Hervé Constant’s transformative sensibility
The man whose thoughts, like larks, take to their wings
Each morning, freely speeding through the air,
Who soars above this life, interpreter
Of owers’ speech, the voice of silent things!
Who soars above this life, interpreter
Of owers’ speech, the voice of silent things!
Hervé Constant is a poetic painter - Like the poet in Baudelaire’s text, his images give form to eeting and at times fragile things, unnoticed, perhaps in the ordinary performance of our lives. Waking up, organizing one’s day, travelling through the city, dealing with the hundred and one things that occupy us, interfacing with our fellow citizens, friends and family, tuned in to the broader geo-political events which form the background of our lives and over which we may have little control. Each of us comes to our own way of personalizing and navigating through our day. For some, perhaps, survival is already enough. e mind attuned to poetry nds wonder in the mundane. ose blinded or distracted by the material world may choose not to dedicate their thoughts to poetic reverie, or may question its purpose or validity. But this particular spirit of reverie has o en been the poet’s at least since the 17th-century. e sensibility of the poet/painter is attuned to these moments and fragilities, and from this awareness, is inspired to encapsulate a thought in form. A battered suitcase, mundane in almost every way, is nevertheless worthy of our attention. Let us stop and think about it - its myriad journeys, the service it has done its owner, obliged to pack up and transport only a handful of worldly possessions on some journey; a synechdoche for the larger home it encapsulates and displaces to some foreign place, a metaphor for the roving spirit of the poet and the transitoriness of life. Its mundanity permits it to stand in for everyman, whether refugee or holiday-maker, and embody their aspirations and anxieties at the journey ahead.