Ryoko Sekiguchi takes the letters Fernando Pessoa wrote his would-be fiancée Ophelia Queiroz as her subject matter in adagio ma non troppo. adagio’s 36 prose blocks – appearing in Japanese, French, and English for the first time in the 2018 Les Figues Press trilingual edition (trans. Lindsay Turner) – echo the 36 letters Pessoa addressed to Queiroz dated from March 1, 1920 until January 11, 1930.

Sekiguchi reconceives the Lisbon Pessoa and Queiroz describe in their correspondence as a map over which rendezvous, affairs, and liaisons can be continued through writing. “Written words,” she asks, “do they erase themselves? […] or instead do all words, once read, never disappear?” Sekiguchi superimposes objects over a landscape where names carry shapes, directions, and the places to which they refer. In her Lisbon, a chair slid into daylight or set before a window punctuates time like comma in a sentence. An old couple contemplating ducks indicates a line between two points like a parasol taken from its stand announces a departure. As love establishes boundaries and relationships between people, if our objects convey our love for one another, then Sekiguchi traces the paths and perimeters lovers leave behind.

Originally published in a bilingual edition containing Sekiguchi’s self-translation into the French (Le bleu du ciel éditions, 2007), adagio ma non troppo belongs in the same category as the modernist works of Franz Kafka and Pessoa – as well as the recent epistolary work of Marguerite Duras, Roland Barthes, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Maggie Nelson, and Claire-Louise Bennett – writing as a philosophic and aesthetic act that reshapes our notions of time, space, translation, and love.

About The Authors

Born in Tokyo, Ryoko Sekiguchi has lived in Paris since 1997. Her work has appeared widely in French and Japanese; her books in French include La Voix sombre (2015), Manger fantôme (2012), L’Astringent (2012), Ce n’est pas un hasard(2011), adagio ma non troppo (2007), Deux Marchés (2005), and Héliotropes (2005). Three of her collections have previously been translated into English: Heliotropes (Sarah O’Brien, La Presse, 2008), Two Markets, Once Again (Sarah Riggs, Post-Apollo Press, 2008), and Tracing (Stacy Doris, Duration, 2003). In addition to her recent culinary performances, Sekiguchi has collaborated with visual artists and sound artists including Suzanne Doppelt, Christian Boltanski, and Ranier Lericolais. Her translations into Japanese include works by Jean Echenoz, Mathias Enard, Atiq Rahimi, and Daniel Heller-Roazen.

Originally from northeast Tennessee, Lindsay Turner holds an A.B. from Harvard College, a Masters in cinema from the Université Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle, an M.F.A. in poetry from New York University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. Her first collection of poems, Songs & Ballads, is forthcoming from Prelude Books in 2018. Her translations from the French include The Next Loves, by Stéphane Bouquet (forthcoming, Nightboat Books, 2018) and a co-translated book of philosophy by Frédéric Neyrat, Atopias (Fordham University Press, 2017).  Starting in fall 2018, she is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Sawako Nakayasu writes and translates poetry, and also occasionally creates performances and short films. Her most recent books are The Ants (Les Figues) and a translation of The Collected Poems of Sagawa Chika (Canarium Books, forthcoming 2014). Other books include Texture Notes (Letter Machine Editions, 2010), Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck, 2009), and Mouth: Eats Color—Sagawa Chika Translations, Anti-translations, & Originals, which is a multilingual work of both original and translated poetry. She has received fellowships from the NEA and PEN, and her own work has been translated into Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish, Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

Photo Credit: Joanne Yu

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