dublinka

Le Cherche midi, have published a great compilation of three of Kiril Kadiiski’s works, Concerts célestes, Les Travaux de Dieu, and Mais quis. Kadiiski is Bulgarian who now lives and works in Paris and a different collection of his, Les Cinq Saisons, recently won the Max Jacob prize for foreign writing. As far as I’m aware, he has yet to be translated into English. It’s a pity. I’m sure it would travel well. Kadiiski’s poetry forever invokes awe as its central theme. And his representation of the heavens, in the symbolic as much as the literal has been finely tuned over the years. As such, the poet sings:


Comme une âme purifiée est la profondeur lumineuse du ciel
Et tu te sens lumineux, lumineux

And

Le ciel trempé pend telle une éponge
Comme si Dieu s’apprêtait à effacer devant ses élèves
Le tableau noir où il a griffonné le monde

Et qui pourrait l’en empêcher
Mais qui?

Not that Kadiiski is naieve:

Le café des poètes des poivrots et des putes
La vérité était dans le vin

But doing so, there are ironic shades of Rimbaud here, as when he tells us:

Le soufflé de la mort hante les bois d’octobre,

or when in la flûte du soir he intones like a church bell

L’amour est une belle mort.

This is not accidental. But ultimately Kadiiski’s poetry sidesteps such a sensibility. His vision, claims its own space.

Seul le vagabond aux pieds nus dit la vérité

…..

La terre tourne sur un tour de potier invisible
Et sous les doigts du Seigneur.

We learn that he is opposed, necessarily, to a publishing world rooted in the secular; one that has rejected his voice, because he finds his truth in the profane. Such an uncompromising and faithful vision, has caused Kadiiski to collide with the publishing world. But this clash of faiths leads to some of the most beautiful lines I’ve read all year. Recognising that Gogol threw the second volume of dead souls into a fire, he writes

Il me reste au moins la consolation
De savoir qu’un jour viendront ceux qui publieront

Dans le flames
La vraie antholoige don’t rêve tout poète

In all a beautiful uncompromising collection of poetry. I’m making it my Christmas book for 2007.