Michel Houellebecq. Photography: EFE Andreu Dalmau
Michel Houellebecq was born on a day like today from 1958 on the island of Reunion. Writer, essayist and poet, is the author of novels that have made him a controversial international media star. But it is also one of the more forceful and transgressive contemporary storytellers. And poet. Today I select 5 poems of his lyrical work.
Michel Houellebecq
He was born with the name of Michel Thomas, but adopted the pseudonym of Michel Houellebecq for his grandmother, who was the one who raised him.
It achieved success in 2001, with the equally acclaimed as rejected Platform. And later, with The Map and the Territory, had a big impact after winning the Goncourt Award. However his biggest controversy went with Sumisión, where it raises a future Islamist France.
Su poetry follow the same line of his narrative and completes the figure of one of the few truly radical writers in contemporary literature.
In his work Poetry (published by Anagrama) brings together his four books of the genre -Survive, The sense of struggle, The pursuit of happiness y Renacimiento- and it is in bilingual version. Alternate free verse, classic and poetic prose with the most varied themes.
In poetry it is not only the characters that live, but the words.
Michel Houellebecq
5 poems
My body
My body is like a sack lined with red threads
The room is dark, my eyes are gleaming faintly
I'm afraid to get up, I feel inside
Something soft, evil, that moves.
I've hated this meat for years
That covers my bones. Of adipose surface,
Sensitive to pain, slightly spongy;
A little lower, an organ tightens.
I hate you, Jesus Christ, for giving me a body
Friends disappear, everything flees, quickly,
The years pass, they slip away, and nothing resurrects,
I don't want to live and death scares me
La grieta
In immobility, the impalpable silence,
I'm there. I am alone. If they hit me, I move.
I try to protect a red and bleeding thing
The world is a precise and unforgiving chaos.
There are people around, I hear them breathe
And its mechanical steps intersect on the trellis.
However, I have felt the pain and anger;
Close to me, very close, a blind man sighs.
I have survived a long time. That's funny.
I remember very well the times of hope
And I even remember my early childhood
But I think this is my last role.
You know? I saw it clear from the first second,
It was a bit cold and I was sweating with fear
The bridge was broken, it was seven o'clock
The crack was there, silent and deep.
A life of nothing
I already felt old shortly after birth;
The others fought, desired, sighed;
In me I felt nothing but a vague longing.
I never had anything like a childhood.
Deep in certain woods, on a carpet of moss,
Disgusting tree trunks survive their foliage;
Around them an atmosphere of mourning forms;
Fungi thrive on his blackened and dirty skin.
I never served anything or anyone;
Pity. You live badly when it is for yourself.
The slightest movement is a problem,
You feel miserable and yet important.
You move vaguely, like a tiny bug.
You are hardly anything anymore, but what a bad time you have!
You carry with you a kind of abyss
Mean and portable, slightly ridiculous.
You stop seeing death as something fatal;
From time to time you laugh; especially at the beginning;
You try in vain to adopt contempt.
Then you accept everything, and death does the rest.
So long
There is always a city, with traces of poets
That between its walls they have crossed their destinies
Water everywhere, memory murmurs
Names of people, names of cities, forgetfulness.
And always the same old story starts again,
Undone horizons and massage rooms
Assumed solitude, respectful neighborhood,
There are, however, people who exist and dance.
They are people of another species, people of another race,
We dance exalted a cruel dance
And, with few friends, we own heaven,
And the endless request for spaces;
The time, the old time, that plans its revenge,
The uncertain rumor of life that passes
The hiss of the wind, the dripping of water
And the yellowish room in which death advances.
Is not that…
Is not that. I try to keep my body in good condition. Maybe he's dead, I don't know. There is something that should be done that I do not do. They haven't taught me. This year I have aged a lot. I have smoked eight thousand cigarettes. My head has often hurt. Yet there must be a way to live; something that is not in the books. There are human beings, there are characters; but from one year to the next I hardly recognize faces.
I do not respect the man; however, I envy him.