Vincent Barré & Sylvain Dubuisson, Monument to the Victims Executed at La Nivelle (2005)

© vincent barré

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In the place where a clearing once was, the monument commemorating the execution of four members of the Resistance by the Nazis on the 21st August 1944 has been re-built on a field on the Ferme Rose, on the banks of the Nivelle river.
A sunken path planted with hawthorn and wild roses leads to the area of the former clearing. Four split columns are installed in staggered rows facing east and west. A low wall, engraved in French and German with ‘Psaume’, a poem by Paul Celan, has to be negotiated before entering the space where the columns are installed.
Columns in cast iron. Height: 2.45 metres.
Wall in Souppes limestone.
The area is grassed and planted with elder trees and a grove of poplars.

Psalm

No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,
no-man spirits our Dust.
No-man.

Praise to you, No-man.
For love of you
we will flower.
Moving
towards you.

A Nothing
we were, we are, we shall
be still, flowering:
the Nothing-, the
No-man’s-rose.

With
our Pistil soul-bright,
our Stamen heaven-torn,
our Corolla red
with the Violet-Word that we sang
over, O over
the thorn.

Paul Celan