a la recherche du temps perdu
new Canadian,
old Quebecer... two solitudes
in the Toronto sunlight
Atlas Poetica, 15, July 2013
Notes:
1 you can read its preceding tanka or the whole sequence here
2 The origin of the name "Toronto" comes from the Huron word toran-ten, which literally means meeting place.
Below is excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, In Search of Lost Time:
ReplyDeleteIn Search of Lost Time (French: À la recherche du temps perdu)—translated previously as Remembrance of Things Past—is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust (1871–1922). His most prominent work, it is known both for its length and its theme of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." It gained fame in English in translations by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin as Remembrance of Things Past, but the title In Search of Lost Time, a literal rendering of the French, has gained usage since D. J. Enright adopted it for his revised translation published in 1992.
And read in the Canadian sociopolitical context, "Two Solitudes" refers to a perceived lack of communication, and moreover a lack of will for communication between Anglophone and Francophone people in Canada. The term was popularized by Hugh MacLennan's novel Two Solitudes. In her investiture speech as Governor-General of Canada, Michaëlle Jean specifically stated that "the time of 'two solitudes' had finished" -- excerpted from the Wikipedia entry, Two Solitudes