Mémoire d'un fou d'Emma by Alain Ferry

Abstract

incarnate his far-ranging spiritin persuasive poetic bodies. Interms of subject matter andimagery, the book ranges between theexperiential and cosmological. In "The Rain at Sea," we encounter the image of a storm cloudabovethesea "combing out itsrainlikewool,/ likea girlher hairabove a pool; / or else (all I coulddowassit//before thescene, andworry it)/ thesea reached up invisibly /tomilk theacheoutofthe sky."Whileemploying theiambic tetrameter couplet, Paterson avoids thegreattrapof theform, which is theslickclickof trite, chiming language - certain, polished,dead. Instead,thetendency theimagery mayhavetoward excessis deflated by theparenthetical metacognition of the speaker.In another of the earlier personal lyrics, wereadabout a young boyimpaired byanincident atbirthhishandshakes as hetries topaint, preventing himfrom fully succeeding in his goal. The father then considers: "ButJamie, nothing's what wemeant. /Thedream istaxed. We all resent / thequarter bledoff bythedark/between thebowstring and themark. . . / Butthetarget alsodrawsouraim - / ourwilland nature's arethesame;//we areits living word, andnot/abookitwrote andthen forgot." Thepedantic quality ofthetone isoffset bythecontext ofa father teaching hisyoungson. Here,as withmostofthepoemsin this collection, weseethepoetmove readily from thespecific occasion of the poemtoitsphilosophical ormetaphysical implications orassociations. The preoccupation withthemetaphysical becomes dominant in later poems inthe book, such asthe tonally varied"Renku: My Last Thirty-five Deaths"and"Motive," inwhich we read:"Whenyoulift yourhandor tongue/ whatis itmovestomake youmove?" Perhaps themostsustained cosmological meditation comesin the long, seven-section poem"Phantom," in whichPaterson offers something akinto theBrahman oftheUpanishads :"We are ourselves thevoid incontemplation. / We areitsonly nerveand hand and eye. / There is something vastand distant and enthroned /with which youareone and continuous, / staring through your mind." Afterthis extended metaphysical dissertation in verse, which is impressive, thisreader was nevertheless grateful toreturn tothe imagistic and sensory in thefinal poem,"Rain.""I loveall films that startwithrain:/ rain,braiding a windowpane /ordarkening a hungoutdress / orstreaming downher upturned face." FredDings University ofSouthCarolina Miscellaneous Alain Ferry. Mémoire d'un fou d'Emma . Paris. Seuil. 2009. 272 pages. €19.95. ISBN 978-2-02-094510-3 In hismostrecent work, lastyear's recipient ofthePrix Médicis for best essay(eventhough thetextresemblesa novel), AlainFerry affirms his appreciation ofFlaubert as wellas hispassionforreading andwriting literature, celebrating his love for Madame Bovary in a stylethatpresentsitself as scholarly whilealso jubilatory andvery witty. As thetextopens,thenarrator hasjustbeenabandoned byhiswife, Èva,for a sailor. Asa result, heseeks to purgehimself of her memory andtosurvive hisordealbyturning to literature and,morespecifically, to a bovaryste substitution ofEva's absentimagewiththatof thefictional EmmaBovary from Flaubert's mostwell-known novel. Through seventy short chapters that seemlike journalentries, Ferrypresents his readerswitha morecontemporary bovarysme, reversing thegesture of thefictional Emma'schoiceofmodels from other authors bychoosing Emmaherself as a model,creating his own variationon the central problematic ofFlaubert's novel. However, Ferry's mostremarkable originality lies perhapsin his contribution to another, morepositiveaspectofbovarysme outlined by Jules de Gaultier inhis1902text Le Bovarysme, when hestates: "seconcevoirautre , c'estvivre etprogresser" (toconceive ofoneself as other is to liveand progress). In Mémoire d'un foud'Emma, Ferry presents Emmaas thefictive "other" whoseimageis transposed ontoreality through the narrator's imagination, ina relationshipthat dependsas muchonFlaubert 's text as onhisreal-life situation of aspiringauthorand voracious reader. In Ferry's insightful writing 741WorldLiterature Today andhisnarrator's willful self-deception , thegesture normally dismissed as escapismthrough novels provides , infact, a useful perspective to approaching literary characters and tounderstanding thenovelitself, in itsattempts tostrike a harmonious balance between whatitisandwhat itdesires tobecome. Intheend,both Ferry and his narrator conceiveof themselves as "other/' intertextually andstylistically appropriating Flaubert 's writing and Emma'sreading. Through thecathartic potential of literature, thenarrator, by way of Emma'sbody,subsequently works hiswaythrough hisproblems and emerges from hisdespair byfalling inlovewith hislibrarian, eventually substituting herimageforthatof Eva's.Moreover, inallowing hisnarrator tohavea relationship witha realperson, Ferry reveals hisdesire toleavetheimage ofFlaubert's heroineintact , inviting thenext reader to explore andembrace hisorherown bovarysme and, as Ferrystates,to "openEmma." Albert SamuelWhtsman University ofOklahoma Juan Forn.Ningún hombre es una isla. Buenos Aires. Emecé. 2010. 268 pages. ARS$63. isbn 978-95-00432-21-4 Thetitle ofthis book,Ningún hombre es una isla(No man is an island), could be the sloganof any good reader who, like Borges,understandsthat literature is infinite. The titleitself summarizes a history of multiple readings. Initially, italludes toa text byJoseph Brodsky inwhich theRussianpoetrecounts whathe experienced thefirst timehe read John Donne'sfamous linesasanepigraph inErnest Hemingway's novel, For WhomtheBell Tolls. Brodsky's text serves, inturn, as theepigraph forthisnewbookbytheArgentine novelist JuanForn...