A Matter of Blue (Lannan Translations Selection Series)

by Jean-Michel Maulpoix, Dawn Cornelio (Translation)

Translated from the French with an Introduction by Dawn Cornelio,  A Matter of Blue  has gone through multiple French printings and is noted poet, essayist, and critic Jean-Michel Maulpoix’s most publicly and critically-acclaimed book. Throughout the collection, prose poems and blank verse operate on a recognizable, accessible level, offering a narrative voice struggling for understanding in a postmodern, sometimes desolate world. In  A Matter of Blue,  Jean-Michel Maulpoix uses the color blue to encompass melancholy and nostalgia, but also the joy and hope inherent in life.

Genres: Poetry, France

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 1992

About the author

The author of more than twenty volumes of French poetry (in blank verse fragments and in prose) and of several volumes of essays and criticism, he teaches modern French literature at the University Paris X Nanterre and is the director of the quarterly literary journal Le Nouveau Recueil. He is an alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud.

His most acclaimed work 'Une histoire de bleu' (translated in English as 'A Matter of Blue') consists of prose poems and blank verse in which, writes translator Dawn Cornelio, he 'uses the color blue to encompass melancholy and nostalgia, but also the joy and hope inherent in life'.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

They look at the blue, but will never know how to say it.

The world is a vast unknown country, contemplated from terraces. We choose rooms with a view, that give a view of the sea, even when we know the sea does not give itself up. We can hear its shouts beyond the shutters: it is night's throat, the voice of that which doesn't speak, the mute recitation of distances, the muffled chatting of silence, a beautiful blend of words placed like plaster on the tongue's emptiness... It says nothing, explains nothing, teaches no lesson. And still it is a good idea to lend an ear.Listening to this empty noise is nothing but living, staying within ourselves:inhabiting our own pallor, with this odd desire for colors that gnaw at us, irritate us, this taste for sugar left in our mouth by certain words. Infinity sticks to our eyelids and powders our face like a clown's.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death falls asleep right against the sea.

Calm, in the depths, very blue, beneath the algae shadows
that daylight does not penetrate and that that no desire disturbs,
there where all that is right is the silence of twisted-mouthed
fishes, of sleepy-scaled mermaids, and old, cruel-hearted crabs.

No chance of reaching the sky, of ending up as dust or smoke.
The eyelid no longer closes over the eye. Energized by a slow,
black undertow, the body begins to open like a large flower.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy FUCK. I didn’t even know it was possible to write like this. That first page is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I’ve read in my entire life. Listen to this:

We know love exists through hearsay.

Seated on a rock or under a red umbrella, lying in the field buzzing with insects, our hands clasped behind our necks, kneeling in the cool darkness of a church or huddled on a straw chair with the room’s four walls, head lowered, eyes fixed on a rectangle of white paper, we dream of estuaries, tumultuous surf, clearing weather and tides. We listen to the inexhaustible chant of the sea within us as it rises and falls in our heads, like the flow and ebb of the strange desire we have for sky, for love, and all that we cannot touch with our hands.

If I had a bone to pick, it’s that not every poem lived up to that opening. Like, Maulpoix is obvs a beast of a writer. And I appreciate that this little collection of prose poems brings us on a defined journey. But some sections, like the one on death, did absolutely nothing for me. And some of the pieces - like, what was the poem about a stripper? - they fit thematically with the arc, but were a disappointment in terms of language. And yeah, that’s kind of the point I guess. But idk, I’m an American heathen who's more interested in an exquisite turn of phrase than his witty thematic symmetry. When someone can write like that, I want him to lay it all on me.

Still a 5 star read though because despite swathes of it being a 3* read, in that first chapter, Maulpoix does the most mind-blowing things with words.

[Pnbn · Rating 3 out of 5]

مشكلة الشعر المترجم أنك تقرأ للمترجم لا للشاعر، والشعر خاصة وسط حسي الهامي، وليس صنعة مثل باقي الكتابة -وهذه من الفجوات بين المتقدمين والمتأخرين فيه- فترجمت الشعر أصعب بكثير من الأدب، بل أجزم أن الشعر خاصة يستحيل ترجمته للأسف. أختي متخصصة باللغة الفرنسية بماجستير للترجمة وسألتها العون في فك بعض صفحات الكتاب لفهم الجانب الفرنسي غير ذلك كانت تجربة طريفة أخذت وقتا مني بسبب ذلك (لكن تمكنت من اقناعها بقراءة أزهار الشر، فلما تنتهي منها بقرأها عشان أخذ بمساعدتها هههه)
لكن بتجاهل تعقيد ذلك ومحاولتي لقراءة بعض الصفحات بالفرنسية مما تيسر لي فهمه والعودة أحيانا للترجمة لتمام فهم ما كتب ولأحس بكلمات وطبيعة القافية الفرنسية الغير موجودة بالانجليزية عادة... للأسف المجموعة نفسها أنظمة القوافي فيها لم تكن مهمة للدرجة وأحس الشعر الفرنسي مال للانجليزي وحاد عن الالماني مع العمر.
كتاب طيب بعض الأبيات بتاخد وقت تدبر فيهم أفكار جيدة وتعابير أصيلة تحتاج لفرنسي عشان يخرجها، لو معتاد سينماهم أو بتحب النوع ده من الشعر فهذه المجموعة بتمتعك.