Nicole Brossard’s FENCES IN BREATHING

By | June 16, 2009 at 8:08 pm

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Coach House Books, 2009. 114 pp.
ISBN 9781552452134

Translation by Susanne de Lotbinire-Harwood

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A poetry-break-post!

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Initally published as La Capture du sombre by Lemeac Editeur, 2007

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There are several worthwhile topics to discuss in Brossard’s newest from Coach House, Fences in Breathing. There are the real-life social implications to the imaginary war that ends the novella, the importance of pleasure (Jennifer Moxley described pleasure as “the word that first comes to mind at the mention of Nicole Brossard’s poetry”), and the associations between language, body, and desire. Yet it is the idea of translation that most fascinates me when thinking about Fences, as well as Brossard’s other works.

In an introduction to one of her readings, Charles Bernstein acknowledged that Brossard was the only native French-speaking poet anthologized in On The Other Side of the Century, a well-known poetry anthology put out by Sun & Moon Press (now Green Integer), and that perhaps the reason for the inclusion of Brossard’s poems was because her works seem to “flourish in English.”

In taking a look at her publications as listed by EPC (SUNY Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center), all of Brossard’s initial publications were published in French. Less than half of the listed publications have been translated into English, and most of the English translations are of her novels, not of her poetry. And unlike many poets and fiction writers, Brossard has not consistently worked with one translator. This raises interesting questions for any reader of Brossard’s work: how does each translation/translator render Brossard’s work differently? If there’s consistency of language in each translation of her works (which is rarely true of translations of an author’s works by different translators), does Brossard’s French (as implied by Bernstein) somehow lead to more “successful” English translations?

Translation plays a role in the novella, not only because the book is a literal translation, but as subject matter. Anne, the main character, is a writer who chooses to render her novel in a “language other than [her] own,” which for Anne is “[a] way of avoiding short circuits in [her] mother tongue.” Translation conflates body as language, where one — language or the physical body — represents the other, so when Brossard writes about a “[s]tory of words,” these typographical bodies are associated with “salt,” “origin,” and “delights.”

Interestingly, Brossard’s associations between translation, language, and body recall the works of other French (or French-speaking) writers/authors. In their works, Jacques Derrida and Abdelkebir Khatibi often conflate the physical body for the typographical letter. For both Derrida and Khatibi, translation equals destruction, which also equals transformation. This state of destruction/transformation/translation occurs on the “tongue” (i.e. one’s sense of being through language and speech), as well as the physical body.

What I admire most about Fences in Breathing it that although it is easy (and right) to read the text as “fiction theory” (which is how Brossard once described her work), theoretical interests in language are expressed through simple, elegant language. One has a strong visual reaction to the text: throughout my reading, I could actually visualize a loose version of a film being created from the language of the book. A prime example of Brossard’s skilled interweaving of language experimentation and description is expressed in the following passage, which describes the work space of Charlie, one of the minor characters in the novella:

He says tools but somebody will mention the cutting edges of things and will see billhook, scythe, fauchard, debris, wood chips and sketches all entangled like words in summertime, when crickets and corn, lives and vines, sunflowers and stormy hours touch and quench one another.

This passage is a simple statement that expresses the relativity of language, language as definition and sign. At the same time, the passage strays away from being merely a cerebral, dry exercise: a definition flourishes; a tool does not remain just a tool, but becomes a “billhook, scythe, fauchard, debris… .” As the passage expands, these objects become entangled with the smell of “woodchips” and sounds of “crickets” and “stormy hours.” There are bursts of colors, the “vines” and “sunflowers.” So much can be remembered from Fences that is concrete, vivid, and visual, so that this “fiction theory” also translates as accessible images.

My own, somewhat unrealistic conclusion is that as a fan of Fences in Breathing, the best way to read and understand the novella is to read both the French and de Lotbinire-Harwood’s English translation. In a sense, reading both the original and its English translation may be the most thorough way in understanding Brossard’s feverish explorations with language. Like Anne, I might conclude with the thought where by reading, struggling with the text in a language that I am not as readily familiar with, I will somehow “find a solution to the questions of meaning that do not come up in my language.”

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