Thousand Times Broken: A Conversation with Translator Gillian Conoley [Part II]
The writer Henri Michaux had two great missions in life: to explore the darkest parts of human consciousness, and record what he found in those explorations in the clearest possible way. That鈥檚 according to Gillian Conoley, who recently published the first English translations of three of Michaux鈥檚 books. Thousand Times Broken is a collection of three works by Michaux which he wrote while experimenting with mescalin, a drug he believed would help him explore 鈥渁 state in which one part of the brain remains unillusioned and lucid during vision, fantasy, or hallucination.鈥 Conoley joined Peter Biello (of the ) on behalf of Three Percent to talk about , a collection of three books published by City Lights. This is Part II of the interview; you can catch up and read Part I here.
PB: Let鈥檚 move on to Watchtowers on Targets. This book was a collaboration between Michaux and Chilean abstract surrealist Roberto Matta. Tell us about their relationship and the product that came from it.
GC: Matta was apparently the visual artist who Michaux felt the closest affinity with as a visual artist himself. And he was very drawn to the level of movement and a kind of frenetic activity that could sometimes be in Matta鈥檚 work. The two of them decided that they would do this collaboration and the first two-thirds of the book are Michaux responding to Matta鈥檚 etching. For the last third of the book, Matta would respond to Michaux. And they began and it鈥檚 unknown as to who created the title Watchtowers on Targets, but what鈥檚 steady throughout the entire book is the sense of a human eye and a watchtower that has sprouted from it. And on the watchtower there鈥檚 an observation post, and in the observation post there鈥檚 an observer who鈥檚 looking back at the human eye. So the whole question of subject-object and perspective鈥攚ho is looking at what and what is looking and what is seeing鈥攁ll of that is called into question. And in Matta鈥檚 drawings you see different interpretations of what I鈥檝e described, though they鈥檙e not ever really . . . you see it but it鈥檚 not a direct representation of a tower, for example, but pretty close when you look at the drawings.
Michaux鈥檚 writing went unrevised and unedited, which is interesting. And it鈥檚 a really wild book and it鈥檚 really fast and it鈥檚 unusual within Michaux鈥檚 oeuvre because we don鈥檛 have the narrative links you usually see in Michaux. Characters pop out of nowhere, begin to speak, and disappear. There鈥檚 a plot at the beginning鈥攁 crime is committed鈥攂ut that quickly vanishes. Toward the end of that book, he鈥檚 got the postcards, and that鈥檚 the only epistolary writing that Michaux did.
PB: You mentioned the plotless aspects of this. This was for me, at least, the least accessible of the three.
*GC:*Yes. [Laughs]
PB: I mean they鈥檙e all challenging to read, but this one is especially challenging.
GC: Yeah, it鈥檚 pretty wild. Michaux makes demands on his readers. He wasn鈥檛 afraid to do that. I think it goes all the way back to his relationship to language. It makes sense that he would be seeking some other mode of expression. The French always looked down upon the Flemish, on Belgian people. The French language is seen as more beautiful, more expressive than Flemish. Walloon is a dialect of the peasant. He鈥檚 got a complicated relationship with the language he鈥檚 writing in. He doesn鈥檛 like it. It鈥檚 like the language of someone who disapproves of his very nationality, so there鈥檚 that sort of tension. And yet he goes ahead and uses it.
PB: The third book, the first one you translated, is Four Hundred Men on the Cross. In this one, we鈥檙e really seeing Michaux struggle on the page with the inadequacy of language. He鈥檚 twisting the poems into the shape of the cross, so the words seem to crouch in the bottom left-hand corner of the page. The medium essentially becomes the message, in a sense, when the shape of the arrangement of the words becomes the message as much as the words themselves.
GC: The place that he puts you in鈥攜ou can鈥檛 say you鈥檙e a reader, you can鈥檛 say you鈥檙e a viewer. You鈥檙e caught in some place in between. He achieved that. He puts you in some completely different realm than you鈥檝e been in before, where it鈥檚 unclear whether or not you鈥檙e reading or seeing. And it鈥檚 unclear as to whether he鈥檚 writing or drawing. [Laughs] So that鈥檚 what鈥檚 really interesting. Just to be able to be in that completely different world.
PB: Finally, you鈥檙e a poet. Did translating this book change the way you write poetry?
GC: Translating is wonderful, and this is the first thing I鈥檝e ever translated. You get to escape your own consciousness and enter someone else鈥檚. And especially with a book like this, when consciousness is the subject matter, that was an intriguing aspect of it. But in terms of my own poetry, I had been writing long poems anyway, but I wrote a really long one that seemed to be able to expand because I had translated a poem that had done that, so it鈥檚 almost like learning to play a piece of music. You know? And then being able to do it in your own work, because you learned to play that music that someone else wrote.
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Gillian Conoley is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Peace , The Plot Genie , Profane Halo , Lovers In The Used World , and Tall Stranger , a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Conoley earned a BA in journalism at Southern Methodist State University and an MFA at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is founder and editor of the long-standing journal Volt.
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