There are books you would expect, promises a journey of seeking the mind awakens the dream, takes the reader in a stream of sounds, colors and ideas. The work of Edward Lionel Martin , poet and novelist, weaves the words and the world, creating a close relationship between language and the sensible world, that of the body and nature. His latest novel, The Old the rosebush , published by the Active Vampire, is born of the unlikely encounter of three amazing characters - one old, one dog, a marquis - a subtle, poetic, but also full of emotion and humor. The language in fact, more than a vector, we entered the world and reflects the relationship we have with him.
Lionel Edward Martin has had the generosity of grant me an interview about his latest novel, I am very proud to reproduce here, from threshold to threshold. I thank all my heart for the simplicity and kindness with which he agreed to be interviewed, delivering depth and sincerity with a penetrating and original thinking on literary creation.
To get better acquainted with this beautiful novel, I refer you to beautiful chronic
- that of Ed Wood in La Taverne du Doge Loredan
- than in Fiolof Walk to
Pages that of Pierre-Vincent Guitard in e-literature-and
chronic audio Nikola on Paludes . ..
Pages that of Pierre-Vincent Guitard in e-literature-and
chronic audio Nikola on Paludes . ..
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Dear Lionel Edward, your novel The Old the rosebush , published Oct. 11 editions of the Vampire Active, is that Karina Cnudde, your editor with Hugh Béesau, called a "literary unidentified object." Indeed, he enrolled at the borders of many genres in a stunning approach to literature, fiction space between and territory of a poetic language, music and rhythm, which also characterizes your work. How would you define your project when you went into his writing?
Speaking Project, it is also necessary that there be one. If project is defined as a route, ballistics, which are expected to lead from one point to another through certain circles, I reply that I am, as a writer or cartographer, or gunner , an explorer, rather, that fixed the starting point, sink into a landscape Undetermined he would, secretly, to measure its progress. I've never written by a schedule, so to say something predetermined: I go to random words - and words are sensible, you end up finding meaning of these wanderings. Valery says somewhere that if "the first verse is given, the rest of the poem, then to find, is an invention. I readily agree with this view of inspiration. The first sentence of the Old rosebush came to me I do not know how, and "novel" if we must call it so, is in development, amplification: "It started like this, not to mention the incipit Journey to the End of the Night .
Travel certainly aimlessly, punctuated by encounters: the old, at first, then the dog, then the Marquis. Clearly, these figures had not completely unknown: there is, in Old the rose bush, as elsewhere in everything I write a biographical material - I have little imagination - but whose sudden appearances, I repeat, are very poorly controlled: they needed a sudden, without my knowledge why. I have often sought - like the rest Valery, on another level - to understand the mechanisms of these occurrences: memory worked by the words in evocations they inspire, and sound systems they organize? This is a track, but without any doubt there others that I am hard pressed to cope. As well, should we understand? Weary of war, say that what counts is how it works - if it works - (and I might add that I am fascinated by how the mind, unless it is the unconscious, manages to weave on a loom so unstable, a tissue image, rhythm, meaning, a text that gives consistency, and ended up making a tapestry).
In this way, I extract a crude substance, it is to resume in order for consistency and make, say, read: it goes from the simple correction terms to moving parts in a meticulous editing. I realize that this generates, in the end, fairly "strange monsters, known as Corneille's Illusion comique , and that is not in the horizon of expectation of a" ; novel "but as well, this romantic horizon - as it is usually defined with a story, a plot, psychology, sociology, a relationship to reality - this horizon is m not interest him. If I had to define myself as a writer, I would not arrogance to claim that "I am a poet" (that is, according to Renaud Camus, the supreme arrogance of Assen to others such a claim), but I'd say write I write as many contemporary poets: random words and out of genre.
Tell us a little about your characters, three disparate things and nothing is destined to meet. But the real protagonist, the one around which your novel is organized, is language. The three characters define themselves in relation to it, and maintain relations with it intense and surprising. Old had some trouble pronouncing words, his speech is marked with phonetic and regional particularities. His relationship to language is tough but loving. The marquis, he is fascinated by the ancient texts of Catullus and Virgil (as you, I think I know). And Diurc / Duke, the talking dog, sings the Mass in Latin! Can you explain the reasons for the staging of the language, both amazing and natural ...?
I think I have ever written on the language - probably by professional deformation, since the basis of my current activities, I am a linguist, or better, but in every sense of the word etymology, philologist, and passionate Latin (but other languages too - whose Arabic - I had the chance to learn and that I control to varying degrees). Language, languages, are indeed at the heart of the Old rosebush : that language, as well, we is, we humans, as it follows from what we are - bodies of words, whose language is one of the foods, which therefore marked the flesh and inform . As such, the character of old is speaking , dare I say it pronunciation amplifies the words are flowing in some sounds that soothe, foreshadowing the "old language of angels" that will, a moment, seize it, the possess, so that all language, from which it emanates, it will be transparent. It is somewhat revisited the scene of Pentecost, when, in the Gospels, the Holy Spirit infuses the apostles the gift of tongues, Babel and restoring abolishing intercomprehension among men (although the old goes further in its penetration of languages, since it also includes one of the things and animals).
It can never be too well how the issue of language strongly imbued all religions, in that language is one of the founding myths, which includes himself in the interrogation of origin - "the beginning was the Word "is the most obvious example. However, if the language is part of the Creation , we can grasp the importance that prides itself create what is called the fiction. Without putting too fine play on words, fingo , Latin, whence derives our fiction means shaping: no need to recall that in Genesis, man (the character?) Is created from a handful of clay ... In short, I invite the reader to also the novel as a broad metaphor of the work of the creator - if indeed it is indeed a job, and nothing else ... The
Marquis, meanwhile, is an amateur linguist: as such, its relationship to language is critical, and bases its relationships with others, under the terms of the call and release - I would venture that governs its existence as it will rule his death. He devoted his life to researching the origin of language - "Why is there more we do not say anything?" Is the first sentence of that hears - ; developing on a personal theory about this. On this question of the origin of language, two competing theories, to 18 th century (I'm referring to the very last page of the novel, citing the names of some authors who have written): one who looks for a "natural", rather than opting for a divine origin. The Marquis at first adopted the first in the supporting body to the rhythm of running, this rate will take its full resonance when he himself strolling the streets of M ***. But the "encounter" with the old - who also does not occur - disabuse him ... Again, metaphor, perhaps, of what is called "inspiration": Ponge's alphabet, or the painting by Poussin? Let me smile, and well keep me from wanting to respond ...
Ironically, each of your characters is immersed in a solitude, accompanied only by words, those who are exchange in ordinary situations (with a neighbor who just make a few visits in a cafe where one is "abroad"). Nature becomes a source of speech, a dog, a pond, a tree, crows. In the second part of your novel, entitled The Origin of Languages The narrator speaks directly to the Marquis: "And I'm the ill wind, your coat is not perfect, you go up the neck, and as time is to kill it is full of gravity and penetrating damp, you let yourself be tempted by coffee: something hot you would the body be articulated around it your silence to release waves of grumbling, to revive the language - because in your ordinary, you only talk to crows, which have a taste of your death, and factor in the vast desolation of the word tune, you're doomed to soliloquy, the echo liar birds in the trees, an official at 4L yellow. "How do you think the language can be so important despite the loneliness? Indeed, your characters, the old, the Marquis, soliloquent lot ...
Not that in La Vieille the rosebush my characters are alone, those of my other novels live also in great solitude, whether Jeanlou in Jeanlou in the tree, Paul, The Man in hermetic , Or Hubert, Corps stone or more. By identifying with this constellation of lonely, there is only one step: it would probably immodest on my part that I say lonely - we had enough of the artist in his ivory tower, though it seems essential to me - but in my view (as much as my ears ...) writing and solitude are hard severable - I think even remember having written - but where? - We never writes than in solitude. Indeed, if we want "that" speaks, it is still necessary to hear, and you never hear as well as himself - I associate the loneliness of silence (no doubt I have the vocation La Trappe ...). It is solitude, the condition sine qua non listening, and maybe even any fine levied. This is an availability of the senses as much as a way of life - away fiercely, and in the shade as much as possible.
On this basis, my characters soliloquent indeed much: but what else a writer than a man, a woman monologue - or dialogue deferred because any text is the bearer as pregnant, a potential reader? Again, one must understand the old, the Marquis, the dog, as metaphors for the author and his "work", which is to talk about what did not vote, this fiction that model, as I said earlier, and remodels to give it voice.
Your novel forges strong links between language and the world, so much so that words materialize in unexpected sounds (a "Adoramus te" anthology, nativity amazing and gratifying), smells - sometimes nauseating: Diurc "stinks. His mouth stinks!
"It's Latin, the words rotten. The decay of language, you know, do not believe, Clemence, he does not eat much ( Guyer ) than vegetables, very little meat, very pyeu meat .... " The words take shape, meat chewed fruit tasted old ... The birth of language itself, a language she was carrying and born in pain. Cratylism the Marquis (forbidden elsewhere in a publication remained confidential) is almost militant, the word imitating the thing and bringing in the world. How would you describe your relationship with words? He embodied specifically in one of three characters?
My relationship with words? Expression could probably summarize it: the pleasure a bit mystical. I like to chew (As Flaubert - but not that I "mouth", I chewed). There is a real pleasure to articulation (pronounced thus "abolished trinket sound of inanity!"), As pointed out, if I remember correctly, the poet Andre Spire. As for Cratylism, it is probably one of the foundations of all poetry, but also magic and myth: the thing and the word are one, the thing is the word, the word is the thing. Even more: the words by their shape, weave them reports that are reminiscent of those not established "similarities" Middle Age (Michel Foucault speaks in precisely Words and things ). The question is obviously not to believe, yet we can believe it, but rather of power, on this basis, link relations between things unimagined, based primarily on phonics or spelling, and short-circuit the common thought, without continuing to mere wordplay: the latter, on the contrary, be regarded as triggers that could create new ideas by associations on which they rest.
The old and the Marquis entretiennent tous deux un rapport étroit, consubstantiel , au langage, mais un rapport différent : la vieille le subit, le marquis en est l'observateur. Based on what I said above, which of them would rather my incarnation? In fact, my relationship with these two spills out into the single question of language: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!", To quote a famous cry. I would go further: any character is necessarily emanate from its creator. I do not think we can introduce split between the writer and his creation, including the author, the narrator or characters portrayed: my narrator, my characters are my creatures, in that I wore them, and they are, as such, part of myself - which is not without consequence on the theory of the novel, and appears completely at odds with current trends in academic criticism, except to read his Dominique Maingeneau Against Saint Proust or the end of literature . Getting back to the Old bush roses, what I just said is to pose the following equation: I = all the characters who roam the text. We can also discern a few winks here and there, everyone is a "development abyss": the old was born November 10 as me, we know neither his name or her name, but its initial data at the very end - LM - speak for themselves ...
However, if in this text, I would identify myself more deeply with a character, it would certainly Marquis whose wanderings woven into the language, again, the metaphor of my writing, and call figures that are dear to me: that of Christ in his climb to Calvary, those of Ulysses, Virgil and, implicitly, that of Dante (between heaven and hell). However, in addition to the reasons mentioned above, one can not exclude the old complicity, since it not only runs parallel to that of Marquis, but she "gives birth", as you rightly out, a language that transforms and purifies, as well before Peter Vincent Guitard in article he was willing to devote to the text. Again, size is metaphorical, and I leave the reader the leisure to look for meaning.
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| Paul Cezanne, Old Woman with a Rosary (London, National Gallery) |
Old the rosebush is full of winks an eye pleasing that set between the work and the reader special links, each player can capture the text through references included or not (I said there is no need to be a scholar to appreciate you, as the work life of its own). Sometimes, you embed the text in quotes reported or not, as for example in the excerpt above. What are your landmarks, your headlights in the world of literature?
Insights, lights ... This implies the way, the sea route, where I would rather speak of influences and affinities. Recent back to back in history: there is the presence of Latin, very strong, Horace, Catullus, Virgil, Seneca - and lesser-known Latin authors, these archaic poets, the language a little rough, which there are only fragments - hence, perhaps, my writing struck, fragmentary.
I'll also mention the great French classics, including baroque, more recently, Balzac, Flaubert, the Goncourt, Proust, Gide, Boylesve, it is wrong to stop reading, Fargue Ramuz Colette - especially the recent years, even closer, Quignard, Michon, Millet, Giono in its most overlooked; Michèle Desbordes, Claude Simon, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Christian Gailly, the extraordinary - I weigh my words! - Charles Albert Cingria Gustave Roud, in general, all authors who regard language as their preferred material, and after writing a method somewhat similar to mine. Poets, too: that Rimbaud Larbaud Guillevic, Follain, Claudel, Saint John Perse, Max Jacob, Cendrars ...
Old the rose bush is indeed riddled with literary references; it goes even Towards Muette, my previous novel, which is a true "intertextuality", as they say. You speak of winks: it is indeed what it is, in part: a little like Charlie Parker when he takes over in his improvisations on a melody, a phrase from another song creating with the auditor warned complicity. But I also want to show thereby that literature thrives on literature, music as music, painting paintings, it is not broken, but Continuity inheritance. This seems important, even critical: the rest of us writers, we have inherited from our predecessors in literature, and we have towards them, a duty of remembrance and gratitude: it was they who made us what we are.
But literature is not your only source of inspiration found in the novel not only a library but also a directory of music especially classical and baroque (I am thinking in particular of the place occupied by Palestrina) and paintings. What music and painting can they (or should they) do you encounter literature?
Since we are working with language, and especially to poetry, since I write novels ; poetic "I think the parallels between painting and literature are relevant. On this question, I'll go back willingly to my account the comments of Yves Bonnefoy, in remarks on the drawing : "Poetry, despite the scale of works, not to delight in putting up a universe of language, with objects embedded in each name, each rich in its difference, is to hear every word in silence, which is equivalent in space-specific design, non-color, empty .'s writing poetry, then, is the unspoken, as the drawing is shown for failure: the figure of absence, which in both cases is highlighted. It is this absence that we look to in the poem or poetic prose, and we impose a particular reading rate by which we try, somehow, to plug holes, while the poetic text, at least in Contemporary design is flawed, it involves filling empty staff, and makes each of us a unique player in that we grasp of his material (which also testify to the articles on this day at Old bush Rose ). For example, in the explanations that I try to make answering your questions, I tend, speaking of metaphors in my opinion innervate the text, to plug some holes, but understand that this is where my point of view, which does not necessarily authoritative, and that can clog those holes in any other way.
Music is something else: a shape made of orchestrated sounds, a meaningless form, we want to make some effort to "program" a symphony (Berlioz), or reproduce nature sounds (Messiaen). But imitating the animation of a ball or the singing of birds is the detail, the essential lies elsewhere: in the form it is implemented to act on the listener, and hold his attention, arouse emotion. It is a work of high tech, which consists over time, since music is of time, the pace , developed by a rhetoric proper to music: composition . Literature, meanwhile, is both space and time the page reading. This is where it is similar to both painting and music. I talked about the painting above; its reports to the music I seem to be the melody, counterpoint, so (there can be in the literary phrase, "harmony" in a strictly musical term): it is the definition sounds and their recurrence, creating a rhythm, phrasing where punctuation plays a role. I would add that, as the partition means being executed, some literary texts do all the meaning and fullness to be read aloud.
Can I afford a more sensitive issue? The title of your book refers to a famous altarpiece in my area, a magnificent work of Martin Schongauer. Can you explain why this first novel link between your and this picture? Also, how do you feel aggressive and disproportionate responses to a handful of Colmar for a little story bookmark at the likeness of the Virgin?
I met the altarpiece - because this is a meeting! - There are about fifteen years, during a visit to Colmar. I knew of course, but from afar. Attendance closely, in this beautiful church that puts so much value, had to show me, so that ten years later he became the title of my book. I had others in mind, but that does not satisfy me: it has become at once - perhaps, thematically, because of the angels who are depicted. Thus was born the famous word game, some people have complained to my editors and myself, and how vehemently! Should we say that the idea of offending religion has never crossed my mind? I received a Catholic education - and this is nothing I deny - very footprint by Marian devotion - the church of my parish, Notre Dame, home to the miraculous statue of the Virgin, to whom, and many sick child near death, I was spent. From this education, there are many traces in my work, each of my books has biblical references: thus, the Old rosebush depicts the Nativity, Pentecost, Easter, quotes extensively from the ritual Mass and the Gospels. I read the attacks that we suffer as errors of assessment. I wrote to those concerned: so far, I have not responded; I consider the incident closed. But I deeply regret that unfounded accusations, intimidation, we were victims, could have lead us to question the distribution of bookmark, and there have been attempts to undo a Part of the remarkable work of my editors.
Lionel Edward Martin, Old in the Rosebush, The Vampire Active Insurgencies , 2010
You can get the novel by Lionel Edward Martin's Active site Vampire or any good bookstore.
Lionel Edward Martin © L.-E. Martin
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