Un Coeur rouge dans la glace by Robert Lalonde

Abstract

LALONDE, ROBERT. Un Cœur rouge dans la glace. Montréal: Boréal, 2009. ISBN 978-27646 -0646-9. Pp. 240. $22,95 Can. Professor of dramatic arts, actor, and author Robert Lalonde draws the reader into a haunting and poetic world in his most recent collection of stories, Un Cœur rouge dans la glace. The book is composed of three stories, “Souvent je prononce un adieu”, “Un Cœur rouge dans la glace”, and “Traduire Alison”, which explore how human experience is recomposed through memory and reflection. Each story’s protagonist suffers emotional and creative sterility following the loss of a loved one. Lost in his solitude, the protagonist requires the intervention of another character, who invites him to leave his familiar surroundings and his spiritual stagnation. Through the exteriorization of his anguish and the revelation of painful secrets, he rediscovers joy in life and finds inspiration to create through writing and song. Lalonde explains that the title story’s name is a metaphor for any dangerous attraction that can drive one to madness, this “berlue qui vous prend comme si le soleil a chaviré” (115). In the three stories, romantic or brotherly love and their loss cause each protagonist to lose touch with reality. Each character’s heart is figuratively frozen until another person intervenes. “Un Cœur rouge dans la glace” tells of Antoine’s quest to find his brother, who has run away. As Antoine heads north, lost in his preoccupations, a chance meeting with a little girl, and his friendship with Nicolas, restore his faith in humanity. As Nicolas guides Antoine through snowy surroundings, he encourages Antoine to articulate his sadness. In this second story, Lalonde gives winter landscapes a ghostly quality through his poetic prose. The author juxtaposes their pallor with splotches of fiery color such as that of a blood red couch (106), the orange sun’s reflection in the snow (109), and the image of an Amerindian’s red heart encased in ice (115). In the first story, “Souvent je prononce un adieu”, a widower has lost the desire to live and write. Unable to extricate himself from memories of the past, the protagonist thinks he sees, one day, Virginia Woolf in his garden. The professor’s dialogues with Woolf are a prelude to his helping one of his students who is struggling with her own ghosts. She will reciprocate, drawing the narrator out of his self-imposed exile from humanity. As the narrator travels with her to the ocean, he regains a taste for life and literary creation. “Traduire Alison” continues the title story’s depiction of nature, whose grandeur and unpredictability remind the characters of their relative insignificance. When the disenchanted narrator sends an e-mail to Alison, a poet he admires, she invites him to visit her at the ocean shore. The ocean tides and sea life are awe-inspiring, but also mirror the character’s emotions. Alison lends the narrator her red quill pen, and he sets to work translating her poetry from English to French. Then he realizes that to translate others’ writings is a step towards translating oneself. Each story acknowledges the literature that inspired it, such as Melville, Woolf, and Nelligan. The stories in Lalonde’s collection illustrate how linguistic creation embraces one’s mortality while reaffirming the will to survive. Each protagonist moves beyond his past by inserting it into the present. Self-identity is a collage of experiences , and we have to recognize, as the narrator of “Traduire Alison” explains, that “le péché originel, c’est d’être incapable de vivre à fond l’instant” (228). Bloomsburg University (PA) Nathalie G. Cornelius 616 FRENCH REVIEW 84.3 ...