Poetry is the most elitist form of art: and it doesn’t sell (just think of Michel Houellebecq’s poetic endeavours, which always fall short of commercial expectations despite his fame!). That’s probably why I hold in such high regard all the poets in this increasingly chaotic, uncertain world who continue to pursue their poetic craft to make the genre persist, despite the commercial pressures – and the lack of, should I dare to say, appetite of the general public for this type of niche art. And when Australian poet Adrienne Eberhard reached out to the Alliance Française Sydney to propose her work for our reading and a Philo Bistro session, I jumped on the occasion even though it took us a few more months than expected to make this happen.
Her book “Marie & Marie” (Éditions tituli, 2025) is both a collection of poems and a voyage into the world of royalty under the last queen of France Marie Antoinette, under King Louis XV, and then Louis XVI. It’s especially a recount of that period by Marie Antoinette herself – from the court of Versailles to the Prison du Temple to the Guillotine – and her alter ego Marie Louise Girardin, daughter of a gardener at the Potager du Roi, disguised as a man under the name Louis Girardin, serving as commis aux vivres aboard d’Entrecasteaux’s expedition La Recherche, taking her to the other side of the world, through the Pacific and into Tasmania and Australia. Thirteen years in the making, the book was launched in Paris in April last year before Adrienne brought it home to Australia – a journey almost as long as Marie Louise’s own.
The book has this uniqueness of being bilingual, a poem in English on the left page, and the French language translation by Catherine de Saint Phalle on the right page; offering a chance to aspiring French learners to test their knowledge and understanding of both the semantics but also the style, the rhythm, the narrative arc, the imagery, the metaphors, the tone of voice, and much more, which is all way more human and difficult than just using AI to translate one word at a time. One French critic put it rather more elegantly than I just have, describing how Catherine “uses the simple to reach the sublime,” her translation capturing what they called the poems’ “inherent mysticism” – and having now read both pages side by side myself, I can only agree.
64 poems in total, holding up a single dialogue between the two protagonists until the end, with lots of bridges between them, to the point that they could actually be one and the same person (maybe?). For the question of identity is the main thing I took away from this attempt to better understand what it is that makes us do and accept what we do in life. What is it that made Marie Antoinette accept in her own heart and mind to join the court of Versailles as a child woman due to become a royal, in a system ruled by powerful men? What is it that made Marie Louise willing to disguise herself as a mere man to stay on board her ship and look after all the provisions for everyone – never to return to France, dying of dysentery at sea barely a year after Marie Antoinette’s own execution? Both have accepted to be someone else for the sake of their destiny. And Adrienne did that through her poetic art, which – like any other art, even when finding an audience proves difficult – has the merit of existing. Isn’t that the definition of identity after all?
It is at least a question I will ask Adrienne and her translator Catherine de Saint Phalle when they visit the Alliance Française Sydney and grace us with their presence for the 36th Philo Bistro, with a focus on history, poetry and the art of translation. Catherine, whose own family ties to the French Revolution make the eighteenth century feel more real to her, has spoken elsewhere of the luck and chance that brought this collaboration to life – and of translation as something like a second skin, keeping her two mother tongues together. I suspect that conversation alone will be worth the trip.
It is happening on Wednesday 1st July from 6.15pm and tickets and information are available on the website of the Alliance Française Sydney, here: https://www.afsydney.com.au/whats-on/philo-bistro/
Olivier Vojetta
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