Jack Kerouac’s search for a Language and Identity Kerouac’s given name wasn’t Jack; it was Jean-Louis. His mother tongue wasn’t English; it was French. In the early fifties Kerouac wrote two unpublished works in French – Sur le chemin, and La nuit est ma femme, in which Kerouac identified French as the language in which he often swears, often dreams, and always cries. ‘When Jack was feeling wounded or angry,’ Joyce Johnson remarks, ‘he’d sign his letters Ti Jean. He’d save Jean-Louis for his darkest moments.’ She suggests he never felt truly American, and his love for the star-spangled nation was always the love of an outsider. Kerouac’s father told him: ‘Ti Jean, n’oublie jamais que tu es Breton’(Never forget that you are Breton). In 1965, he traveled to Brittany searching his family’s roots. Unfortunately, he followed a wrong track. He never went any further until his death, in 1969.

La nuit est ma femme will construct a literary exploration of Kerouac’s relationship to French, to Catholicism and Buddhism; of his bi-lingual identity; and of his fraught relationship with America. The selections will draw on his letters, poems, haiku and novels. Two writers – Gabriel Rosenstock and Gearóid Mac Lochlainn – will both translate and respond to Kerouac’s work. The texts will be read to improvised jazz accompaniment by The Dirty Jazz Band and on-screen projections created by Margaret Lonergan.

Curated by Liam Carson, director of the IMRAM Irish Language Literature Festival.

Is í an oíche mo bheansa: Jack Kerouac sa tóir ar theanga agus ar fhéiniúlacht Ní Jack a tugadh ar an mbunóc ach Jean-Louis. Níorbh é an Béarla a theanga dhúchais in aon chor ach an Fhraincis. Sna luath-1950í, scríobh Kerouac dhá shaothar neamhfhoilsithe sa teanga sin, Sur le chemin agus La nuit est ma femme, an teanga a bhí i mbarr a ghoib go minic agus mallachtaí ag teacht uaidh, an teanga inar múnlaíodh a chuid brionglóidí go minic agus an t-aon teanga amháin a bhí aige is é ag caoineadh. Níor bhraith Kerouac ina Mheiriceánach go smior. An grá a bhí aige do Mheiriceá, grá an étranger a bhí ann, grá an strainséara. 'Ná dearmad gur Briotánach is ea thú,' a dúirt a athair leis.

Nuair a cheistigh foilsitheoirí an Lonesome Traveller é dúirt sé: 'My people go back to Breton France, first North American ancestor Baron Alexander Louis Febris de Kérouac ...was granted land along the Riviere du Loup after victory of Wolfe over Montcalm; his descendants married Indians (Mohawk and Caughnawaga) and became potato farmers...' más fíor an méid sin! Sa bhliain 1965 chuaigh sé chun na Briotáine agus a chuid fréamhacha á lorg aige ach chuaigh sé amú ann.

Déanfaidh La nuit est ma femme caidreamh Kerouac a iniúchadh agus a chaidreamh leis an bhFraincis, leis an gCaitliceachas agus leis an mBúdachas a léiriú; a fhéiniúlacht dhátheangach agus a chaidreamh míshuaimhneach le Meiriceá. Freagróidh beirt scríbhneoirí Gearóid Mac Lochlainn agus Gabriel Rosenstock dá shaothar agus aistreofar cuid de go Gaeilge.

Beidh snagcheol tobchumtha ag The Dirty Jazz Band agus íomhánna ar scáileán cruthaithe ag Margaret Lonergan mar thionlacan leis an seó. Liam Carson, stiúrthóir IMRAM, Féile Litríochta na Gaeilge, a chruthaigh an tionscadal seo.