Angelic Echoes by Ralph Sarkonak

Author:Ralph Sarkonak [Sarkonak, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0802047947
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2016-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

SELF-REFLEXIVITY

In reading Guibert, we discover that living with AIDS is like living in a gallery of mirrors, with the result that it is difficult if not impossible to determine when self-regard, self-revelation, and self-reflexivity interconnect, overlap, or end up meaning the same thing. This is a universe where writing goes hand in glove with reading. References to other writers may take the form of a list of authors admired: “Les écrivains morts faisaient la ronde autour de moi, une sarabande où ils m’entraînaient gentiment en me tirant par la main, le tourbillon de mes fantômes chéris” (HCR, 79-80) (“Dead writers danced in a ring all round me, in a saraband into which they gently drew me by the hand, the whirlwind of my beloved phantoms” [MRH, 54]), a clause followed by a long list: “Tchekov, Leskov, Babel, Boulgakov, Dostoïeski, Soseki, Tanizaki, Stifter, Musil, Kafka, Ungar, Walser, Bernhard, Flaubert, Hamsun.” There are also numerous direct references to Guibert’s other works, as well as the book that the reader is in the process of reading. In Eric Michaels’s AIDS diary Unbecoming, he mentions that he was “warned against too much explicit reflexivity, a principle that I agree to, even as I sit here violating it” (19). Guibert, by contrast, often writes about writing, about its intoxicating ability to make him if not forget at least live through the pain: “It’s when I’m writing that I feel most alive” (CP, 106). He also describes the kind of style he aspires to, a style quite different from the previous one: “J’avais envie d’une écriture gaie, limpide, immédiatement ‘communicante,’ pas d’une écriture tarabiscotée” (PC, 172) (“I longed to create a style that would be gay, limpid, immediately ‘accessible,’ not overloaded with ornamentation” [CP, 148]). In the last part of the sentence quoted Guibert seems to be referring to the ornate style used in Des aveugles. As for the adjective gaie, it probably does not mean “gay” in the contemporary sense – at least at the first level – since Guibert has not used the spelling gay, which is the most common one used in France when referring to gay liberation, for example. On the other hand, in other parts of the francophone world, such as Québec, where gaie has acquired the same meaning as in English since the 1970s, this sentence would be interpreted as a description of writing that is specifically homosexual, or better, homophile. But the two meanings are not mutually exclusive and, while not an gay activist, Guibert must have been sufficiently aware of current usage of the word gay in France to want to hint at the idea of same-sex love. Another example from the same chapter of Le Protocole compassionnel, describes Guibert’s use of gai to refer to the concept of an “open work,” one in which the ending is neither predetermined nor even known: “cette marge d’imprévu réservée à l’écriture vivante, à l’écriture gaie” (PC, 173) (“that margin of the unpredictable that is the prerogative of living writing, writing that is gay” [CP, 149]).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.