since the iran contra hearings, i was transformed from a critic of my mother tongue, into its enemy
that language, had been debased & degraded before. cold war historiography had been nothing but mendacity, profane in the sense that the people, the people who had made the history, were excluded
it was my intention as a poet & a dramatist, to do damage to the language, i understood that it was an impossible enterprise, but i know all my work since that time, has been a relentless & implacable attack
it is not strange to me today that my poetry possesses a significant connection with preislamic poetry, i have deliberate stripped the language to its most brutal function
when i finally decided to live in france nearly a quarter of a century ago, i was not researching a redemptive language, simply a distance, that the french language permits
i am the enemy of my mother tongue, i remain its enemy
c b novembre 2013
P.S.
someone has asked what does that mean in practice, it means everything, everything is interrogated until it disappears & reappears again in another enunciation that is is interrogated again, on & on until breath reemerges dominant. it means a rigorous rejection of anglo american medias. i scan almost everything because i, like you have read it ten thousand times - i drown myself in research in french & italian in fields that i learn from reading, for example geology . silence filled with silence stillness. sufficient stillness that english words like 'compelling' make me want to vomit. my work in french is entirely based on listening, interrogative listening simply because so much of it with my communities is in argot or patois. that is to say i read very differently than i write & i write exclusively for breath
that language, had been debased & degraded before. cold war historiography had been nothing but mendacity, profane in the sense that the people, the people who had made the history, were excluded
it was my intention as a poet & a dramatist, to do damage to the language, i understood that it was an impossible enterprise, but i know all my work since that time, has been a relentless & implacable attack
it is not strange to me today that my poetry possesses a significant connection with preislamic poetry, i have deliberate stripped the language to its most brutal function
when i finally decided to live in france nearly a quarter of a century ago, i was not researching a redemptive language, simply a distance, that the french language permits
i am the enemy of my mother tongue, i remain its enemy
c b novembre 2013
P.S.
someone has asked what does that mean in practice, it means everything, everything is interrogated until it disappears & reappears again in another enunciation that is is interrogated again, on & on until breath reemerges dominant. it means a rigorous rejection of anglo american medias. i scan almost everything because i, like you have read it ten thousand times - i drown myself in research in french & italian in fields that i learn from reading, for example geology . silence filled with silence stillness. sufficient stillness that english words like 'compelling' make me want to vomit. my work in french is entirely based on listening, interrogative listening simply because so much of it with my communities is in argot or patois. that is to say i read very differently than i write & i write exclusively for breath