Mind-God and The Properties of Nitrogen
By Fouad Gabriel Naffah
Translated from the Frenchby Norma Cole
Pastels by Irving Petlin
The economy of Naffah's poetry raises possibilities of relationships of equivalence, harmonics, between writing and life in the material world. "Restricted" would be an understatement. In a way it is all understatement, the understatement of an extravagant boldness.
— from the Introduction by Norma Cole First published in 1966, Lebanese poet Fouad Gabriel Naffah's Mind-God and The Properties of Nitrogen charts the mind's progress through the material world to the realm of pure spirit. "To understand is just/ the synonym for to grasp," he writes. Apprehended, the world survives as trace elements in the mind's experience, in turn refined into concept, ideal, until all images fall away and the spirit frees itself.
Crystalline, elusive, his poetry frustrates our tendency to consume form and meaning whole, without first appreciating the subtleties binding them more closely together. Through her masterful translation, Cole further distills the text, disintegrating and reintegrating its spirit into English.
Other works by Fouad Gabriel Naffah (1925-1983) include Les Oeuvres Complètes, Description de l'Homme, du Cadre et de la Lyre, which won the Prix René-Laporte in 1966, and Les Poésies.
Norma Cole is a poet, painter, and translator. Her books include Spinoza in Her Youth, Mars, Moira, Contrafact, Desire and Its Double, and The Vulgar Tongue. Recent translations include Danielle Collobert's Journals, Anne Portugal's Nude, and Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France.
