Non réconcilié

by Michel Houellebecq, Vladimir D. Janković (Translator)

Selected poems from the critically acclaimed author of Atomised and Submission

Dual-language edition

This selection of poems chosen from four collections shines a fresh light on Michel Houellebecq and emphasises the radical singularity of his work. Drawing on similar themes as his novels, Unreconciled is a journey into the depths of individual experience and universal passions.

Divided into five parts, Unreconciled forms a narrative of love, hopelessness, catastrophe and, ultimately, redemption. In a world of supermarkets and public transport, Houellebecq manages to find traces of divine grace even as he exposes our inexorable decline into chaos.

Told through forms and rhythms that are both ancient and new, with language steeped in the everyday, Houellebecq’s vision of our era is one brimming with tensions that cannot – and will not – be reconciled.

Genres: Poetry, France

221 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2014

About the author

Michel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas), born 26 February 1958 (birth certificate) or 1956 on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire; to detractors he is a peddler, who writes vulgar sleazy literature to shock. His works though, particularly Atomised, have received high praise from the French literary intelligentsia, with generally positive international critical response, Having written poetry and a biography of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, he brought out his first novel Extension du domaine de la lutte in 1994. Les particules élémentaires followed in 1998 and Plateforme, in 2001. After a disastrous publicity tour for this book, which led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, he went to Ireland to write. He currently resides in France, where he has been described as "France’s biggest literary export and, some say, greatest living writer". In 2010 he published La Carte et le Territoire (published the same year in English as The Map and the Territory) which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt; and, in 2015, Submission.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

And you were the only horizon of my night;
*
A fine and soft fog crystallises in silence
In the depths of the universe
And a thousand destinies unravel and advance,
The waves of the sea.

[Ioana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Îi dau 4 steluțe pentru că au fost anumite poezii care mi-au plăcut tare mult și pe care mi le-am și notat.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a porn cinema, wheezing pensioners
Discrete, secrete, excrete.
This is as close to love
As any of us are likely to get.

[Jovi Ene · Rating 3 out of 5]

”Când va fi să plec de pe lume
Fă în așa fel încât să fii de față
Fă ca în ultimele clipe antume
Să te privesc cu speranță

Animal tandru, cu sâni ce mă-mbată,
Sâni ce-i dezmierd la capătul patului,
Ochii-mi închid: trupul tău, fată,
E hotarul regatului.”

Poezie citadină, plină de semnele orașului, de supermarketului, ale zonelor industriale, ale metroului; un personaj misterios străbate versurile, pe care nu-l putem privi altfel decât ca fiind autorul însuși, Michel Houellebecq, care deseori pare dezamăgit, îmbătrânit de această lume, așa că devine dur și este acoperit deseori de depresie... Dar, na, scrie bine și are mereu cuvintele potrivite la el.

[QBD Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although he has made his name as a novelist of great insight and both a suave and delicate complexity, poetry was Houellebecq's first form of artistic expression, and remains his passion. This collection, taken from several French publications, is in dual language form, with the original sur la gauche and in English sur la droite; and as far as the translation quality goes, Houellebecq is quoted as saying Bowd is his favourite of his translators into the language of Donald Duck.

This controversial and provocative writer could perhaps only survive, today, in a nation like France. He is a singularity; nobody writes like he does, even though we live the same life that he does, essentially ... while we wouldn't care to always admit it. Some of these poems burn you where you are most flammable, some seek our more wet spaces, just to be doused in your reading. While the English doesn't always measure up to the extravagance of the rhythm and cadence of the verse, it attracts enough to it.

In an age where poetry as a genre is being defined by Instragram account-ants, my God, this book is something tragic to hold on to while your sinking in it. Worth every penny; worth every word. It should be enough to make you learn the language, if you aren't already … the language of French or the language of poetry … or both.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, Houellebecq's poetry is not very good. Or the translator isn't. It's always hard to tell. I picture him smoking a cigarette in a dark corner, reading Nietzsche and scribbling about dead bodies and hopelessness. (And unfortunately this image makes me laugh... probably not the desired reaction.)

I've read a lot of Houellebecq and usually enjoy his fiction. These poems feel more like something he wrote for himself, and probably they should have stayed that way. It is nice to see the original French.

Some I liked more than the rest:

[Untitled]
"...We have passed through weariness and desires
Without finding the taste of childhood dreams,
There is nothing left behind our smiles,
We are prisoners of our transparency."

Variation 49: The Final Journey
"...Our eyes entangle, interrogate in vain
The thickness of space..."

And one that ends in "the possibility of an island," which is the title of one of his novels.

Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy through Edelweiss.

[Matthew Wilder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Houellebecq doing poetry—and I’m not being cute about this, kids—is not too far off from William Shatner doing “Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds.” One thinks one moments that he is even aware of this and is having us on a bit. The prissy diction that Houellebecq thinks is poetic, the vague abstractions that strike him as an Image with Ideas—truly, this is a dude who went to agronomist school.

[Aśku · Rating 2 out of 5]

Czego jak czego, ale takich tandetnych rymów to się tutaj nie spodziewałam. Słabiutko.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe I like Houllebecq’s earlier poetry better, but probably just prefer the translations by Delphine Grass and Timothy Matthews in ‘The Art Of Struggle’ (Herla, 2010), minus some Britishisms. Curious, I looked for crossover between the two collections. Here’s Grass/Matthews’ version of “The Dole” (i.e. unemployment):

I cross the city with nothing in mind
And the endless turnover of souls,
The overhead line, I know it by heart;
Days go by, I’ve nothing to say.

Oh, those afternoons coming back from the social
Thinking about rent and other morose doings,
Vegetate as much as you like, you’re still getting older,
It doesn’t change anything, neither summer, nor things.

A few months later you lose your benefits
Autumn comes back slowly like gangrene;
Money is the only thought, the only law,
You are really alone, and it lingers and insists.

The others go on in their existential ballet,
Behind the glass partitions you’re sheltered away;
Winter is back. Their lives seem real.
Maybe, somewhere, your future is waiting.

***

VS. Bowd’s “Unemployment” from ‘Unreconciled’

Crossing a city offering nothing any more
Amongst human beings endlessly renewed
I know it by heart, this overground metro;
Days pass by without me saying a word.

Oh! these afternoons, coming back from unemployment
Thinking again of the rent, morose meditation
We may not live, but we get old all the same
And nothing changes nothing, neither summer, nor things.

After a few months you run out of benefits
And autumn returns, slow as gangrene;
Money becomes the only thought, the only law,
You’re truly alone. And you drag on, and you drag on...

Others continue their existential dance,
You’re protected by a transparent wall,
Winter has returned; their life seems real.
Maybe, somewhere, the future awaits you.

***

Bowd’s Houellebecq is a vague, awkward creature (“amongst human beings endlessly renewed”?) I’ll leave it to French readers to tell me which one is closer to the original, but I know which book I’m more likely to go back to.

[Caleb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Houellebecq stays on brand in his poetry, ruminating on many of the same themes he explores in his novels (existential dread, the decline of Western civilization, loneliness/unrequited love, etc.). To be sure, there are a few gems here ("Unemployment" and "The news mixes up like needles" really stuck out to me), but I found many of these poems hard to connect with. The language, in parts, is bland. The motifs and images get a little redundant. Perhaps I need a distinct narrator/protagonist to latch onto? Whatever it is, this collection was just meh for me.

[Ethan Ksiazek · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 is not a knock on one of my favorites. Houellebecq has been my gateway into modern literary engagement; he pulled me from a dry reading history. But I expected his poems to be more decorated. This seemed too stylistically austere for me, too barebones. I liked a few parts, but overall read this to get to the next. Here’s something I liked:

Skin is a borderline object,
It is almost not an object
In the night corpses live,
In the body lives a regret.

The heart spreads a beat
Right inside the face
There is blood beneath our nails,
In our bodies movement starts;

Blood overloaded with toxins
Circulates in the capillaries
It transports the divine substance,
Blood stops and all is clear.

A moment of absolute consciousness
Passes through the aching body.
Moment of joy, of pure presence:
The world appears to our eyes.

____________________________

also,

Before, there was love, or its possibility;
There were anecdotes, digressions and silences
There was your first stay
In a serene institution
Where days are repainted
In a slightly cream white.

There was forgetting, almost forgetting, there was a departure
A possibility of departure
You went to bed later and later
And without sleeping
At night
You began to feel your teeth grind
In the silence.

Then you thought of taking dance lessons
For later,
For another life
That you would live at night,
Especially at night,
And not alone.

But it's over,
You're dead
Now, you're dead
And you're truly in the night
For your eyes are gnawed away,
And you're truly in the silence
For you no longer have ears,
And you're truly alone

[C. Varn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gavin Bowd's translations of Michel Houellebecq render him laconic and often dry, but the French verses are right nearby for those who can check Bowd's work. While the dryness can be off-pointing and sometimes feel a bit forced in its existential rumination, Houellebecq's complexity does come out in re-reading and a lyrical turn comes out that is often lacking in his more polemical fiction. Many people used to the polemics may find the lack of controversial politics in the poems either refreshing or suspect depending, but it does flesh Houellebecq out to me to have this decade-spanning collection in English.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read somewhere that Houellebecq thinks of himself as a poet before a novelist, and though I enjoyed this collection and see a distinct line running through all of his work, I definitely prefer his novels. I appreciate that this is a bilingual edition - perhaps as my French improves that could be of use to me, later. Worth a read if you’re a fan but not at all a place to start with MH.

[antek_czyta · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

jednak było całkiem dobre należy mu się

[Jovana Kuzmanović · Rating 3 out of 5]

Većina pesama mi je nekako prosečna, ali ima nekoliko pravih bisera koji su uspeli da me dirnu, pa je u tom smislu svakako vredno pažnje...

[Ana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book as a gift for my birthday this year, otherwise I probably wouldn't have picked it up by myself. Since I love reading poetry I was excited to read something from a new author. Houellebecq writes prose and poetry, and this is my first book from him that I read. I must say his poetry is quite dark, themes that revolve around death and suicide are very common. I do like to read dark stuff but this wasn't for me. The poetry is harsh and brutal and that often made me uncomfortable. He makes you think about death, the afterlife and rotten decaying bodies. The poems are unusual, sometimes they rhyme and they have good rythm, sometimes they are like small stories, completely free and iconsistent. The author himself says that he doesn't think his poems are the best. He also says that once he writes a poem he never goes back to change it somehow, so his poems remain unaltered and therefore the original emotion they represent stays intact. Although that idea sounds really interesting to me I still think maybe some poems could be made better by revising and changing them. But of course that is just my opinion. In this collection there were some poems I really liked and those I wrote down but I don't feel like I will come back to this book. At least not anytime soon. Two stars not because I think the book is awful and because I wouldn't recommend it, but because it's just not for me. The writing style and the ideas presented do not seem appealing to me, that is not how I like my poetry.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read this for awhile but I wanted to secure a used copy of this. Houellebecq has a pretty uniform and distinctive mode of thinking, and poetry lays that thinking out in the most bare way possible. I think that fiction gives a little more wiggle room. That is to say that I found a lot of his ideas in this collection to be a bit too obviously provocative, or too desperate, or too bored, or too critical of consumerism. It felt a bit like Banksy, to be blunt.

I think that Houellebecq is a religious writer. That is, there is a desperation for belief that is always evading him. I just don't think that it comes off in a way I found especially interesting in this collection. I think his poems need to give more of the personal and less of the provocateur.

One takeaway from this collection: I suspect that the French language has so many better rhyming words than the English language. His best works in this collection are bound to form, of which there are many - it is when he strays from it that the poems fizzle out the most. But even when they are rhyming, I often struggled to parse why he brought up one particular theme over another. In a poet like Arthur Sze, you can see how his individual poems spiral out over dozens of poems, zooming in microscopically and zooming out to see the universe. Houellebecq is more obsessed with the moment and can't see beyond it. His poetry reminded me of Ben Lerner.

That being said, I didn't not enjoy reading this. It just felt contained rather than expansive. I think that's what he wanted.

[Julian Gallo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been a big fan of Houellebecq's novels since reading 'The Possibility of An Island' a few years back — as well as having the opportunity to see his bizarre and amazing art exhibit at the Palais Tokyo in Paris two years ago — so I was looking forward to reading his poetry. This collection, comprising of poems written between 1991-2013 hint at what will eventually become his fiction, though I find his poetry and fiction to be completely different from one another. The poems are far more personal, sometimes very lyrical, sometimes covering the same themes as his novels, other times topics perhaps he's yet to write about in his fiction. He's been compared to Camus by some though I think, after reading some of these poems, that he has more of a kinship to Celine. It's another side to this truly original writer, one that I enjoyed experiencing very much. Definitely recommended, especially admirers of Houellebecq's fiction.

[sqrt2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

//

malgré les fatigues physiques,
malgré la marche d’hier,
malgré le repas « gastronomiques »,
malgré les litres de bière

//

il y aura la mort tu le sais mon amour
il y aura le malheur et les tout derniers jours
on n’oublie jamais rien, les mots et les visages
flottent joyeusement jusqu’au dernier rivage
il y aura le regret et puis un sommeil très lourd

//

les gens s’en vont, les gens se quittent
ils veulent vivre un peu trop vite
je me sens vieux, mon corps est lourd
il n’y a rien d’autre que l’amour

//

le bloc énuméré
de l’œil qui se referme
dans l’espace écrasé
contient le dernier terme.

//

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Empty poems, many just fragments, that are not done any favors by their dry, sterile translations. I can’t even understand French, but by reading Houellebecq’s originals alongside Bowd’s English, it was clear how much rhythm, rhyme, and nuance were purged. The reading experience itself wasn’t unenjoyable, but there isn’t a single poem in the collection that stands on its own as something to be remembered or studied.

[Marie Bouteille · Rating 3 out of 5]

C'est un peu difficile de juger un recueil de poésie. C'est la première oeuvre de Houellebecq que je lis et j'avoue ne pas avoir une bonne impression du personnage mais j'ai plutôt bien aimé. Il y a beaucoup de souffrance dans ces poèmes. Certains m'ont vraiment remuée. Il faudrait le garder sous la main pour les relire de temps en temps mais on m'a prêté le recueil donc...

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate Houellebecq's writing. particularly his novels, but his cynicism and existential angst , I think, are poorly suited to poetry. The book includes both the English translation and the original French so readers can compare. I found it interesting and insightful, particularly for Houellebecq fans, but not especially easy or poetic.

[Sylvester · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think the English translation did justice to the collection of poetry, but looking at the actual French version, I could see the subtle brilliance of Houellebecq's postmodern misanthropy. I wouldn't say it's a fun read, most of the poems are quite dull but it's a refreshing take on classic poetry.

[Michael O · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of like a more European, philosophical, and sophisticated version of Bukowski - which isn't to say it's on the same level as the bard of bars. Still, if you like Houellebecq's novels, this is worth reading: nihilism pervades, but the imagery is evocative, sometimes beautiful, and there's always the possibility of an escape from the horror, albeit usually brief.

[Sanjuro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't read Houellebecq before, but I was caught by the cover when browsing a book shop, and I read the first few poems, and they made use of exactly the sort of language and rhythm that speaks to me, so as I often do, I bought the book on a whim, and it was what I'd hoped it would be. Apparently, in France, Houellebecq is not without his controversies, but I detected nothing controversial in these poems, just insightful descriptions of the city, and of modern life. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and can't wait to read it again.

[Vladimir Ghinculov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le célèbre écrivain Michel Houellebecq, bien connu pour ses romans, a également exploré d’autres genres littéraires. En fait, il a débuté comme poète. Dans ce livre, nous avons une collection de poèmes couvrant plus de 20 ans d’écriture, anthologués par l’auteur lui-même.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 1 out of 5]

A couple of good ones about being alone in the city/drunk in a supermarket, but mostly just disappointing.

[Murtaza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably 20% of the poems are good and worthwhile, which is a decent ratio.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michel is a man after my own heart