What happened to time during the Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns? Acclaimed novelist and essayist Marina Warner recounts how strangely her days and weeks passed, in this highly personal account of a response to lockdown in which she delves into her experience of Catholic convent schools for some clues as to how each day might be marked as significant. She discusses missals, almanacs, Roman and Revolutionary calendars, developing her thoughts into what amounts almost to a manifesto – for a new way of rendering each day different, memorable, human. Her text is accompanied by a further response to lockdown, by the Greek photographer Dimitris Kleanthis, whose haunting images somehow make visible the suspension-and-acceleration of time experienced by so many, while also hinting at how, to the eye that is acute enough, there may always be an event taking place.

Published by Sylph Editions, this elegant book is part of ‘The Cahiers Series’ made in collaboration with The American University of Paris: ‘The goal of this series is to make available new explorations in writing, in translating, and in the areas linking these two activities.’ Find out more about the series here. Buy a copy of this beautiful book (£14) on Sylph Editions here!

Since Temporale was published, it has been featured in various publications, online and in print.

17 March – TLS, ‘Dish delish’, Temporale feature

In the TLS column by M. C., Marina’s latest book Temporale is mentioned, with a photograph from the publication by Dimitris Kleanthis shown alongside. M.C. writes

We admire the choice of images such as the portal station reclaimed by nature, pictures above, perhaps a little more because they do not exactly illustrate the essay they accompany; rather, they “partner” them. […] And as Kleanthis’s photos are to Temporale, so Temporale is to Warner’s recent memoir Inventory of a Life Mislaid, resuming a life story from a different angel. May post-lockdown literature bring about more such partnerships.

14 April – Temporale excerpt, The New York Review

This edited excerpt from Marina’s book, Temporale is accompanied by historical images of almanacs and timekeepers, as well as part of Francesco del Cossa’s frescoes that make up the months in Palazzo Schifanoia!

25 April – Temporale excerpt in Book Post‘s most recent mail-out, along with a review

Book Post have featured Marina’s latest publication Temporale in their 25 April Diary, along with a review of the work, giving some background on the Cahiers series:

Temporale reflects on ways to cultivate in modern life the benefits of the marking of time in ancient calendars. The Cahiers series, a veritable who’s who of contemporary literature and art […] Dan Gunn teamed up with designer and Sylph Editions founder Ornan Rotem to create a series of impeccably produced, hand-bound chapbooks of around forty pages, combining art and literature. In 2013 he was joined by scholar and critic Daniel Medin. Find out more about […] the confluence of circumstances that nourished [Dan Gunn’s] eclectic career in this interview—in Music & Literature—with Lydia Davis.

21 September, ‘Temporale’ – Event celebrating Marina Warner’s book Temporale, #39 in the Cahiers Series, 6.30pm, 6, rue du Colonel Combes, 75007 Paris

The Center for Writers and Translators celebrated their most recent publication with Sylph Editions by Marina, Temporale, the 39th issue of the Cahiers series. Temporale addresses ‘What happened to time during the Coronavirus pandemic?’, as Marina recounts how strangely her days and weeks passed, in this highly personal account of a response to lockdown.

Review by Ruth Padel in LMH Brown Book 2023

Read the review of Temporale (pp.111-112) here, or see below. Padel writes that Temporale is a ‘richly associative and imaginative essay […] a highly personal but wonderfully erudite response to that bizarre time we all shared alone. […] Read Warner’s essay and marvel at how the ways we measure time recharge our subjective experience of it through our life’