The Libera Me Domine
 | |
| Author | Robert Pinget |
|---|---|
| Original title | Le Libera |
| Translator | Barbara Wright |
| Language | French |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Éditions de Minuit Calder & Boyars Red Dust |
| Publication date | 1968 |
| Publication place | Paris |
Published in English | 1972 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 215 |
| ISBN | 9780714503394 |
| LC Class | PZ4.P653 Li |
Le Libera (Éditions de Minuit, 1968), translated as The Libera Me Domine, is the ninth novel by Swiss-born French writer Robert Pinget. The title is a reference to a Catholic liturgical chant sung at funerals ("Libera me, Domine, de morte æterna, in die illa tremenda" which translates as "Deliver me, O Lord, from death eternal on that fearful day").[1]
The final page of the French edition has no page number printed on it, "reflecting perhaps the growing awareness of the voice that the process in which it is engaged will continue until death."
The novel was translated into English by Barbara Wright for Calder and Boyars in 1972.[2]. The Red Dust edition includes a note from the author at the end of the text, not present in the original French.
Background and composition
Plot summary
Reception
In The New York Times, John Sturrock writes: "Like each of Mr. Pinget's novels, The Libera Me Domine Is the record of someone failing lamentably to construct a single coherent story, but that record is so rivetingly, so eloquently told, that this failure has to go down as a thumping success . . . Mr. Pinget's are spoken novels, written in order to be heard. His chief interest in writing them, he has said, is to impersonate a particular 'tone' of voice and to sustain this over many pages. In a book such as The Libera Me Domine, the voice is beautifully consistent and rhythmic, and its monologue is irresistible."[3]
An anonymous reviewer in The Virginia Quarterly Review writes: "Like Beckett, with whom he has marked affinity, Pinget concerns himself with the timbre of human speech in its more problematic self-definitions. Apart from L'Inquisitoire, Libera Me Domine is Pinget's most notable accomplishment, and one which challenges the assimilative ingenuity of the cleverest reader of contemporary fiction."[4]
References
External links
🇫🇷 This article about a French novel is a stub 📚
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1979/09/17/1979-09-17-165-tny-cards-000115714