UFR LLASICLanguage, literature, performing arts, information and communication, journalism

Summary

Paradisiaca: An Opera on the Lake is a book about the Lake Constance (Bodensee) region, Europe’s third-largest lake, located at the border of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Written over a period of five years and based on numerous visits to the area, the book offers an exploration of the lake, a place renowned for its water and light, culture, and art. It is a book of resistance written in defiance of the prevailing gloom.
This resistance is not expressed through activist rhetoric or opposition, but through the ecological, philosophical, and poetic conviction that our future life, if it is to be harmonious, must reconnect with the laws of the earth, water, and air. The narrative is told through multiple voices that bring the Lake Region to life in all its uniqueness and diversity. The text is a hybrid—part diary, part travelogue, part story of love for the land and a man, and part puppet theater presented in the form of poems that are also songs.

Elke de Rijcke

A bilingual (French-Dutch) author who writes in French. She has published works in the fields of poetry, translation, and the essay. All of her poetry books take up the challenge of an artistic dialogue with the arts (literature, visual arts, cinema, music) and the sciences (medicine, physics, ecology, cosmology, astrology). She has thus explored the works of David Altmejd, Frantisek Kupka, Antonio Damasio, Kaija Saariaho, and S.O.A.D. in June over April (LansKine, 2021). She recently published And then, suddenly, it rings out (Selected, 2005–2021), a comprehensive anthology that offers a glimpse into his five books (LansKine, 2023).