Le sacret by Marc Graciano, and: Je m'oralise by Ghérasim Luca (review)

Set in medieval times and recounting part of an aviculturist's childhood, Graciano's tale unfolds expressively in a single sentence that follows the adventures of a boy and a wounded male saker falcon he nurses to recovery. The storytelling sensitizes us to the various unnamed characters by emphasizing a fluidly unfolding progression of events couched in a restrained, often period-specific vocabulary as the falcon heals and, on a particular day at the story's core, becomes a hunting companion. Provided one accepts the heavy reliance on the word et along with other conjunctions, this engaging portrait has much to offer. Graciano writes with directness and devotion to his subject matter, immersing us in the sights, sounds, rhythms, and primeval relationships of the natural world. The language, by far one of Le sacret's most distinguishing traits, cues us to the boy's gradual development in smoothly grouped phrases and precise, revealing, realistic detail, as in the following alliterative lines from the first scene: "[I]l vit que l'oiseau avait une aile blessée et qu'elle pendait sur un côté, [...] et son œil était terne, nullement vif et acéré, comme habituellement chez les rapaces, et l'oiseau éclamé [...] se laissa prendre sans résistance" (7–8). The narrative continues in this vein of observations gently modulated and regularly accompanied by outmoded usages or unusual terms such as "éclamé," thereby conveying both respectful admiration for the people and fellow creatures in and around a castle and a fascination with violence, as here regarding the broken wing. It introduces the boy, the sacret, an autoursier who serves as somewhat of an initiator, and "toute la troupe" (81) of a "grande chasse au vol" (28). We move from early scenes of the boy feeding the bird from his own mouth, to these adventures in the wild focused on hunting, in lengthy descriptions that help us identify with hunter and prey alike—and subtleties of social interactions—by visualizing each moment as if from a camera lens and experiencing related sensations, which are heightened by the cascading short phrases, unusual diction, sound patterns, and imagery. Regarding Luca's previously unpublished manuscript from the late 1960s, a handwritten facsimile with drawings followed by a transcription, it presents views on how poetry—or his preferred term "ontophonie" (unpaginated)—should destabilize familiar points of reference through the associative logic of sounds, textures, and lexical shifts such as those suggested by the title's play on the verb moraliser. The aim is to liberate "le souffle," to bring to life new "vibrations," to let each word signal unanticipated meanings latent within "la matière" and thus allow language to resonate more fully as part of "la transmutation du réel." Je m'oralise is a germane work that enriches our appreciation of Luca's oeuvre. In addition, it complements Graciano's Le sacret in foregrounding words' expressive powers, their ability to redefine perception and to spark progress within transformed affective worlds.