The BURIED Book Club discussion

French author of prose-poems and memoirs, active between 1961-1978

Born July 23, 1940
Rostrenen, Brittany

Died July 23, 1978
Paris, Île-de-France

Subjects death, madness, schizophrenia, gender

Danielle Collobert was a French author, poet and journalist, born in Rostrenen, Côtes-d'Armor on 23 July 1940. She died, by her own hand, in Paris on 23 July 1978.

Her mother, a teacher, was obliged to live in a neighbouring village, and thus, Danielle grew up at her grandparents' house, where her mother and her aunt would return whenever they so could. Both entered into the French Resistance.

In 1961, having abandoned her university studies, she worked at the Galerie Hautefeuille in Paris, where she wrote Totem and many other texts that would three years later be part of her seminary text, Meurtre. In the April of that year, she published, at her own expense, Chants des Guerres (War Songs) with Pierre-Jean Oswald publishers. Some years later, she would destroy the early editions of this, her first published book.

She engaged in the FLN and was involved in missions in Algeria. After a self-imposed exile from May to August 1962 in Italy, she returned to collaborate with the Algerian magazine, Révolution Africaine, until it stopped being published during the Presidency of Ahmed Ben Bella. After rejection by Les Éditions de Minuit, her cause was supported by Raymond Queneau, which led to Gallimard publishing Meurtre, in 1964.

After joining the Writers' Union in May 1968, and soon after turning up in Czechoslovakia during the Soviet backlash to the Prague Spring, she would travel near continuously from 1970 to 1976. Her travels would strongly influence her later writings. In 1978, she asked Uccio Esposito-Torrigiani to translate her last work, the ironically titled Survie (Survival), into Italian; reportedly, she wanted it published as quickly as possible. Survie came out at the end of April, and Danielle Collobert would die by suicide, on her birthday, three months later, in a hotel on the rue Dauphine in Paris.

An experimental writer, Collobert wrote in a haunting, pessimistic, tense and stark style of 'prose poems.' Her work showed an obsession with death as the destination of humankind, the ambiguity of gender, travel and madness.

Bibliography

Chants des guerres, Éditions P.-J. Oswald, 1961 (later by Éditions Calligrammes, Quimper, 1999).
Meurtre, Gallimard (Lagny-sur-Marne, impr. É. Grevin et fils), [Paris,:], 1964.
Des nuits sur les hauteurs, Éditions Denoel (preface by Italo Calvino)
Dire : I-II :+un-deux+, Paris, Seghers : Laffont, 1972, 27-Mesnil-sur-l'Estrée, impr. Firmin-Didot, 192 p., collection Change, série rouge.
Il donc, Laffont, Paris, 1976.
Survie, Éditions Orange Export Ltd, 1978.
It Then, O Books, 1989 (trans. Norma Cole).
Notebooks, 1956-1978, Litmus Press, 2003 (trans. Norma Cole)

Further Reading

"The Path to Impersonalization (Danielle Collobert)," by John Taylor, 'Paths to Contemporary French Literature', volume 2, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2007, pp. 149-155.

Survie has been translated multiple times: by Norma Cole in both Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France & Violence of the White Page: Contemporary French Poetry (both of which are indispensable sources), and perhaps just since this post has been made, Meurtre has been translated by Nathaneal on Litmus Press as Murder.

Survie is now available on the Cordite Poetry Review website in both the original French and in yet another English translation, this time by Marty Hiatt, who also offers an introduction to the poem sequence.

Collobert continues to be underread in English (tragically so, in my opinion), at least on Goodreads, despite the availability in translation of much of her work via O Books and Litmus Press, including her haunting short novel Murder, excellent collection of poems It Then, and equally compelling notebook excerpts.

Perhaps the ready availability of Survie will entice a few new readers.

consider me enticed!