…by letter I decant
your meanings,
pour my signs
onto the silent book.
In She Who Lies Above, Beatriz Hausner combines poetry and poetic prose, fiction and non-fiction and her own remarkable presence into a work of creative imagination. This book moves with cohesion and depth across a set of mysteries that have endured for over seventeen centuries.
Hypatia: silenced icon. None of her letters remain. No writing known with certainty to be authored by her has survived. Some scholars state her work was probably derivative. Others champion her as singularly brilliant, unique. Admired and vilified: then and now. While countless women have been born, died and disappeared from human consciousness, Hypatia and her stories remain.
What we have been told is, she lived in 4th century AD in Alexandria, a philosopher, teacher, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist. Although non-Christian, she was respected and sought out by many Christian students and colleagues. Independent— although she may have had lovers, there is no mention of marriage. And murdered—seized from her chair and dragged through the streets, perhaps by priests, or hired killers, Her flesh was torn away from her body by sharpened sea shells, perhaps broken tiles, as was done at that time. The motives were political, perhaps religious, likely both. It seems the intent was to silence her, to render her gone. That effort has been persistently unsuccessful.
Beatriz Hausner brings to Hypatia’s mythic legacy a friendship, documented in letters and reflections, between herself and a bespectacled poet-librarian and archivist, Bettina Ungaro. We learn from Beatriz that Bettina, in the refectory of a convent in Quebec, has found undiscovered letters written by Hypatia to her former student, friend, colleague, admirer, perhaps lover, Syncresius. His letters to Hypatia are already well-known and have historically been one authoritative source of information about her. Bettina sets herself the task of translating and somehow integrating the two sets of letters. In the commentaries that accompany her translations, she notes that this was not an easy task: “Alchemy is the focus throughout”. She Who Lies Above is the result of her efforts.
In the surrealist realm of Hausner and Ungaro’s fictional explorations, Hypatia emerges as a passionate woman who is deeply and profoundly excited by the possibilities of science and mathematics and who sees connections in and through her relationship with Syncresius:
Syncresius:
“This letter I dictate for you….teacher, mother, sister, daughter, and, before all else, benefactress, the bestower of blessings all.”
Hypatia:
“…..I recall our embrace long ago when you last you were in Alexandria. You would speak about your pursuit of the placement of stars in the dark night, by way of attesting to your method and the manner of your careful measuring of your affection….”
Bettina:
“Here is my persistence, my delving deep into the archive in the unearthing of the spirits of the Alexandrian and her Cyrene and my homage to their enduring love. When all is said and done, and after everyone has left the building, and dust gathers in the corners of the rooms, Hypatia will remain The Wise One, she who lies above her gender….”
Poetry and mixed genre work, with their white spaces, metaphors, and invitations to consider what lies beyond our immediately available frames of consideration, is one ideal door into surrealisms’ unreal truths. When is a librarian an alchemist? How is an astronomer an archivist? How does a fictional account of some (im)possible lost letters between two people in places and millennia long past create a new sense of creative possibilities for the here and now, in me?
When is a librarian an alchemist? How is an astronomer an archivist?
Surrealism has an important place at a time when thousands of people are dying in Gaza; as around the world many of us watch in a state of helplessness pleading for ceasefire; when war in the Ukraine is now in its third year; when so much of the motivation and intent of regional politics, worldwide and at home, defies any easy understanding.
This book asks something of its readers. And offers much. She Who Lies Above requires an active engagement across “outside of time‘s delight and time’s suffering,” with Hypatia and Syncresius, Bettina Ungaro, her friend Beatriz Hausner. What we receive in return is alchemical and previously unconsidered possibilities: who is the shadow lover we may encounter in the stacks of our own unexplored archives if not some new vision of ourselves?
Syncresius:
“Your words made strange sense to me, ….”
Hypatia:
“Everything is alive.“
Beatriz Hausner was born in Chile and immigrated to Canada with her family when she was a teenager. She has published many poetry books, including The Wardrobe Mistress (2004), Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), and Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020). Her prose and poetry have been published in many chapbooks and included in several anthologies, and her books have been published internationally and translated into several languages, including her native Spanish, French, Dutch, and Greek. She is an active participant in the international surrealist movement, and a respected historian and translator of Latin American surrealism. Hausner, who is trilingual, served three terms as President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and was Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. She was also a founding publisher of Quattro Books. Hausner lives in Toronto where she publishes The Philosophical Egg.
Publisher: Book*Hug Press (November 7, 2023)
Paperback 6″ x 8″ | 109 pages
ISBN: 9781771668200
Susan is grateful to live on Treaty 18 territory at the southern shore of Manidoo-gitchigami (Georgian Bay) in Ontario, Canada with two human partners and a very large dog. Recent publications include a collaborative chapbook,Hand Shadowswith Michele Green and Suzette Sherman (Wintergreen Press, 2024). Hag Dancesis coming out with At Bay Press in Spring 2025.www.susanwismer.com