additions from the author (a postface) and from the scholar Elena Basile (an afterword). In fact, I'm now very interested in a book mentioned in Basile's bio: Queering Translation/Translating the Queer (eds Brian Baer and Klaus Kaindl).
This is a book that will not meet its reader, but will demand the reader climb as many steps as necessary to meet the text. It isn't inaccessible, though: once you're there, it is patient and slow and insistent, it will carry you through its interrogation. It is gentle, somehow, while being entirely abrasive at the same time. I can't wait to read it again.
May 12, 2021
nathanael: I’m a queer boy
Me: ....... I am thinking
Me: ....... I am thinking
June 22, 2008
the duality of self. awesome. nuff said.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews