- Paperback: 191 pages
- Publisher: Sheep Meadow Press; Bilingual French-English ed. edition (Nov 1 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1878818872
- ISBN-13: 978-1878818874
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 322 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
An English-to-French translator who was awarded the French Legion of Honor for her work on Emily Dickinson, Malroux resurfaces on these shores with this book-length autobiographical poem set in France before and during WWII. Germany, in a child's impulsive perception, is largely obviated by the more immediate particulars of Mother and Father, sister, village square and classroom. "My first death," she writes, "is the rabbit's." The larger, war-torn world increasingly encroaches as the narrator ages--moving from a "she" to an "I"--and intensifies during Occupation. Malroux's father, a district official and devout Socialist, became involved in the Resistance and was sent to a concentration camp, where he died of dysentery. From the start, the speaker confronts the futility of locating her child self in the larger forces that shaped her youth, "History/ brutally carrying out/ Time's orders." Such clich‚s aren't helped by Marilyn Hacker's translation, which privileges sense over music, but the French on facing pages lets readers hear the more engaging lines: "Ma soeur mon enfant tu t'enchantes/ de comptines sacr‚es." (Hacker also provides an introduction.) Bilingual selections from Malroux's shorter poems were published by Wake Forest in 1996 to little notice, and this volume is unlikely to fare much better, but it furthers Sheep Meadow's commitment to examining WWII and its aftermath from as many angles as possible.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review
"From the start, the speaker confronts the futility of locating her child self in the larger forces that shaped her youth . . . [this volume furthers Sheep Meadow's commitment to examining WWII and its aftermath from as many angles as possible." --Publishers Weekly
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Remembering A Long Gone Sun,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Long-Gone Sun: A Poem (Paperback)
Claire Malroux's booklength poem sequence, A Long Gone Sun, beautifully evokes life during the '30s and '40s in a small village near Toulouse in the south of France, evidently Saint- Sulpice or nearby, where traces of that life can still be seen and felt. Certainly the memory of World War Two still lives vigorously in that milieu of the poet's father, who was active in progressive politics and the Resistance, and who died as a result. The book is a subtle tribute to him and the world he helped to preserve. Malroux's unobtrusive imagist style suits her project, an oblique autobiography without egotism, a Bildungsroman in poetic form that also meditates on history's complex impacts upon the individual. She tells the truth but tells it "slant," as Emily Dickinson recommended. The translation by Marilyn Hacker echoes with grace and fidelity the syntax and internal rhymes of the original. Hacker has done a favor for American readers by introducing both a fine writer and a time and place worthy of our thoughtful attention.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review) 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Remembering A Long Gone Sun,
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Long-Gone Sun: A Poem (Paperback)
Claire Malroux's booklength poem sequence, A Long Gone Sun, beautifully evokes life during the '30s and '40s in a small village near Toulouse in the south of France, evidently Saint- Sulpice or nearby, where traces of that life can still be seen and felt. Certainly the memory of World War Two still lives vigorously in that milieu of the poet's father, who was active in progressive politics and the Resistance, and who died as a result. The book is a subtle tribute to him and the world he helped to preserve. Malroux's unobtrusive imagist style suits her project, an oblique autobiography without egotism, a Bildungsroman in poetic form that also meditates on history's complex impacts upon the individual. She tells the truth but tells it "slant," as Emily Dickinson recommended. The translation by Marilyn Hacker echoes with grace and fidelity the syntax and internal rhymes of the original. Hacker has done a favor for American readers by introducing both a fine writer and a time and place worthy of our thoughtful attention.
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