Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon
Page 17
How much has the eye to weigh in the balance?
What does the dream between two eyelids measure?
How much does a closed eye, the eye of death,
an eye peeled weigh in your hand?
Also featured in this novel are quotes from Assia Djébar, Silvina Ocampo, Violette Leduc and Dante Alighieri.
3
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Paradiso by José Lezama Lima
L’obéissance by Suzanne Jacob
Benito Cereno by Herman Melville
Le monde sur le flanc de la truite by Robert Lalonde
The Euguelion by Louky Bersianik
Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
The Book of Promethea by Hélène Cixous
Heroine by Gail Scott
Childhood by Nathalie Sarraute
Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Xavier Marias
Molloy by Samuel Beckett
Crossing the River by Caryl Phillips
The Last of the African Kings by Maryse Condé
Time Regained by Marcel Proust
The First Man by Albert Camus
Fortuny by Pere Gimferrer
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaétan Soucy
Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch
Fontainebleau by Michael Delisle
Le soir du dinosaure by Cristina Peri Rossi
Blue Eyes, Black Hair by Marguerite Duras
Un homme est une valse by Pauline Harvey
My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay by Peter Handke
Les derniers jours de Noah Eisenbaum by Andrée Michaud
Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi
Two Stories of Prague by Rainer Maria Rilke
Next Episode by Hubert Aquin
Cobra by Severo Sarduy
La vie en prose by Yolande Villemaire
The Lesbian Body by Monique Wittig
Technique du marbre by Béatrice Leca
Mauve Desert by Nicole Brossard
Extinction by Thomas Bernhard
The Opposing Shore by Julien Gracq
Thérèse and Isabelle by Violette Leduc
La déconvenue by Louise Cotnoir
Meroë by Olivier Rolin
These Festive Nights by Marie-Claire Blais
In the Shadow of the Wind by Anne Hébetr
The Christmas Oratorio by Goran Tunstrom
Le livre du devoir by Normand de Bellefeuille
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy
E. Luminata by Diamela Eltit
The Palace by Claude Simon
Parc univers by Hugues Corriveau
The Sea by Michelet
Microcosms by Claudio Magris
Dios No Nos Quiere Contentos by Griselda Gambaro
La nuit by Jacques Ferron
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Swallower Swallowed by Réjean Ducharme
Paulina 1880 by Pierre-Jean Jouve
Memoria by Louise Dupré
Dust over the City by André Langevin
Pylon by William Faulkner
A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein
Jos Connaissant by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Nous parlerons comme on écrit by France Théoret
Life: A User’s Manual by Georges Perec
About the Author
Born in Montréal, poet, novelist and essayist BROSSARD, NICOLE has published more than thirty books since 1965 and has twice won the Governor General’s Award for her poetry. Most of her books have been translated into English: Mauve Desert, The Aerial Letter, Picture Theory, Lovhers, Baroque at Dawn, The Blue Books, Installations, Museum of Bone and Water, Intimate Journal and, more recently, Fluid Arguments and the Governor General’s Award–shortlisted Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon. She has co-founded and co-directed the literary magazine La Barre du Jour (1965–1975), co-directed the film Some American Feminists (1976) and co-edited the much acclaimed Anthologie de la poésie des femmes au Québec, first published in 1991 and then in 2003. She has also won le Grand Prix de Poésie du Festival International de Trois-Rivières in 1989 and 1999. In 1991, she was awarded le Prix Athanase-David (the highest literary recognition in Québec). She is a member of l’Académie des lettres du Québec. She won the 2003 W. O. Mitchell Prize. Her work has been widely translated into Spanish and is also available in German, Italian, Japanese, Slovenian, Romanian, Catalan and other languages. Nicole Brossard writes and lives in Montréal.
About the Translator
SUSANNE DE LOTBINIÈRE-HARWOOD lives and teaches in Montréal, her hometown. She is the auther of Re-belle et infidèle: la traduction comme pratique de ré-écriture au féminin / The Body Bilingual: translation as a rewriting in the feminine (Remue-ménage/Women’s Press, 1991), and of many texts about her practice of both literary and art-text translation. As a translator she has co-authored numerous works of theory and fiction into English and into French. Her practice has led to parallel art experiences such as years of ‘performative lecturing’ in North America and Europe, and an exhibition of her art-text translation artifacts (La Centrale/Powerhouse, Montréal, 2001). This is the third Nicole Brossard novel she has translated (the other two are Mauve Desert and She Would Be the First Sentence of My Next Novel). She was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 2005 for her translation of Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon.
Typeset in Granjon
Printed and bound at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane, 2005
Translated by Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood
Edited and designed by Alana Wilcox
Cover design by Stan Bevington
Cover image, In that inner space, by Betty Goodwin [1994, Graphite and oil stick over gelatin silver print on translucent mylar film (Cronaflex), 94 by 73.6 cm]. Courtesy of the Galerie René Blouin, Montreal.
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