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  • Fifty Dreams
  • Sylvie Durbec (bio)
    Translated from the French by Denis Hirson

1. I dreamed that I spoke perfect Portuguese, Russian and Finnish.2. I dreamed that I'd just published my first book and discovered that I was twenty years old. My children and I were surprised at how young I was.3. I dreamed that Bolaño and I walked along the Ajuntament de Blanes and then went and ate some cakes at the home of his friend Joan Planells, the pastry maker and nephew of Àngel Planells, Catalan painter of Mariner espérant l'arribalda de no sap què.4. I dreamed that everyone understood what was meant by a portable homeland.5. I dreamed that my heimatlos in multiplying propagated a form of Spinozist joy.6. I dreamed that Bolaño was a child, I took him in my arms and he didn't make much of an impression on me anymore. Not that much, anyway.7. I dreamed that out of the ruins of the Guitton carpentry workshop you could make billions of poems.8. I dreamed that I was no longer ashamed of my awkwardness, nor proud of having won a Solex moped thanks to my drawing of a futurist umbrella.9. I dreamed that I'd read almost as much as Roberto Bolaño.10. I dreamed that I finally stopped getting the names of my sons mixed up when I was on the phone with one of them.11. I dreamed that I didn't draw a blank anymore when trying to quote a poem that I loved. [End Page 192] 12. I dreamed that I had overcome the fear that takes hold of me each time someone asks me what I'm busy doing.13. I dreamed that I numbered all my dreams like Roberto Bolaño but I still don't know how to type a tilde on a computer keyboard.14. I dreamed that my friends would believe me at last when I explain to them that as a child I flew for a very brief moment, in a little alley lined with hazelnut trees, in Marseille, a place called the Dames Réunies where, later, my old aunt Valérie hanged herself. I remember her as a perfumed and refined lady who had lived in Saigon in the middle of the silk and the natives. Don't my friends believe in the uprising of the self which Marina Tsvetaeva refers to when explaining the nature of poetry?15. I dreamed that dreams could be translated into all languages, even those that do not yet exist.16. I dreamed of seeing the materialization of time: what form would it take? The form of a snail like my grandfather's apartment in Marseille?17. I dreamed of asking Bolaño if I could follow him, discretely of course, when he decided to come back to life.18. I dreamed of eating in the company of Thomas Bernhard, Max Sebald, Roberto Bolaño, Wislawa Szymborska and Herta Müller.19. I dreamed of knowing how to keep disorder and its desert in order, and how to defeat boredom.20. I dreamed of becoming a trapeze artist in a circus where Arthur Rimbaud worked. And of performing a number with Vadim the dog and Smouroute the cat.21. I dreamed of reading my list of dreams in public and that a young Polish girl would begin, in her turn, to dream in French.22. I dreamed that the tree opposite my window was my father who had returned from far away to assure me that all was well.23. I dreamed that my mother's first name multiplied until I no longer knew who she was.24. I dreamed of becoming as light as a bird that dreamed of becoming a human being. [End Page 193] 25. I dreamed of hearing the steps of my father on the path to the house.26. I dreamed of hearing his father-tongue in my own voice.27. I dreamed of leaving for Iceland with the poet Nathalie Guen, in search of the vertebrae of a whale.28. I dreamed of being in a position...

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