Trop de Pascale, Pascale Bérubé
Triptyque, 2023
In her debut collection, Trop de Pascale (Too Much Pascale), Pascale Bérubé uses tightly written prose to retrace the movement through which the body winds up of around its image. While each poem plays on appearance and disappearance, Bérubé does not lift any veils or let anything vanish. She dodges clichés about femininity in order to better confront them; she avoids any notion of identity in order to better situate herself:
“i die but there are many other pascales, never exactly the same each time i cancel one. i always feel like everything i am not.”
“je meurs mais il
y a plusieurs autres pascale, jamais exactement la même chaque fois que j’en
annule une. je me sens toujours comme tout ce que je ne suis pas.” (19)
Bérubé’s poetry lends itself to a philosophical reading just as much as a poetic reading. The latter reading might focus on looping effects and repetition of themes; on the fading of each poem into a sentence without final punctuation; on the minor chords struck by the composition of the sentences; on the mirror and screen effects through the uses of the self, of the self as others, of others as versions of the self, of others as versions of others yet; on the euphoria of slight modifications to a steady beat exploding in dropped beats – all this announced by the quotation from SOPHIE’s song “Immaterial” which opens the book.
The philosophical reading, which I’ll take up here, is announced somewhat later in the collection by the reference to the Hebrew meaning of Pascale as “passing through”: Bérubé leads a reflection on transformation, the constancy of appearance and replacement, and the inter-replaceability of selves. Her poetics ties into the poetics of the body, the practice of creating an aesthetic expression not so much of beauty as of passion and tragedy, these grand sentiments of being overwhelmed by something within oneself.
And as selves take the place of others, the Pascale who writes these poems maintains an undefined and porous relationship with the Pascales within the poems, speaker or object. Appearances are as real, and often more real, than her body. In its leaning toward appearances, the body comes to matter more and more and gain meaning, even as it is transformed. There is no real body, no natural body to which she can return; each alteration has a continuing presence past its own time.
The Pascales of which Bérubé speaks appear, make their appearances on screens. Mirrors people the poems; they add reflections and images to those she gives of herself “as an author, as a performer, as a cam girl” (98-99). Her hope seems to be to “lie down in the embrasure of my reflection and no longer move from it” (“me coucher dans l’embrasure de mon reflet et ne plus en bouger,” 97).
The poems take their strength from their internal interruptions, which let in other possibilities for the self and for her relation to others. To give only one example: in the middle of a longer poem, we read: “i imagine a futurist city where water sometimes flows” (“j’imagine une cité futuriste où l’eau coule parfois,” 89). Anytime a poem veers into a non-human image, it returns renewed to the body.
In this manner, practically as well as in what the poems let us see, disappearance is a matter of one aspect (of a self, of a room, a screen, a space) leaving room for another. Makeup and clothes are less the instruments of an apparition than the crafting of the erasure of what is not yet, the creation of an expectation. This disappearance cohabits with the appearance of others, the disappearance of the self working through envy and desire for others as potential selves, selves that exist in their own movement of appearance: “the skin you want is just underneath the skin you see” (“la peau que tu veux est juste en dessous de la peau que tu vois,” 82).
Disappearance can also be a movement into another woman – into her image, into the space she creates, into the space between her and herself – without us readers ever knowing if this other woman, this “tu,” these other women, are also Pascale, more Pascales, and even simply videos of herself, selfies stored on her phone. We do see her relate to others through their image, as in this passage where Bérubé renders her uncertain relationship to a woman on a book cover:
“a young woman whose appearance evokes goodness, long hair split with a precise part in the middle, white blouse under pink sweater, sitting, hands over the knees. behind can be found this other version of her, black turtleneck, head titled, menacing, her gaze fixed upon us.”
“une jeune femme à l’allure sage, longs cheveux fendus d’une raie précise au centre, chemise blanche sous pull rose, assise, mains par-dessus les genoux. derrière se trouve cette autre version d’elle, col roulé noir, la tête penchée, menaçante, le regard fixé sur nous.” (75)
Both Bérubé and the women she mentions tend to disappear in the gaps between their selves and themselves. This disappearance is in fact a mutual relationship, each being able to contain the other. She holds the desire that others might want to enter her, “that vacant girls may find in me a landmark, a decorated room, even if I am still searching the other vacant woman who may offer me a home” (“que les filles vacantes puissent trouver en moi un repère, une chambre décorée, même si je cherche encore l’autre femme vacante qui pourra m’héberger,” 100). Bérubé is not concerned with representation, or presence, or identification, or identity – but with hospitality, with being capacitous, able to hold, comfort, give something of oneself to others so they may do the same for others still.
At stake in this relationship to others – and specifically to other women – is her happiness: “i could choose to be vacant and happy through the real radiance of these bodies that are yours” (“je pourrais choisir d’être vacante et heureuse à travers l’éclat réel de vos corps à vous,” 109).
It is as if appearance is more the self than the body: “with each filter i reveal myself, i become this holy version of myself. iconique. frank, direct like scalpel light” ( “avec chaque filtre je me révèle, je deviens cette vision sainte de moi-même. iconic. franche, directe comme la lumière en bistouri,” 77). She gives meaning to skin, to screen, to presentation, destroys the idea that women’s work on their appearance is meant to attract a gaze or a touch. Through ideas that fall into oblivion as others rise, she gives a poetic body to renewal.
Bérubé displays great precision in the description of others, presenting surfaces under which she can slip herself and go unnoticed. The dismemberment of the self extends to others as well. With these poems focused on the poetics of the body, Bérubé leaves us with a nothingness that is a bright light, a hope that is movement through existences, beyond herself, beyond ourselves.
