L'impossible - The Impossible

L’impossible

After finally leaving Cork, I went to live in France in 1989. There was some further travelling, a trip to Norway, a period spent in London… but after these initial wanderings, I finally settled in one of the many suburbs of Paris not too far from the old palace of Versailles. Language was, of course, a major issue. I had to learn French, and quick, in order that I could get a proper job. After doing countless odd jobs like cleaning, gardening and painting and decorating, I was finally taken on by a very popular cultural supermarket, is the best way I can describe it, called Fnac. It was in a pretty plush suburb called Parly 2, and I worked there in the storeroom for over three years.

This was a very difficult period for me, as a young man. As I was recently married, and I also had a child, my son Liam, to support. I didn’t fit in at all, to my colleagues I was just a young lost Irishman. Most of them, I think, pitied me. I struggled with the language, the culture and with my newfound responsibilities. I see it now myself in certain young people, being a language teacher. The perpetual struggle of the immigrant who is trying to assimilate into a foreign culture, and is struggling. This is the kind of challenge which really makes or breaks you as a person. Well, I spent five years there, before eventually giving in and returning home. It was all too much. I had bitten off far too much for one so young.

I wrote this poem in 1993, I know this as Giles Deleuze had just had his book Critique et clinique published by Les Éditions de Minuit, Beckett’s loyal publishers. I remember the day very well as I had bought a copy of Figaro which was very unusual for me, as I usually bought Le Monde. This was to improve my French. Well, I opened up the newspaper and I saw this photo of Giles Deleuze, the philosopher and intellectual darling of the French left.

I remember reading the article about the book, and some of the phrases which Deleuze had made during the interview with the journalist, some of which I directly paraphrased in the opening section of the poem L’impossible. I started writing on the napkin while I ate lunch in a café which was in the neighbourhood where I worked. It was a very good lunch, I remember. I must have been just paid, as dining out like this for lunch with a newspaper on my own, and no doubt a beer or two, was not the norm.

Anyway, after finishing the poem, I was very happy. As it was my first poem composed in French. I remember showing it to the waiter when he came over for the bill. That is how proud I was. Voila!        

L’impossible

Pas seulement pour raconteur des histories,

Des voyages, des amours, des éprouves,

Des rêves et des fantasmes,

Mais pour essayer d’affronetr la réalité

Et pour la prendre

Comme un objet,

Et en retour,

D’etre prise par elle,

Comme en s’appuyant

Contre un mirror qui reflète

Un autre millier de mondes possible.

Le besoin ne connait pas des limites.

Quand rien n’est define on doit, au moins,

S’occuper de sa santé.

Alors, envoyer moi les medicaments docteur

Car je vois rouges

Et mes oreilles bourdonnent

Après avoir lu le dianostic de l’éternel incurable.

Parly 2, Le Chesnay 1993

The Impossible

Not only to tell the stories of

The journeys, the loves and the many difficulties,

The dreams and the fantasies,

But to try and confront reality

And to hold it like an object

And, in turn, to be held by it

Like leaning against a mirror

Which reflects back another

Hundred possible worlds.

Need knows no limits.

And, when nothing is certain

One must at least look after one’s health!

So, show me the medicine Doctor

For I see red and my eardrums are ringing

After just having read the diagnosis

Of the eternally incurable.

http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/auteur-Gilles_Deleuze-1381-1-1-0-1.html