Rifts in the Visible

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

This bilingual collection of poems in which poet meets painter leaves
the reader with feelings of both awe and pleasure. As a painter Chaim
Soutine (1893–1943) focused not on life’s moments of happiness, but
rather on the pain of the human condition. Persecuted by his Jewish
family and the villagers of his native Russia for wanting to be a
painter, Soutine escaped to France. There he led an insecure life that
culminated in the Nazi occupation of France.

We are introduced to this brilliant, proud, and emotional painter
through poems that are witty and sensitive, yet never sentimental. Inge
Israel, a bilingual Canadian poet born in Germany of a Russian mother
and a Polish father, writes in her short introduction that Soutine
conveys “tragic power with his splendid colors and immensely
descriptive brushstrokes.” Quoting him, she explains his philosophy,
which has become her own: “The important thing / is to look / through
rifts / in the visible.” Color reproductions of eight Soutine
paintings complete the volume.