{"id":301696,"date":"2015-06-16T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2015\/06\/16\/sphinx\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:57:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:57:33","slug":"sphinx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2015\/06\/16\/sphinx\/","title":{"rendered":"Sphinx"},"content":{"rendered":"

Founded in 1960 by such creative pioneers as George Perec, Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, the Oulipo, shorthand for Ouvroir de litt\u00e9rature potentielle<\/em>, came about in when a group of writers and mathematicians sought constraints to find new structures and patterns on their own writing. Anne Garr\u00e9ta\u2019s visionary debut novel Sphinx<\/em>, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan, was the first to be writer born after the group\u2019s founding year to be inducted into the Oulipo, although not until 2000. Sphinx<\/em>, originally published in 1986 in France, it is just now, almost thirty years later, being introduced to American readers by the impressive new publisher Deep Vellum.<\/p>\n

In the past, most Oulipian works have dealt with self-imposed literary constraints such as lipograms or the strictly mathematically structured Invisible Cities<\/em> by Italo Calvino. Garr\u00e9ta has upped the proverbial literary stakes and not merely played with the textuality or form of the work, but she has taken gender out of the language and put the constraint only on the imaginative limits of the reader. Sphinx is innovative in the way it is written—without assigning gender to the narrator and the narrator\u2019s love obsession, making it a cutting-edge work for queer and feminist theory and an avant-garde novel that is more effective with the Oulipian constraint than without. Considering the grammatical calisthenics performed by Emma Ramadan\u2019s translation, these points wouldn\u2019t have been evident as Daniel Levin Becker aptly states in his introduction (via clever footnote):<\/p>\n

\n

If Garr\u00e9ta\u2019s composition of Sphinx was a high-wire act, then Emma Ramadan\u2019s task in carrying it over into a language with at least one crucially important constitutional difference, is, near as I can figure it, akin to one tightrope walker mimicking the high-wire act of a second walker on a steeply diverging tightrope, while also doing a handstand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not simply Garr\u00e9ta\u2019s genderless constraint or Ramadan\u2019s dazzling translation, but it\u2019s the power of the novel itself: sensual, provocative, a hypnotic mix of nightclub noir and midnight morality that plays out in the dance clubs of 1980s Pigalle. Thematically, Garr\u00e9ta explores the power of obsessive love to control our identity, the consequences of completely surrendering to carnal desire as a means of spiritual fulfillment and how memory can haunt and fail us.<\/p>\n

From the very first pages, the narrator\u2019s obsession with A\u272d\u272d\u272d, an American dancer ten years the narrator\u2019s senior, is unmistakable:<\/p>\n

\n

So I must have first spotted A\u272d\u272d\u272d during a melancholic, disinterested contemplation of a succession of bodies I wasn\u2019t trying hard to distinguish, on the stage of a cabaret where some obliging alcoholic had decided to drag me, coming from a club where we\u2019d mingled our disappointments. Asking myself afterward what had made the place so appealing, I couldn\u2019t describe it. In that blur, something must have struck me: something started operating underground, a digging, a tunneling in my mind following the blinding impact of a fragment on y retina. A body, just one, that I hadn\u2019t identified, surreptitiously had filled the place with a seduction that permeated so deeply I couldn\u2019t discover the cause, I couldn\u2019t uncover the root of it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The narrator is cursed with ennui, an incessant melancholy that is not being soothed by following theological studies and, in fact, becomes so disgusted with the teachings of a particular theologian from Freiburg, decides to abandon university study in favor of finishing a thesis at home and under the tutelage of Padre\u272d\u272d\u272d. <\/p>\n

Padre\u272d\u272d\u272d is an important character because he ushers in the extended metaphor that compares the narrator\u2019s obsessive love with A\u272d\u272d\u272d and the late-night life they live at cabarets and dance clubs to religious experiences. Padre\u272d\u272d\u272d introduces the narrator to a nightclub he frequents, The Apocryphe (possibly an allusion to the non-canonical biblical works), which had an “illuminated entrance sheltered from the rain by a white canopy . . .” as if it were a heavenly gate to the demimonde. When the DJ at the Apocryphe dies unexpectedly one night, the narrator is lead by the owner of the club and Padre\u272d\u272d\u272d\u2019s longtime friend, George, to the “DJ booth, a sort of podium that loomed over the dance floor. This glass-enclosed den was attached to one of the walls of the club, which was organized around it in concentric levels, making it the focal point . . .” as if it were a lectern. Then again:<\/p>\n

\n

It was settled that until I found another job I would remain the resident DJ. The Padre couldn\u2019t help acting as sort of a moral guide\u2014he had decided to view this adventure as an ablution, as a necessary submersion in the world of terrestrial passions. It was a type of trial, a confrontation with the excesses of evil designed to steel my character.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Garr\u00e9ta makes clear from the beginning that when the narrator and A\u272d\u272d\u272d are introduced to each other at the club where A\u272d\u272d\u272d dances, ironically named the Eden, “den of inequity,” the there will be a fanatical element, an obsessive devotion on the part of the narrator. After continually trying to convince A\u272d\u272d\u272d that they should consummate their relationship, the narrator finally confesses one night that “the inversion was complete: I made myself into a demon, and A\u272d\u272d\u272d symmetrically put on the mask of the angel that I had abandoned.”<\/p>\n

The narrator and A\u272d\u272d\u272d spend more time together, visiting each other\u2019s clubs, hanging out in a group, and traveling through the early morning hours among flashing lights, pulsing music and the mirrored walls of dance clubs. When they part, desire amplifies the memory of A\u272d\u272d\u272d\u2019s presence, but cannot recreate it:<\/p>\n

\n

A hallucinatory sensation, as if my body had suffered an amputation. This sensation that, even after the split, the separation of our two bodies kept scalding me, kept me awake. I oscillated the entire morning between the rage of embracing only a void, and the memory, the bliss of an instant, of the past night that I was trying so hard to mentally recompose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sphinx<\/em> is an inquest of memory, of why it can remind us of what once was but not reproduce it. Memory becomes the torturer, the unreliable witness and the keeper of people lost, love lost; Garr\u00e9ta creates the narrator\u2019s desire and loss through remembrances of ephemeral sensations\u2014the sight of A\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2019s hips, the feel of A\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2019s skin, and the smell of A\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2019s t-shirt. Then there is the narrator\u2019s memory of being introduced to America so that the narrator can meet A\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2019s family and walk around the Harlem neighborhood where A\u2605\u2605\u2605 grew up:<\/p>\n

\n

An anxiety wells up and distills in me, the feeling of having lost, of having let this setting swallow up, a fragment of my substance that I can\u2019t place or describe, but whose absence makes itself felt throughout my body, invading and voiding it insidiously. A bitter cold, an abyss full of wind cuts through me, the same wind that cut through me as I walked through the streets of Harlem all those years ago. Harlem\u2019s devastation now resides in me, my body haunted by the soul of this spectral city.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Garr\u00e9ta\u2019s prose throughout this five-part narrative is expressive, fluid and intense. There is also the language of violence used to describe desire, the scourge of obsession, and the torment of memory; terms comparative to the destruction left behind after war. This choice she makes and one that Ramadan creatively remains loyal to, enhances the primal, nearly destructive elements of abandon, desire, loss, those emotions which we cannot succinctly express:<\/p>\n

\n

Why give voice to the unarticulated? Because the inexpressible doesn\u2019t articulate itself in the least; it shatters into pieces before even taking form. I felt distinctly that something was breaking under a kind of assault; an obscure combat was taking place, syncopating my breath with its blows.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sphinx<\/em> is a novel of passion and loss that transcends gender and speaks to the universality of desire and loss, morality, spiritual crisis and the need to connect and belong. It\u2019s also a novel that captivates and propels the reader to question the boundaries of desire and memory\u2014and which one ultimately holds us captive. This was a powerhouse pick for Deep Vellum to publish. In addition, the editorial choice of Daniel Levin Becker\u2019s Introduction and Emma Ramadan\u2019s mini-translation course in the Translator\u2019s Note are both a delight to read and only strengthen the caliber of the work. Sphinx is a work that should be read because the narrator is genderless, A\u2605\u2605\u2605 is genderless, and isn\u2019t it about time we let go of “he said, she said?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Founded in 1960 by such creative pioneers as George Perec, Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, the Oulipo, shorthand for Ouvroir de litt\u00e9rature potentielle, came about in when a group of writers and mathematicians sought constraints to find new structures and patterns on their own writing. Anne Garr\u00e9ta\u2019s visionary debut novel Sphinx, translated from the French […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[6346,56186,60166,3426,12936,60156],"class_list":["post-301696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-anne-garreta","tag-deep-vellum","tag-emma-ramadan","tag-french-literature","tag-monica-carter","tag-sphinx"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336176,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301696\/revisions\/336176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}