Dernier état des lieux by Pierre-Alain Tâche (review)

TÂCHE, PIERRE-ALAIN. Dernier état des lieux. Chavannes-près-Renens: Empreintes, 2011. ISBN 978-2-940414-15-4. Pp. 113. 19,20 a. This third poetry collection in a series by Tâche shares modest explorations of place, many of which take on a haunting, elevating quality thanks to the calm voice of experience that characterizes the wandering self and the mostly balanced— at times exquisite—prosody that orients the reader. In the manner of L’état des lieux and Nouvel état des lieux, the poems’ appeal lies in Tâche’s receptivity and the literary voice that enables us to inhabit widely ranging scenes in north and southeastern France, Malta, Romania, Normandy, Switzerland’s Upper Engadine, and Paris. Aiming to grasp the real “dans sa profusion, dans son chatoiement” (back cover), the author resists foregrounding any one particular effect his surroundings might have on him and focuses instead on gracefully bearing witness to the passing of days, albeit with hints of elegy and regret at not ensuring attunement to “la beauté” (51, 75, 78, 97). An affirming, inquisitive urge makes itself felt structurally, through titled poems of about three to five elegantly measured stanzas that home in on specific settings, events, and emotions. Successive pages introduce tableaux whose words and sounds add light and shade to the pursuit of personal, local, historical, and spiritual knowledge. The opening poem, “Naviguer,” sets the tone for the volume ’s alertness to intense micro-environments that are then artisanally reconstructed through diction, consonance, and intermittent rhyme: in this pastoral scene, the speaker discovers a temporary ability to “naviguer sans bruit / dans la profonde nasse de verdure, / où dort le fin mot d’un secret,” within the purified atmosphere of “les cathédrales de sève, / où chants et vols ont convolé” (11). Unafraid to “lire avidement dans le fugace” (29), to suggest for instance the endless promise of a similar “présence rayonnante” offered to us “dans la paume des monts, / surpassant la respiration des forêts” (78), Tâche by no means contents himself with facile optimism. The diverse backdrops, in addition to subtle differences in line lengths, establish in compact form undercurrents of uncertainty and unpredictability that could be said to validate the search for meaning. “Avant Scey” portrays a car’s mad, fiery dash on land as contrasted with diligent, always renewed work on a ship (17); “Éléphants nains” emphasizes “le devenir foireux de l’espèce” (25); “Un rideau vénitien” depicts a museum object that has become “retranché du naos, / incomplet, vacant, désœuvré” (51); and several section endings convey the potential emptiness of the impulse to “ruer / dans le cadre obligé du poème” (106). Absorbing human portraits include a young girl pronouncing “gravement kau / (comme cause ou caution)” for “co-que-li-cots” (38); a provincial “cour, où les marchands des quatre vents / disputent tout le jour de petits riens” (53); and a street musician at the Louvre whose flute “incite [...] à la badinerie” while “[l]es gens, les marronniers, le ciel / tout bourgeonne et jubile” (84). The palpable ache can in some poems seem overly sonorous or elliptically expressed. Nonetheless, the overall coherence and conviction make for moments of stunning clarity and a movement toward collective wisdom: “La paix qui règne ici tient sa fraîcheur / d’une source profonde; et nous, / qui profanons la pulpe de l’énigme, / en pèlerins futiles, nous l’aimons” (45). With a master’s touch for subdued lyricism, Tâche extends a distinctly Swiss tradition—though one well informed by the broader poetic canon—of immersion in landscapes of all sorts. He echoes Ramuz and others in his gravitation around an observed center and attention to concrete details surfacing as part of a ceaseless “retour de l’élémen1006 FRENCH REVIEW 86.5 taire” (103). These are perceptive, evocative accounts of circulation in the outer world, as well as of the immediacy such encounters can achieve in sensitively modulated frameworks. Southwestern University (TX) Aaron Prevots ZALBERG, CAROLE. À défaut d’Amérique. Arles: Actes Sud, 2012. ISBN 978-2-330-002466 . Pp. 214. 18,50 a. Ce roman clôt la trilogie de Zalberg...