Séculaires par Olivier Barbarant

Abstract

Reviewed by: Séculaires par Olivier Barbarant Khadija Khalifé and Deborah Gaensbauer Barbarant, Olivier. Séculaires. Gallimard, 2022. ISBN 978-2-07-298386-3. Pp. 128. In his latest autobiographical collection, composed in Barbarant's characteristic supple blend of diverse forms of poetry and sonorous prose pieces, the poet, born in 1966, meditates at a mid-point in his life on both intimate and broadly historical memories and experiences spanning forty years. Crucially for Barbarant, they bridge a change of centuries and altered personal perspectives, hence the title conjuring a significant sweep of time. "Jadis j'étais l'été/À présent je le vois" (38). The first section, essentially an affective balance sheet, continues in the lyrical and sensual vein of his Un grand instant (prix Apollinaire 2019). Barbarant probes in "ma mémoire grenier en désordre" childhood vignettes blended by time into dream-memory hybrids, conjurations of intimate moments with lovers, and confrontations with aging (20). Engagingly, too, he chronicles the relationship to words, sounds and rhythms that has impelled him to "faire entendre quelque chose de sa perception de son émotion, dans le corps respiratoire du langage" (49). His melancholic meditations become more searingly political in the second section, which he opens by declaring: "[i]l n'y a plus de paille dans l'étable espérance" (55). An extensive segment entitled "Complainte à la charnière des temps" limns consequential events for each year from 1981 through 2020. The strongest pieces, corroborating his conviction that "[c]'est à l'intérieur que la vérité creuse son sillon," capture his acute sense of light and color in evocations of intimate experiences that bear historical weight (95). The prose elegy on the fire-ravaged Notre-Dame Cathedral, for example, conjures student memories of emerging from the train "directement sous son soleil/Elle était maternelle volumineuse et couleur de blé tendre," to render the momentous reverberations of the cultural loss with poignant simplicity (18). "C'était comme si chaque pierre était un sable cristallisé/un morceau du pays mêlé à l'intime mémoire" (95). As the calendar moves toward the millennium, the poetic reflections increasingly focus on social injustice: "[d]es violences du temps naissent celles des êtres/Brillent dans les regards l'éclat d'affreux couteaux" (99). Séculaires advances toward a grim finale with "Fils de feu," ten poems concerning a global rash of self-immolations. Barbarant concludes, nonetheless, by juxtaposing darkness with a positive entreaty. "Que vaut un siècle dont les fils/souffrent tant qu'ils se font bûcher?" (125). This despairing query in the final poem, "Envoi," is followed by a plea that alters the strictly personal context of his earlier paeans to corporeal intimacy: "[e]nfants, brûlez/de colère/et [End Page 217] de désir, mais laissez/l'ardeur à l'âme, à la langue,/et que d'étreinte seule/flambent vos paumes nues" (125). "Envoi" connects to previous affirmations of life in the collection but responds to concrete socio-political violence by tempering the ferocity of an earlier exhortation: "cri ou couteau mais que/ la vie/ déborde" (20). A disciple of Louis Aragon, Barbarant fears neither emotions nor the mundane: "[i]l sut que frémir ne serait jamais ridicule" (45). Although a few poems in Séculaires come across as palely sentimental and nostalgic, his intertwining of personal intimacy, public history, and combat against the "grésil des écrans" creates overall a compelling work (105). [End Page 218] Deborah Gaensbauer Regis University (CO), emerita Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French