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BEYOND ELSEWHERE by French poet Gabriel Arnou–Laujeac translated by Hélène Cardona Winner of a Hemingway Grant SAINT JULIAN PRESS BOOK REVIEW |
BEYOND ELSEWHERE by French poet Gabriel Arnou–Laujeac, translated by
Hélène Cardona, creates a new mythopoetic language of transformation. The story
told moves the reader across a lyrical landscape that marks the passage of one person’s
journey through human desire, passionate love, awakening, and spiritual
transformation.
The lover and the beloved are one,
becoming one flesh, nearly one mind. They are wedded to one another in a
mystical sense. Twin souls, who embrace each other willingly and begin to touch
on a mystery, which lies just beyond their earthly sense, where something more
is revealed and unveiled.
“The light is here, with her.
She reveals herself to my gaze naturally, the way spring unveils the
blueness of sky or the gold of your skin. She slowly removes makeup, masks and
ornaments, and gives me a vision of herself bewitched, of herself bewitching:
she adores me and I unlock her.
Sprung raw from a virginal flame, passion takes us whole under its animal
breath; the sun sparks impale our bodies galloping in a crash of oceans.”
This is poetic myth making in the
truest sense, and in discovering what wisdom we can within life as it unfolds
before us. If we will listen
carefully, breathing in and out with each verse, becoming more aware and
embrace an abundant life, unafraid of our own humanity. Especially when we are
lost within desire, and come to know that the search for the beloved is a quest
for the soul held softly within eternity.
The poem asks us to stand “beyond the borders of nothingness” and
to embrace, the infinite possibilities of “becoming
and non-becoming, within everything and outside of everything,” resting in
the openness of creation.
“I remember a Kingdom that is neither here nor elsewhere, but which
offers its love right here to those by emptiness abandoned. I remember the All
Other. It was me.”
The poet’s words through translation
become an invocation to the heavens and of the spirit. They transport us to the
edge of what we know, beseeching us endlessly, to see the unseen and invisible
reality that surrounds us every day. In an exquisite tongue, the poet invites
us to partake of all that is and has been, beyond ordinary time and vision.
He speaks to us:
“Come
I hold the keys to another world: a solar dynasty triumphing
over the arbitrary as well as over dust.
Beyond this day-by-day too narrow…
Come
I’ll take you where the wind-people exile themselves…
I take you: to Yourself.”
In the final stanzas, the poem gives
us an invocation of the spirit; an innovative set of prayers, which invokes a
divine memory we may celebrate as a remembrance of spirit and truth. And as
sacramental liturgy, where we recall who we are within creation and beyond,
this realm of many different perceptions, worlds without end.
I invoke the new dawn nestling in the aurora…
I invoke the fiery opening between Heaven and Earth…
I invoke the music of the spheres…
The poetic journey resolves to its
essence, its whole, and the gestalt in this narrative poem’s final stanzas.
They speak of truth, of memory and pathways, and finally of silence. Become a
fellow Traveller
with us, take the journey and discover these words in your own worthy time.
See, what you might have forgotten, or what you have learned and remembered
within your life. Let your soul reminisce, in other words, in these words.
Ron Starbuck
Publisher ~ Saint Julian Press
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Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac is one of
French poetry's most innovative new voices. The author of the
acclaimed Beyond Elsewhere (Editionsdu
Cygne, 2013), he graduated from Sciences Po
(Institute of Political Studies) and holds a Research Master's in Human Rights (Fondements des Droits de l'Homme). He also studied Western Philosophy at university
and Indian Classical Philosophy with traditional acharyas
(Hindu scholars). Publications include Petite anthologie de la jeune poésie française (Éditions Géhess, 2009), Le
livre de la prière (Éditions de l'Inférieur,
2013), Les Citadelles, Poésie
Directe, Littérales, Polyglotte, Recours au Poème, Testament, 3è Millénaire and L'Opinion indépendante.
He contributed to the book Irak, la faute, with Alain Michel and Fabien Voyer
(Éditions du Cerf, 2000). |
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Hélène
Cardona is a poet, literary
translator and actor, the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a
Hemingway Grant and the USA Best Book Award. Her books include three poetry
collections, most recently Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry), and Dreaming
My Animal Selves (Salmon Poetry); and three translations: Beyond
Elsewhere (White Pine Press), Ce que nous portons (by Dorianne Laux, Éditions du Cygne), and Walt
Whitman's Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb.
Junimea Editions published a Romanian translation of Dreaming My Animal Selves in 2016. Hélène's
work has also been translated into thirteen languages. She contributes essays
to The London Magazine and co-edits Plume Journal and Fulcrum:
An Anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics. She holds a Master's in
American Literature from the Sorbonne, and taught at Hamilton College &
Loyola Marymount University. |
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