Axiales

A stunning collection of verse in French and English.

Dites : entendez-vous le monde murmurer là, juste là,

au coeur de votre souffle ?

Dites : l'entendez-vous ?

Tell me: do you hear the world whispering there, right

there, at the heart of your breathing?

Tell me: do you hear it?

Two themes have always attracted Anne-Lise Brugger Grataloup: childhood, with its eternal capacity for wonderment, and the vast mystery of the universe. These two themes explain her varied career: Doctor of Literature (philosophy), Bachelor of Educational Science, Diploma in Theology (University of Geneva), and Master Specialist in Clinical Sophrology.

After 14 years of teaching, she opened in Geneva in 1982: "passe murailles, école de l’Imaginaire”, having "caught in a manner increasingly clear and demanding, the call which Rilke, Ramuz and Bachelard had heard and which they transmitted to her—Learn to think and to speak also in images” (Gabriel Widmer).

This apprenticeship kept in store the eventual surprise of an upwelling of astonishing images, leading to the essay entitled: "Au commencement était l’image” published in 1992 by Labor et Fides.

As for the works in this collection, they attempt by "words on the fringe of rational speech”, to allow the world to express itself, to dream, weaving between it and the psyche ties which will pass stealthily from the seen to the unseen.

Axiales won the "Plume d’Or” (Golden Quill) award during

the presentation of the Grand Prix de la Ville de Genève and of the Société Genevoise des écrivains in 1984.