LARB Reviews Nathanaël's New Translation of Édouard Glissant's Soleil de la conscience

At Los Angeles Review of Books, Matt Reeck relishes in Nathanaël's translation of Édouard Glissant's Soleil de la conscience (Sun of Consciousness, Nightboat, this month), a "prequel to a prequel" to Poetic Intention and Poetics of Relation. "The book presages the key concepts and style of his future work: it contains many of the themes of Glissant’s subsequent philosophical and poetic meditations, and it also demonstrates his inimitable mix of poetic prose, poetry, and philosophical speculation, rooted in local affinities that bring together geographical and cultural forms of consciousness," writes Reeck. More:

...Sun of Consciousness is also a prequel in another sense: the oracular nature of its scope. The past, the present, and the future are forever linked in Glissant. As he writes about his rite of passage to France through the lens of someone who has inherited European culture but must reconcile it with his own experiences, his mind is attuned toward how this personal reconciliation can propel a broader social consciousness. He means to articulate a vision of the future beyond the colonial, beyond even the postcolonial — a further future in which diasporic consciousness will propel people beyond the proprietary boundaries of the national.

¤

The University of Liverpool Professor Charles Forsdick has called Sun of Consciousness a “poetic narrative of a journey” from Martinique to France, thereby identifying the book as an example of postcolonial travel writing. To me, it reads like a meta-travel narrative, with extensive commentary on voyages, travel, and writing itself.

Find the full review at LARB.