For almost twenty years, TRANSverse has pushed the boundaries within the sphere of student-run publications. In my time with the journal, I have witnessed its continued growth and have seen how the challenges presented by its ever-changing editorial board also contribute to its unique approach to the publication of both rigorous academic essays as well as rich works of creative writing. Unique to Issue 18, which take
Depuis presque vingt ans, TRANSverse repousse les limites dans le milieu des publications estudiantines. J’ai été témoin de sa croissance et j’ai compris comment les défis reliés au renouvellement périodique de l’équipe éditoriale réaffirment son approche unique quant à la publication d’essais académiques rigoureux et de textes originaux de création littéraire. Ayant pour thème la Nostalgie, le 18ème n
I. Cool wind rattles loose doors at intervals untimed. Clouds gather beyond the blinds— a cool day, yes, and one that I don’t want to see or acknowledge—a small sacrifice when championed against the paralysis of morning. But what casts on me if not clouds? What clambers in me if not organ pipes? What bears upon me if not paternal expectations, social exultations, or the weight of a growing conscience? I am yea
In the good old days nostalgia was a pathology. The black bile feathers a bed with memories of where they came from and where they had never been yet — and ended remembering their death in the present tense.
I made you pot roast, potatoes, and apple pie. I tried to conform to your recipe for suburban domesticity. You hurled oranges and insults, sprouted verses to your taste. I changed the formula – Savoury compromise. You pitched putrid peaches Once juicy, perfectly yielding. Born with purpose. Now rotting in the backyard garden.
Long face of Nostalgia with a rubber eye—a tap on my bones— I saw you looking at me, trying to persuade. I didn’t want to look in your direction. But I feel you closing in, your breath on my shoulder, then a stirring in my body. Go find a day job where you won’t bother anyone, something remote, like a sheepherder. Go roam the mountains and give me a passing nod. Leave my past in a shack with no electricity and only
A stone from the ocean upturns and rolls, catching the sun’s glare and you half-blinded by the deflection of the water as beams strike the ocean, your own pupils, dark part of another place that takes in light and then reflects in the eye to focus recollection. Why pick it up? Why admire its smoothness, as though you could see just surface? Throw the stone. Skip across the water. The stone will endure far longer. The
This pain shuts the door and sings a bad song. It’s like a dog’s howling a human’s growling when nothing else will matter. Matter makes the muscle, which seizes up. What did I do that couldn’t have been undone? A ripe sunset cannot be eaten. And a word misspoken spins its own orb. What can I swear to that shouldn’t be sworn? I wish for the shadows to soften. I hope for the meadow of my muscle- bound youth to roll tow
Our thing, this cosy nostalgia. A dog to its vomit, your nose tells you smells awful. Sent forward, no stall here – empty manger of hesitation – nor steeled to a retreat. The nest endures but wings signal now to all years fly home. Years in, still new, it cheers me acutely. And you, still here.
Traces of blood tell stories, create memories. Engraved in the skin, an unhealed wound; one that bleeds when I scratch: an open wound; a painful testament; a past stitched into my skin. She protects her, my grandmother. She shelters my mother within the folds of her saree, sells her bangles to buy food, strips off her own bindi: a naked forehead. Better than a naked body for the soldiers to prey on. Pray, prey, strip
Introduction La négritude a constitué, à en croire Leiris, le thème central de la poésie d’Aimé Césaire « comme expression naturelle de ce qui lui tient le plus à cœur » (Leiris dans Kesteloot & Kotchy, 8). Kesteloot estime de même que « toute étude sur l’œuvre de Césaire débouche inévitablement sur le tragique essentiel de la condition nègre, et sur la révolte aussi essentielle de l’homme, par le tr
Introduction Des photographies de Roman Vishniac accompagnent le texte d’Y.L. Peretz dans Les oubliés du Shtetl, paru dans la collection « Terre Humaine » (2007), fondée par Jean Malaurie en 1955 et actuellement dirigée par Jean-Christophe Rufin. La série de clichés extraite de l’ouvrage A Vanished World (Vishniac, 1984), dans lequel le photographe inventorie les traditions hébraïques et rurales dans les
Dans le train qui l’éloigne de Budapest, Sándor Márai, contraint à l’exil par le régime communiste en 1948, écrit : « pour la première fois de ma vie, j’éprouvai un terrible sentiment d’angoisse. Je venais de comprendre que j’étais libre. Je fus saisi de peur » (445)[i]. Alors que l’écrivain hongrois voit défiler derrière lui son pays qu’il ne reverra plus jamais, il n’évoque pas
L’immigration, l’exil venant arracher l’individu de son univers, fait naître chez lui la douleur du déracinement et le sentiment de la nostalgie de la terre natale. Nous tenterons d’éclaircir dans un premier temps les conditions qui créent la nostalgie et celles qui l’accentuent. Nous nous pencherons par la suite sur le rapport avec le pays natal et sur les différents aspect
NAPOLI CHE CANTA de Roberto Roberti, 1926 La nostalgie du muet se nourrit du miracle toujours renouvelé que représente le fait qu’un cri puisse passer par l’écran. (Damisch 11) I. Films perdus, films retrouvés Si la moitié des films de l’histoire mondiale du cinéma ont disparu, on estime jusqu’à 80 % les films muets antérieurs à 1930 qui sont irrémédiablement perdus (Le Monde). Plus que tout autre
Looking Back is an autofictional game that takes you, the Player, inside of Kris’s life as a PhD student. Appropriating the classic JRPG style with a Choices Matter twist, it is a parts exploration, parts visual novel game, in which you must carve your own path toward the destruction of the ultimate boss monster that haunts your everyday life: your Thesis. It lurks in your bedroom and fills you with anxiety, b
Ce film est consacré à plusieurs femmes et un homme russophones immigrés en France après 1991. À travers l’histoire de ma mère russe devenue professeure de français pour des russophones, on découvre quelques bribes des parcours éclectiques de ses élèves ainsi que leurs souvenirs fragmentaires conservées dans des images d’archives, les vidéos amateurs des années 1990. ____________________________________
Ba Ngoai (vietnamese for maternal grandmother) is a piece of interactive fiction exploring the generational and familial bonds between first and third generation immigrants, along with the preservation of memory through oral practices. Through the various choices made by the user, the autofictional character is brought to interact with various objects scattered in Ba Ngoai’s house, and with the memories
Transverse is a peer-reviewed journal with an interdisciplinary focus organized by graduate students at the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.
Our mission is to provide a space to showcase critical works, creative writing, and visual art that do not easily fit into more traditional publications.