Book Review: Mirror Notes of a Novel
Review of Contemporary Fiction
Sep 04, 2009
Breyten Breytenbach. Mouroir: Mirror Notes of a Novel. Archipelago Books, 2009. 279 pp. Paper: $15.00. (Reprint)
Breyten Breytenbach. Voice Over: A Nomadic Conversation with Mahmoud Darwish. Archipelago Books, 2009. 45 pp. Paper: $9.00.
Long out of print (it was originally published in 1984), Mouroir might be seen as a novel, a series of stories, essays, prose poems, philosophical reflections, notes, or fragments, but is at the same time none of these things. Indeed, the power of this book, written by South African writer Breytenbach when he was imprisoned for seven years, lies in just that: these are pieces that cannot be pinned down. Here, the boundaries between the real and the magical are blurry, here the poetic and the lyrical can draw abruptly up into something painfully real. They are flights of the imagination written during a time of physical immobility. Though a few don't amount to much, the majority of them develop in surprising and satisfying ways. Breytenbach's English, inflected as it is by the logic of poetry and dream, by his native Afrikaans, and by French, is surprising as well: a mortal wound, for instance, might be described as having "an odd odor, the dank and yet distant smell of a wing." At its best (in, for instance, pieces such as "G?," "Wiederholen," and "A Pattern of Bullets"), Mouroir is replete with stunning gestures and startling imagery. Often too, Breytenbach has a way of folding reality back on itself that makes the metafictional seem deadly serious and engaged while still remaining playful. Mouroir is a complex, important book.
Voice Over, published simultaneously, is a twelve-section poem written as an homage to Mahmoud Darwish. It converses with Darwish after his deadi, continuing to wrestle with his presence and his poetry. Whereas Mouroir makes the most of ambiguity and shapelessness, Voice Over shows Breytenbach to be equally talented when working in a more directed and formal space.
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