Luba Jurgenson, Au lieu du péril : une poétique de l’interstice

Abstract

In Au lieu du péril : récit d’une vie entre deux langues (2014), Luba Jurgenson (born in Moscow and living in France since 1975) describes her physical experience between two languages, Russian and French. To her, bilingual people have twin bodies. During a hike in the mountains, she was seized by vertigo: the same unsettling vacillation that might affect bilingual people as if they felt a crack between their feet, but which can ultimately be a safe refuge and above all a creative “interstice.” In her book, Jurgenson explores this interstice through concrete topics (cities, thresholds, bridges, courtyards), abundant intertextuality, and numerous connections with the arts. Oscillating between an autobiography and a poetic essay, Au lieu du péril is more like a notebook, whose notes and fragments afford Jurgenson precious flexibility and enable her to constantly refine her observations: reflections on language and identity, childhood memories, nocturnal dreams. This article’s aim is to approach Jurgenson’s translingual praxis from an esthetic angle and to consider its place in 21st century French-language literature while also examining two of the author’s more recent books which carry echoes of Au lieu du péril.