In Search of a Face - by Aurelia Lassaque (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Search of a Face rewrites Homer's ancient myth through a dialogue between Ulysses and an unnamed She.

Originally written in French and Occitan, this narrative poem unfolds at a time that precedes Homer's tale. Explaining why She has no name, Aurélia Lassaque tells us "her name is unknown, for her story has been subsumed in his story and the rewritings of history". But although 'She' has no name, Aurélia gives her a voice in Occitan, through which we re-encounter perennial themes of love and abandonment, war and separation, and the loss of identity they engender. An echo of formal Greek poïesis, at a time before drama, song and poetry were separated, this text was conceived as much for the stage as for the page. It comprises eight Cantos with prose poems in Occitan, while a third voice adopts in French the role of the chorus in ancient classical drama.

While Ulysses roams the seas, 'She' roams the territory of her memory, grapples with its impostor nostalgia, is driven to the brink of madness by the relentless materiality of absence, age and regret. Time is stretched by waiting in perpetuum for her lover's return in the rarefied echo chamber of Elle/Ela's memory, while elements of space are sparsely sketched out, as in a dream.

This poignant rewrite of an archetypal story, at once highly intimate and universal in its reach, explores the toll that war and separation take on those who leave and those who are left behind: "Give me a name, Ulysses/give me a name so that I can wait for you."

Review Quotes

"Aurélia Lassaque's wonderfully spare and potent stanzas prove to be the perfect form for a feminist imagining of an eternal moment stretching from before the time of The Odyssey into the future, into infinity. Like Emily Wilson's recent translation of Homer's great epic, the poems of In Search of a Face create space for a woman, for a woman's experiences of love and of longing, thereby creating space in ancient history and myth for all women. Here, through the voice of this unnamed woman ('She'), the voice of Ulysses, and a choral voice, we learn truths about the intimate, human costs of war. As dramatic as it is poetic, In Search of a Face is a necessary book for our present historical moment." --Gail Wronsky

"She writes in two languages, but speaks with one voice, so much so that her poetry is meant to be said, sung and danced. Aurélia Lassaque, is a young woman whose day of writing began thousands of years ago. In Mexico, Brazil, in the vast Amerindian world, Aurélia Lassaque would be something of a shaman; her readers would read her as they gather wild plants to heal themselves or keep away from curses. As a woman faithful to the happy rumors of her childhood, Lassaque invites us to pagan festivals, primitive rounds, rural phantasmagorias where two stories are always intertwined, one ancient, the other contemporary."--Bruno Doucey

About the Author

Madeleine Campbell is a freelance translator and transdisciplinary researcher at Edinburgh University (Scotland). Her translations of Francophone Maghrebi poets have been published in several magazines. Her translations from this collection have appeared in Poetry at Sangam, on the Poetry International Festival website (Rotterdam), in Poems from the Edge of Extinction and The Arkansas International (2020). Her translation of Lassaque's short story "Whalesong" appeared in Asymptote (2020). Madeleine's edited books on intersemiotic and experiential translation challenge traditional notions of literary translation through the embodied perspective of practitioners working in a range of media.