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Libertà grande
In rari e preziosi casi, la potenza della letteratura è tale da far vivere il miraggio della perfezione. Lo si scorge come un miracolo sospeso, ad esempio, nella serie di poemi in prosa che compone Libertà grande, raccolta di testi vertiginosi pubblicata originariamente nel 1946 e poi arricchita per oltre un ventennio da uno dei maestri di stile del Novecento francese.
Attraversando deserti di ghiaccio, architetture trasfigurate dalla luce dell’alba e porti affollati di vele notturne Julien Gracq si abbandona a suggestioni dal sapore surrealista senza per questo rinunciare al nitore classico della frase cesellata né tantomeno a un gusto romanzesco capace di donare un afflato d’avventura a ogni paesaggio.
Diario di viaggi immaginari e taccuino di estasi letterarie, Libertà grande è una celebrazione, un inno, un incantesimo dove la lingua si dispiega nel suo massimo potere evocativo e la parola è l’orizzonte in cui gli esseri umani abitano il mondo.
Attraversando deserti di ghiaccio, architetture trasfigurate dalla luce dell’alba e porti affollati di vele notturne Julien Gracq si abbandona a suggestioni dal sapore surrealista senza per questo rinunciare al nitore classico della frase cesellata né tantomeno a un gusto romanzesco capace di donare un afflato d’avventura a ogni paesaggio.
Diario di viaggi immaginari e taccuino di estasi letterarie, Libertà grande è una celebrazione, un inno, un incantesimo dove la lingua si dispiega nel suo massimo potere evocativo e la parola è l’orizzonte in cui gli esseri umani abitano il mondo.
- GenresPoetryLiterature
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
2 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Julien Gracq
73 books178 followersJulien Gracq (27 July 1910 – 22 December 2007), born Louis Poirier in St.-Florent-le-Vieil, in the French "département" of Maine-et-Loire, was a French writer. He wrote novels, criticism, a play, and poetry.
Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his baccalauréat. He then entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1930, later studying at the École libre des sciences politiques.
In 1932, he read André Breton's Nadja, which deeply influenced him. His first novel, The Castle of Argol is dedicated to that surrealist writer, to whom he devoted a whole book in 1948.
Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his baccalauréat. He then entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1930, later studying at the École libre des sciences politiques.
In 1932, he read André Breton's Nadja, which deeply influenced him. His first novel, The Castle of Argol is dedicated to that surrealist writer, to whom he devoted a whole book in 1948.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 14, 2023
Julien Gracq is a favorite writer of mine, so I feel obliged to write something about this book, even though it did not move me nearly as much as a lot of his fiction does. This collection of prose poetry represents Gracq at his most surreal. Gracq admired Andre Breton and the Surrealist movement, and Breton even asked him at one point to join them. Gracq, however, declined, for reasons he seems to have kept to himself. I get the sense that he wasn’t much of a joiner, instead preferring to go his own way—a perspective with which I can identify. Gracq had distinct ideas about the nature of fiction versus that of poetry. He preferred to keep them separate. As such, you will not find much likeness between his novels and the poems included in this book, despite them being written in prose. Gracq was interested in place and geography, the latter being somewhat of a hobby of his. As such, these poems are also fixated on places and geographical themes, which are not uncommon in surrealism. They veer from the rather surreal earlier works to the later pieces, which become increasingly more straightforward accounts of specific places that presumably held some meaning for Gracq. It was these later pieces that I felt more drawn to, as they came the closest to evoking the feelings I get when I read his fiction. One could almost say they feel like raw material for his novels. These are all very superficial and personal observations, though; the book includes both a foreword and an afterword, which delves much more deeply into thematic interpretations and Gracq’s intent.
February 27, 2024
If you love Gracq, get this. Working through his wartime traumas in Surrealist prose poems. A very intense glimpse of his artistry in transition, a foundation of imagery for The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest. What a writer! And Wakefield Press - they bring the really good stuff.
May 27, 2022
4
C'est très beau mais j'ai rien compris (askip c'est de la poésie en prose donc ça passe)
C'est très beau mais j'ai rien compris (askip c'est de la poésie en prose donc ça passe)
May 15, 2023
Great Liberty collects all of Julien Gracq’s prose poems and translates them into English for the first time. Graq’s prose poems—short scenarios, most ranging in length from a paragraph to two pages—are sketches of places or persons that bear the impression of surrealism’s influence in his choice of metaphors and similes. This influence doesn’t transform Graq’s prose poems into surrealist exercises but instead extends his rhetorical techniques so that his poems’ initial dream-like qualities are shown to be, through cumulative effect, more accurately described as extravagant but emotionally acute descriptions of Graq’s chosen subjects. The Great Liberty of the collection’s title becomes, then, the liberty of visions free of conventional descriptors, often arrived at via verbal collages: Think of Burroughs’s cut-ups with the added labor of yoking them to coherence rather than, a la Burroughs, using the cut-ups to abolish conventional methods of coherence. (And Graq’s use of collage precedes the cut-ups of Burroughs and Gysin—Great Liberty was originally published in 1946.)
Graq’s prose poems read like exercises in technique—etudes, if you will—that seem lifted from (or depositable into) larger scenes, serving to set the tone. Let “Surprise Parties at the Houses of the Augustules,” quoted here in its entirety, represent the book’s methods and tone:
"This morning the pavements are stairways where beautifully aligned cascades vaporize in a perspective of petrifying fountains. Not a breath of wind, but, on the boulevards, as far as the eye can see, the branches of the chestnut trees crack one by one with an audible sound of musket fire. From time to time some heraldic book bindings explode on the bouquiniste stalls along the Seine—giant seed pods burst open on the bars of cafes. Wooden faces everywhere; the day promises harsh weather; a dense hail of balls of laundry blue is reported at intervals on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. At the crack of dawn, crowds of postmen are at Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, however, humble laundry workers coalesce at Saint-Nicholas-du-Chyardonnet—the cannon is methodically fired every twenty seconds behind the altar of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. It’s unheard of, it scandalizes; at each detonation the archbishop makes pigeons fly out of his sleeve. Gazelles emerge in crowds from brothels and flock together on the municipal squares."
If the techniques behind Great Liberty have a musical corollary, it would be Chopin, who developed etudes—pedantic studies in developing one’s piano playing techniques—into musical statements in their own right, as tune-like as any other form of fully developed aesthetic offering to the public. Beautiful, weird, oddly un-surrealist, and recommended.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Graq’s prose poems read like exercises in technique—etudes, if you will—that seem lifted from (or depositable into) larger scenes, serving to set the tone. Let “Surprise Parties at the Houses of the Augustules,” quoted here in its entirety, represent the book’s methods and tone:
"This morning the pavements are stairways where beautifully aligned cascades vaporize in a perspective of petrifying fountains. Not a breath of wind, but, on the boulevards, as far as the eye can see, the branches of the chestnut trees crack one by one with an audible sound of musket fire. From time to time some heraldic book bindings explode on the bouquiniste stalls along the Seine—giant seed pods burst open on the bars of cafes. Wooden faces everywhere; the day promises harsh weather; a dense hail of balls of laundry blue is reported at intervals on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. At the crack of dawn, crowds of postmen are at Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, however, humble laundry workers coalesce at Saint-Nicholas-du-Chyardonnet—the cannon is methodically fired every twenty seconds behind the altar of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois. It’s unheard of, it scandalizes; at each detonation the archbishop makes pigeons fly out of his sleeve. Gazelles emerge in crowds from brothels and flock together on the municipal squares."
If the techniques behind Great Liberty have a musical corollary, it would be Chopin, who developed etudes—pedantic studies in developing one’s piano playing techniques—into musical statements in their own right, as tune-like as any other form of fully developed aesthetic offering to the public. Beautiful, weird, oddly un-surrealist, and recommended.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
January 30, 2022
Parmi les 17 publications de Julien Gracq, ce petit livre édité en 1946 en est un de poésie, le seul de toute son oeuvre. Les très courts poèmes en prose qui le constituent sont presque entièrement dédiés à l'observation de la nature, un thème omniprésent dans tous ses écrits. Géographe de formation, Julien Gracq a acquis l'arsenal nécessaire du spécialiste. À cela s'ajoute une imagination très féconde où l'on retrouve l'influence du surréalisme.
Je ne suis pas une lectrice de poésie et je m'y connais peu mais je reconnais dans ce livre la même rigueur, les mêmes envolées métaphoriques au vocabulaire d'une précision maniaque et d'une grande richesse linguistique que l'on retrouve dans ses romans comme Un beau ténébreux ou ses essais comme Les eaux étroites.
Je ne suis pas une lectrice de poésie et je m'y connais peu mais je reconnais dans ce livre la même rigueur, les mêmes envolées métaphoriques au vocabulaire d'une précision maniaque et d'une grande richesse linguistique que l'on retrouve dans ses romans comme Un beau ténébreux ou ses essais comme Les eaux étroites.
June 21, 2024
This translation of Julien Gracq’s collection of prose poetry, Abounding Freedom, is based on the third edition published in France, which included 40 poems he wrote during the two years (1941-1943) after he was released from a German prison camp (based on an incorrect diagnosis of tuberculosis), another eight written about a decade later, and another one, “Aubrac,” written in 1963, plus (new to this translated edition) excerpts from his unfinished novel, The Road.
Although an acquaintance of André Breton, who appreciated Gracq’s novels and poetry, Gracq never formally associated himself with the Surrealists, although his extravagant metaphors, and winding, unpredictable sentences suggest a kindred spirit within him.
Here is an excerpt from the page-long “Transbaikalia,” which, like almost every propse poem in this collection, teems with metaphoric imagery (Transbaikalia is a region where the far eastern borders of Russia meet the far western borders of China and Mongolia. The names Nonni, Kherlen, and Selenga are rivers in that area):
Nonni is the name I give her when she softly consoles me, hushed and tender as if behind a convent veil, it’s the stony softness of her dry hands, her little beads of sweat like a child’s, light as a drop of dew after morning’s embrace, it’s the little sister of nights pure as lilies, the little girl of innocent games, of white pillows crisp as a September morning—Kherlen is the red storms of her muscles overcome in a fever, it’s her mouth twisted by that blazing sculptural torque of iron beams after a fire, the great green waves where her jostling legs float among the sea’s fresh muscles when like a plank I sink with her through translucent strata and the blare of trembling bells that follows us to the bed of the depths—Selenga is when her dress floats like a sunlit flock of seagulls amid the morning’s empty streets, it’s in large fluttering veils, ocellated with her eyes like a peacock’s tail, it’s her liquid eyes that swim around her like dancing stars—it’s when she descends into my dreams through December’s calm chimneys, sits near my bed, and timidly takes my hand between her small fingers for the difficult trip across the night’s solemn landscapes, her eyes transparent to all the comets in the sky, open above my eyes till morning.
The book goes from strength to strength as Gracq’s increasing feel and capacity for writing these poetic sketches develops over time. In the ending to “The Uplands of Sertalejo,” the narrator is already literally on top of the world, a position that matches the exaltation of his emotions—a position, given its tone, of almost balloon-level heights. But the diction and tone modify slightly, so his euphoric visions become an unmoored craft, floating as it will down a river:
On those nights when the cold took possession of the earth, my heart reveled in its strength. I lay on the roof of the earth, palms open on the frosty grass, my eyes vanishing like an ink into the balmy depths of the night sky, the heaving of my chest breaking like a tide into the infinitely deepening ether, my gaze burning in the pure air like the pure, wandering gaze of a lookout, my heart pierced by the biting cold that was freedom from the cracked stones. At the heart of the dissolving night, all cables cut, all weights cast off, surrendering to the air and carried on water, I was a pure vessel of exchange and communion. Already half asleep, in the excess of my contentment, I squeezed Jorge’s hand in my fingers, as a sign of farewell and of a new coming.
Thanks are due to Alice Yang, whose translations uniformly render splendid results, even in seemingly knockoff lines like this tidbit from “Siesta in Dutch Flanders”: “a cyclist’s secluded trail disappears, like a finger pressing into a fur coat.”
The last work presented in Abounding, “The Road,” comes from an uncompleted novel by Gracq and suggests an intention by him to test his ability to sustain this method beyond just a few pages. One image that stands out is a long simile in which he likens the road he walks to the spreading lines on the palms of a hand, scarred by the conditions in which it was built:
the will that had made blood and sap flow into the solitudes cut from this gash [i.e., the road] had been dead for a long time—dead too were the circumstances that had guided this will; there remained an indurated, whitish scar—eaten bit by bit by the earth like a wound being healed by its flesh—whose direction was vaguely outlined still by the horizon, not a route but twilight’s muted sign to go forward, a worn lifeline that continued to sprout across the wilderness, as it might across a palm.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
Although an acquaintance of André Breton, who appreciated Gracq’s novels and poetry, Gracq never formally associated himself with the Surrealists, although his extravagant metaphors, and winding, unpredictable sentences suggest a kindred spirit within him.
Here is an excerpt from the page-long “Transbaikalia,” which, like almost every propse poem in this collection, teems with metaphoric imagery (Transbaikalia is a region where the far eastern borders of Russia meet the far western borders of China and Mongolia. The names Nonni, Kherlen, and Selenga are rivers in that area):
Nonni is the name I give her when she softly consoles me, hushed and tender as if behind a convent veil, it’s the stony softness of her dry hands, her little beads of sweat like a child’s, light as a drop of dew after morning’s embrace, it’s the little sister of nights pure as lilies, the little girl of innocent games, of white pillows crisp as a September morning—Kherlen is the red storms of her muscles overcome in a fever, it’s her mouth twisted by that blazing sculptural torque of iron beams after a fire, the great green waves where her jostling legs float among the sea’s fresh muscles when like a plank I sink with her through translucent strata and the blare of trembling bells that follows us to the bed of the depths—Selenga is when her dress floats like a sunlit flock of seagulls amid the morning’s empty streets, it’s in large fluttering veils, ocellated with her eyes like a peacock’s tail, it’s her liquid eyes that swim around her like dancing stars—it’s when she descends into my dreams through December’s calm chimneys, sits near my bed, and timidly takes my hand between her small fingers for the difficult trip across the night’s solemn landscapes, her eyes transparent to all the comets in the sky, open above my eyes till morning.
The book goes from strength to strength as Gracq’s increasing feel and capacity for writing these poetic sketches develops over time. In the ending to “The Uplands of Sertalejo,” the narrator is already literally on top of the world, a position that matches the exaltation of his emotions—a position, given its tone, of almost balloon-level heights. But the diction and tone modify slightly, so his euphoric visions become an unmoored craft, floating as it will down a river:
On those nights when the cold took possession of the earth, my heart reveled in its strength. I lay on the roof of the earth, palms open on the frosty grass, my eyes vanishing like an ink into the balmy depths of the night sky, the heaving of my chest breaking like a tide into the infinitely deepening ether, my gaze burning in the pure air like the pure, wandering gaze of a lookout, my heart pierced by the biting cold that was freedom from the cracked stones. At the heart of the dissolving night, all cables cut, all weights cast off, surrendering to the air and carried on water, I was a pure vessel of exchange and communion. Already half asleep, in the excess of my contentment, I squeezed Jorge’s hand in my fingers, as a sign of farewell and of a new coming.
Thanks are due to Alice Yang, whose translations uniformly render splendid results, even in seemingly knockoff lines like this tidbit from “Siesta in Dutch Flanders”: “a cyclist’s secluded trail disappears, like a finger pressing into a fur coat.”
The last work presented in Abounding, “The Road,” comes from an uncompleted novel by Gracq and suggests an intention by him to test his ability to sustain this method beyond just a few pages. One image that stands out is a long simile in which he likens the road he walks to the spreading lines on the palms of a hand, scarred by the conditions in which it was built:
the will that had made blood and sap flow into the solitudes cut from this gash [i.e., the road] had been dead for a long time—dead too were the circumstances that had guided this will; there remained an indurated, whitish scar—eaten bit by bit by the earth like a wound being healed by its flesh—whose direction was vaguely outlined still by the horizon, not a route but twilight’s muted sign to go forward, a worn lifeline that continued to sprout across the wilderness, as it might across a palm.
For more of my reviews, please see https://www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/...
April 7, 2025
These exquisite surrealist essays are perfect portals to dream through.
February 24, 2012
Gracq´s style of unlikely parables and wildly lyrical prose is like a breath of fresh air for your mind, essential reading.
July 18, 2023
Un libro che mi ha spiazzato.
Quasi fino alla fine non ne ho capito nulla, non ne capivo il senso. Ogni due righe la mia mente vagava altrove e dovevo riacchiapparla e ricominciare. La prima pagina, appena aperto il libro, l'avrò riletta 4 volte e mi sarò distratto 100: sono andato avanti rinunciando a capirla, così come buona parte di quelle successive (se non tutte).
Poi non so come, con una frase o cos'altro, la potenza di questi viaggi immaginari, queste estasi letterarie, mi è arrivata ed ho deciso di rileggerlo all'istante.
Alcuni pezzi rimangono di difficile comprensione (del resto è surrealismo: fantastico, non razionale) ma dove non si coglie il senso, si coglie il colore, il calore, il profumo: la lettura si trasforma in un'esperienza sensoriale.
Quasi fino alla fine non ne ho capito nulla, non ne capivo il senso. Ogni due righe la mia mente vagava altrove e dovevo riacchiapparla e ricominciare. La prima pagina, appena aperto il libro, l'avrò riletta 4 volte e mi sarò distratto 100: sono andato avanti rinunciando a capirla, così come buona parte di quelle successive (se non tutte).
Poi non so come, con una frase o cos'altro, la potenza di questi viaggi immaginari, queste estasi letterarie, mi è arrivata ed ho deciso di rileggerlo all'istante.
Alcuni pezzi rimangono di difficile comprensione (del resto è surrealismo: fantastico, non razionale) ma dove non si coglie il senso, si coglie il colore, il calore, il profumo: la lettura si trasforma in un'esperienza sensoriale.
June 18, 2025
Picked this up on a whim over the weekend after reading the back cover: "[Gracq's] manipulation of imaginative and metamorphic imagery generates bizarre, phantasmagorical, and lyrical wonders"
Each entry here ranges from a couple of paragraphs to a few pages, each one reads something like a fever dream, something ephemeral and surreal. Multiple occasions I reread the same passage several times over, just in awe at the prose and his command of language and imagery. A book to be revisited in the future
Each entry here ranges from a couple of paragraphs to a few pages, each one reads something like a fever dream, something ephemeral and surreal. Multiple occasions I reread the same passage several times over, just in awe at the prose and his command of language and imagery. A book to be revisited in the future
November 27, 2024
Prototypical prose poems, paragraphs of poetry. Most have to do with landscape, not unusual for poetry, but there are a fair number of urban landscapes too. Kind of strange that many of these were written during or immediately after WWII which forms such a vague backdrop, not really addressed head on. Not as surrealist as I thought it would be, some surprising descriptions, but nothing unreal.
April 2, 2023
Recensione anche sul mio blog:
https://pleaseanotherbook.tumblr.com/...
L’Orma Editore è una delle mie case editrici preferite e mi ha sempre regalato dei testi unici e particolari che mi hanno affascinata con la loro magia. Di Julien Gracq volevo leggere “La riva delle sirti” ma ancora non sono riuscita a iniziarlo, ma questo volume di racconti mi ha dato un assaggio della potenza della sua scrittura. Non so bene come descriverlo perché le atmosfere sognanti delle sue descrizioni sono difficili da riportare su carta ma l’espediente che usa è uno dei miei preferiti. I diari di viaggio e la descrizione di città mi hanno sempre incantato fin da quando mi è capitato in mano per la prima volta “Città invisibili” di Calvino, e questo migrare ininterrotto, questo mettersi in cammino verso un mondo sconosciuto mi ha sempre affascinato. Julien Gracq ha dalla sua l’abilità di dare in un rapido colpo d’occhio lo scorcio di prospettive uniche, delle albe indimenticabili, porti che si spalancano di fronte allo sguardo con la potenza di un sogno. Ogni prospettiva è unica e affascinante e allo stesso tempo incastonata in un percorso vagamente onirico, tutto nei suoi racconti ha il brillio del ghiaccio colpito dal sole e il freddo spettrale della notte.
https://pleaseanotherbook.tumblr.com/...
L’Orma Editore è una delle mie case editrici preferite e mi ha sempre regalato dei testi unici e particolari che mi hanno affascinata con la loro magia. Di Julien Gracq volevo leggere “La riva delle sirti” ma ancora non sono riuscita a iniziarlo, ma questo volume di racconti mi ha dato un assaggio della potenza della sua scrittura. Non so bene come descriverlo perché le atmosfere sognanti delle sue descrizioni sono difficili da riportare su carta ma l’espediente che usa è uno dei miei preferiti. I diari di viaggio e la descrizione di città mi hanno sempre incantato fin da quando mi è capitato in mano per la prima volta “Città invisibili” di Calvino, e questo migrare ininterrotto, questo mettersi in cammino verso un mondo sconosciuto mi ha sempre affascinato. Julien Gracq ha dalla sua l’abilità di dare in un rapido colpo d’occhio lo scorcio di prospettive uniche, delle albe indimenticabili, porti che si spalancano di fronte allo sguardo con la potenza di un sogno. Ogni prospettiva è unica e affascinante e allo stesso tempo incastonata in un percorso vagamente onirico, tutto nei suoi racconti ha il brillio del ghiaccio colpito dal sole e il freddo spettrale della notte.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews