Cet obscur objet du désir

I should know it. Christmas time rarely makes for good cinema.
Do you remember Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie? The main character, Marnie, was a thief but, above all, she was frigid. To make his point, Hitchcock gave her Sean Connery as husband and showed her throwing herself into a swimming pool after he imposed conjugal duty. She'd rather drown than touch Sean Connery or be touched by him. That woman obviously had a huge problem!

Well, Australia is a sort of libido test for heterosexual women too. If you're capable of watching that almost 3 hour film until the end, chuckling instead of sighing over it, your libido is just fine...

I wish I could say something kind about the film, but as films go it sucks. It's nothing like Gone With The Wind and Kidman's character is nothing like Scarlett O'Hara. I don't have any problem with genre and entertainment per se, I have a problem with bad writing and bad cinematography. In that regard, Australia does everything that should be forbidden in a cinema class. All the movie cliches are there. All of them! The postcard-like shots, the ridiculous slow-motions, the slushy music to emphasize emotional moments, the stereotyped situations, the laughable camera angles, the overused lines. Some movies do that on purpose, selling themselves as parodies–like that western starring Sharon Stone and Russel Crowe that was a tribute to Spaghetti westerns, or even like Van Helsing, two movies that were a lot of fun– but Australia isn't supposed to be a parody. It's a wannabe-saga-epic-romance film. As such, it failed completely.

Wanna see a good Australian movie on the issue of stolen mixed-blood children? Watch The Rabbit Proof Fence ! Now that's epic, inspired, moving, heartbreaking yet uplifting and beautiful. I know that Baz Luhrmann's idea wasn't to show reality but to portray a mythologised Australia: fine! but mythology doesn't necessarily mean artificial cinema, kitsch and clichés. The boy was cute but I wasn't moved by his story, and the romance did nothing to me.

However, I watched Australia until the final credits, because while one half of my brain–the thinking one, was processing the commonplaces and mocking the bad stuff, the other half–the basic one that is obviously ruled by urges, kept telling the former"Oh shut up and enjoy the pretty! Look at these arms, look at his arse, look at this hairy torso! Wow...Oh dimples!".

Hugh Jackman is the embodiment of the handsome manly man here. His character doesn't even need a name for he isn't really a character but an archetype. He's the Drover; the drool-inducing drover. I already found him very attractive, we all already knew he had an incredible body– his good looks had been used on screen before – but this film goes beyond the usual stuff. Anything Jackman does here, either he sits or stands up or walks or rides a horse or lies down, or just stands against a tree, he does it in a sexy way that makes you wish to become that seat, that pair of trousers, that ground, that horse or that tree. Actually he keeps posing and showing off his perfect body during the whole movie; whether he's filmed from the front or from the back or from the side, or from below, he exudes confident manliness, oozes sex-appeal; whether he's dressed or shirtless, bearded or shaved clean, wet or dry, he's handsome and just hot; actually anything Jackman-related is testosterony, sensual, pure rowrrrrrrrrrr, shot to make us swoon and fan ourselves. He is the eternal man, the Man of the Dreaming–note that this is my only attempt to connect the silly writing to actual Aboriginal culture.

I know movies whose main goal was to flatter an actress whom the filmmaker was usually in love with, but it's probably the first time I see a film that is a nearly 3 hour advert for a sort of manly perfection, a male sex object. And the villain is played by David Wenham, the wonderful Faramir from The Lord of The Ring, who isn't hard on the eyes either...

So yes, I'm guilty of putting aside my cinema expectations and switching onto lust-mode. Sometimes, because it's Christmas, you just want to forget the poor stuff, focus on the pleasant things, lie back half-satisfied, and purr.

Apocalyptic time

ARTE, the French-German channel, is often considered boring– Americans would say "high-brow"–by the crowd, or, at best, educational. Actually it's the way people, who never watch it, see it. They miss many interesting varied programmes and good old films, or more recent films that weren't necessarily blockbusters, I admit, but usually worth seeing. And once every 5 years there's a terrific programme that constitutes a true revelation and goes straight in the history of television. It often happens this time of the year, and it's often provided by Gérard Mordillat and Jérôme Prieur.

This year it was a documentary series whose title L'Apocalypse could be seen as a mislead, but is actually relevant.

Several researchers (historians and theologians, Jewish, Catholics, Protestants, believers and atheists, whatever) from all over the world have contributed to that inquiry/explanation/exegesis in front of the camera, on the origins of Christian Church in the Roman Empire. The debate unfolds through the montage of the various speeches, but they basically talk to the camera, alone. There's a female voice-over to introduce a theme, a question, or make a transition but nothing else. The writers-directors never appear on screen. The approach is quite similar to the Corpus Christi series that aired 11 years ago (same writers-directors), which means it's scholastic and sober, severe even, but it's simply engrossing and fascinating. Corpus Christi was a success at the time and I'm sure that the dvds of L'Apocalypse already sell well. My point is that the audience can enjoy smart when you give them smart even when it doesn't look attractive nor entertaining.

Books talk to each others, so our researchers use several other sources to throw light on the Christian literature and articulate the demonstration; it isn't only a matter of exegesis for historical events are also examined to explain the beginning of Christianity.

The series begins with a study of the Book of Revelation, hence the title, and opens with the idea–actually it's a quote from Alfred Loisy and a leitmotiv throughout the series–that early Christians waited for the impending return of Christ but it's the Church that came. The writers of the series are no historians, their work isn't flawless, they may even be trapped in their own certainty and obsessions, unable to think "out of the box"for they don't see the box they are stuck in, but they make good and refreshing television; they do have a thesis since they built L'Apocalypse from the basic premise of a hiatus between the Jewish sect of Jesus followers and the institution that overcame in the Empire, and that thesis is conveyed by the voice-over, sometimes a bit heavily, but they let the scientists talk as they wish, which is the best part and makes the series gripping.

I've just seen the first episode, "La Synagogue de Satan"; I bought the dvds as my personal Christmas gift to myself; I loved it. It suggested very well how divided the first Christians were and that the New Testament is an unlikely collection of books that reveal the controversies of the time, the Canon having covered them up. I liked the idea that the Book of Revelation, written by John, followed a tendry Apocalyptic genre in Jewish literature, echoed the frustrations of many Jews after 70, and among them the frustration of those who believed in Jesus as the messiah and might have considered the others to be false jews(hence the phrase "synagogue of Satan"), but also gave away the competition between Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians, and might be, at the end of the day, a mere blistering attack against Paul and his followers.

The second isntallment goes back over the fire in Rome and the first persecution but I'm saving it for later, there's Doctor Who on the cable.

PS: Enluminure du commentaire de l'Apocalypse, Béatus El Escorial, 1ère moitié du Xème siècle, parce que la sans-dieu que je suis n'a pas oublié qu'elle était aussi médiéviste.

Defeated gods

A student asked me, two days ago, what happened to Roman gods after Theodosius put a ban on them and the Roman Empire became Christian. I said they took a break in the country–I had just explained the etymology of the word "paganism" and thought I was being funny.

Nobody asked whether there was a necropolis for dead gods.

Shoe planning

The good thing about the Internet buzz concerning the Shoe Attack against Bush in Iraq is that now everybody seems to recall Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN in 1960.

Some people said that the shoe event was an example of Khrushchev's terrible temper and primal reactions but I have been told–I haven't seen the pictures myself– that he was actually still wearing both shoes on his feet at the time so he would have brought an extra shoe as a mere prop, cunningly premeditating the whole thing.

8 years before, Adlai Stevenson was running for the White House. He believed in the power of words but was caught with a hole in the sole of his shoe, and Eisenhower won the elections.

The Iraqi journalist that aimed at Bush, is said to have practised throwing shoes for weeks.

Morale de l'histoire? The political shoe must be at hand but requires planning.

Sunset in Tarangire

Two years ago, I took the picture that is now the header of this blog, in Tarangire, my first and favourite park in Tanzania. But I hadn't realized how much I liked this photograph, until it found its place here.

C'est Mozart qu'on assassine ?

To tell the truth, I don't like Mozart's music very much. I listen to the Requiem (perhaps it's Salieri I like actually)from time to time, and I don't hate the Clarinet Concerto in A major, but Mozart usually doesn't make it to my play list. Most of the time I find his music...annoying. As opera works go, I much prefer Puccini's or Wagner's, or Purcell's mini operas. So far my favourite memories in l'Opéra Bastille are Robert Wilson's Madame Butterfly, and the wonderful production of Tannhaüser I saw last year.

Yet I really enjoyed Die Zauberflöte,The Magic Flute, I saw on Sunday. The voices weren't great although Pamina was really good (The Queen of the Night missed a note in the famous aria and Jose Van Dam is really getting old)but I did love the extravagant and controversial production.

When it was showed first in 2005, the reactions were visceral and many conservative operagoers called it an outrage, a sacrilege. Minor changed have been made since then so the show I saw was still very original, unorthodox, daring, smart and funny. However there was no boos and no screams of horror this time. The audience may be used to Gérard Mortier's avant-guard choices now(I wonder if the Tristan and Isolde by Peter Sellars, that uses Bill Viola's videos, is still controversial, for I remember the boos it received years ago). Personally I think that Alex Ollé and Carlos Padrissa from the Catalan theatre group, La Fura dels Baus, did a great job with The Flute.

It was as if Lewis Carroll met Pedro Almadovar, with Mozart playing in the background...I guess that Amadeus would have agreed.

Modern productions with bizarre mise en scène and videos aren't always relevant; sometimes the interpretations are far-fetched and a stroke of inspiration may have only a shocking value; this one fits in the story and is quite meaningful. Papageno comes out as a sort of convincing drag-queen (see the picture above), the video was cleverly used, and the idea of using machinery(the Queen of the Night is brought on stage sitting at the end of a camera crane and is held aloft over the orchestra) and huge air-filled plastic mattresses—that either call to the mind the world of dreams and the world of madness(the stage then becoming a padded room in which those crazy characters are stuck!), or are turned into walls, doors, labyrinths and even a cocoon for chrysalis-Tamino –was simply spot-on, even though the shifting was sometimes a bit noisy.

I also loved the two parodies of magic acts, when the Speaker shows up, inside of a box, to be split a few minutes later, or when Sarastro is pierced by Pamina's swords; the chess game was also a brilliant idea, very well thought up.

The masonic allegory that Mozart imagined is replaced here by something more modern, or maybe more universal. The first video projection says it all in the first scene, as we can make up the shape of a brain on the central mattress. Everything happens in the brain...What's in a brain?–yes I'm stubborn when it comes to correspondances. Fantasy of course!

At the end of the day, the production kind of stole the show and the music could have almost been forgotten, which I didn't mind a bit.

Unforgettable

On Sunday I saw Hunger. It was grey and cold, I was moody so it sounded like a good idea at the time.

What a movie! It's both gruesome and stunning. Steve McQueen never made a film before but he definitely knows his way around a camera! He teaches a lesson of cinema here and didn't win the camera d'or (the prize rewarding a debut film) in Cannes for nothing! I tell you, a talented film maker is born.

The actor who plays Bobby Sands, Michael Fassbender, has an incredible screen presence that gets more and more palpable as he loses more and more weight, but to me it's all about the scenario, the mise en scène and the cinematography.

They made some almost unbearable scenes watchable. I know that some people think it's too arty given the topic, but I was glad for that artistry, especially since it doesn't soften the horror, the raw violence displayed on screen. I don't like films whose only goal is to shock and hurt the audience (Here I'm thinking of Hanecke and his La Pianiste). Hunger is intense and hard to take for it doesn't spare the viewers the most awful details about the way IRA prisoners were treated by the guards in the Maze, about the dirty strike and the hunger strike, and about Bobby's final death, yet it remains a beautiful work of art. Even shit and piss end up looking beautiful. Can you imagine that? Some contemporary so-called artists make utter crap and call it art, this film maker turns supposed shit into art. McQueen is an alchemist!

However, the central piece is neither about prisoners being regularly beaten up and living among feces and worms, nor about Bobby starving himself to death, it's a 15 minutes conversation between Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunnigham who plays someone working in "the business of soul", that is the prison's priest(see the picture above). It's dialectical but it could be an interior monologue as well. That scene is a purple passage, almost a sequence shot. Brilliant! There's even humour in the scene, as Bobby, who's used to smoking the Bible pages, nicks the priest's cigarettes to spare the Book of John!

I guess it's easier to see and enjoy the film for what it is, when you don't have any personal baggage concerning IRA; some British people already resent Hunger, accusing Steve McQueen of propaganda, but I didn't take it that way. The film maker doesn't support Bobby's cause or actions. Yes there's the scene I mentioned above, in which he shows him arguing and justifying his choices, including the hunger strike, and I guess we could call it apologetic, but Bobby is confronted with the priest's rhetoric then, so it's pretty balanced. We mostly see a desperate man trying to give a meaning to his life.

I admit that "the magic of cinema" tends to turn any lead character into a sort of hero, especially when such character is played by a handsome guy who ends up looking Christ-like because of the hunger strike. But it isn't a biopic, and symbolism matters more than who Bobby Sands really was, more than his agony. By the way, the film doesn't begin with Bobby, whose introduction happens much later, but with other characters, first and foremost a guard with injured knuckles.

To me it doesn't say "look at this man who is a true martyr", it's a film showing tormented souls, showing what human beings are capable to do to themselves–and with "themselves" I mean their own person but also their close relations and their kind– and the horrible situations they can find themselves stuck in, for various reasons that they all might find right at the time. And that's a reflection that we need nowadays more than ever.

One scene that truly moves me shows a young guard finally breaking down as his colleagues unleash violence and go wild on the prisoners. It points out that crimes against humanity destroy the torturers too. It goes well with the symbolism of Bobby Sands destroying his body through hunger strike.

The film maker tells a story that obviously left a mark on him as a British man, but he doesn't really take sides and he doesn't shy away from the violence of the IRA militia when he shows one of the guards being killed by a bullet in the head, while he is visiting his senile mother in an old people's home, his blood splashing on her forgetful face, his head falling dead onto her still lap. A shocking scene too.

Eventually if McQueen had an agenda, it isn't about glorifying Bobby Sands, but it might be about putting recent events into perspective(Abu Graib, Gunatanamo...), and it's pretty much about addressing to She whose voice is heard several times during the film, but who is never there of course.

As for me, I wouldn't mind if Margaret Thatcher were forced into watching Hunger...

What's in a crane ?

Yes I'm shameless when it comes to misquoting Shakespeare and butchering the English tongue!

Less than 100 pages and I'll be done with The Echo Maker.

Here are three pictures I took in the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania.

The famous crowned cranes, and wildebeests.

what's in a brain ?

A few days ago I watched the last Eastwood's film, Changeling –watchable enough but not his best work, Clint still knows how to shoot but hasn't been really inspired for a while, and he now indulges in many facilities–and, as I was sitting in the theatre it called to my mind the book I've been reading since last week. In Changeling, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie)'son is kidnapped. The LAPD (already as corrupted as in a James Ellroy's crime novel) needs some good media coverage and decides to show off a solved case by bringing the boy back to his desperate mother, but, as the kid returns home, Christine Collins doesn't recognize him, and insists on saying that the boy who claims to be Walter, isn't her son but a fraud. When she becomes too vocal, and therefore embarrassing, she's thrown into a mental institution. But of course she's right, her cause is just and Hollywood demands that justice must be done.

In Richard Powers' The Echo Maker, Mark, one of the central characters/voices suffers from Capgras syndrome. After a car accident, Mark emerged from a coma, recognizing everybody but his most beloved ones: his sister Karin and his dog Blackie. To his eyes they look like almost perfect doubles of the sister and pet he cherished, and he's convinced that they are impostors. Soon, in order to explain the emotional disconnection he feels, he considers himself to be the victim of a huge conspiracy.

But there's much more in this wonderful book than a mere neurological thriller. There are echoes within echoes, several sorts of disconnection, various degrees of a more general condition, interlocked metaphors.
Without stating it, Richard Powers literally auscultates the post-9/11 America. The cranes' migration is a key metaphor the whole book is based on, or rather a kind of leitmotiv thoughout the story; they come and go, giving the novel its title. Once upon a time some people from an Indian clan called themselves the Cranes, aka the echo makers.

And is it me or does Karin sounds a little bit like crane? Also the phrase "the echo maker" calls to my mind Nietzsche analyzing (or rather attacking)Wagner's music, but that's another story.

I could go on parsing the book, drawing parallels and playing with the echoes that Powers dropped here and there. This book is like a big game for me but it is also an educational and pleasant reading. There's obviously a lot of research behind the story, but it is never tacked onto the rest, it doesn't dehumanize the characters, and it never hampers the poetical prose. Richard Powers is a talented writer, not a pretentious one. He makes you forget about the wires beneath the flesh. Maybe because, unlike Mark, we actually want to be fooled.

Eventually there's one echo that he must not have meant to make–a connection that probably exists in my head only wherein often connections take place– an echo that I enjoy although it confused me at first. The book has been published in France this year, got terrific reviews, and Richard Powers has done some great interviews, but I didn't buy it when I spotted it in my favourite bookshop. So much gets lost in translation, the title to beging with(La Chambre des Echos isn't a bad title but it limits the sense), so I ordered it on Amazon and I read it in English to enjoy the author' s musical style. The first page disconcerted me until I remembered what the word "crane" means (I did see crowned cranes in Tanzania after all and learned many bird names at the time before forgetting them all !). And I find rather amusing that "crâne" is also a French word meaning skull or head. The echo maker indeed.

Weber shut off the shower and closed his eyes. For a few more seconds, warm tributaries continued to stream down his back. Even the intact body was itself a phantom, rigged up by neurons as a ready scaffold. The body was the only home we had, and even it was more a postcard than a place. We did not live in muscles and joints and sinews; we lived in the thought and image and memory of them. No direct sensation, only rumours and unreliable reports.

Okay I may be falling for Richard Powers, a little bit...

PS: I bought a poster-copy of Bosch's painting (a few experts say it might not be one of his works though), The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (The cure of Folly), at El Prado's shop many years ago, and it has been on the wall above my desk since ever. What's in a brain? A question teachers often ask when swimming in Marking Hell.

PPS: The picture of Bosch's painting vanished and I hate seeing that empty spot, so I have to edit this post, 3 weeks later, which is probably going to screw up the chronology on my blog.

Is this History or just a good story?

First, I have to say that I'm glad and relieved that Barack Obama of The Bright Smile won...because it means that McCain/Palin ticket, that scary joke, failed. Lesser of the two evils, you know...

Obama was too much conservative and religious to be my cup of tea, even though I acknowledge the fact he sounds intelligent, level-headed, articulate, which is far better than what we've seen in the U.S lately (or than the silly President France elected last year...*sigh*). He does have qualities, so it's a breath of fresh air after 8 years of Bush administration, but, as a left-wing person I don't delude myself.

Obama simply revived a certain Democrat tradition(perhaps more F.D Roosevelt-like than J. F Kennedy-like), was obviously Wall Street candidate, and I doubt there will be much of a change for the poorest. To think that some ultra-conservative Americans considered him a leftie! From our standards in here, he's a centrist (no wonder that he got 95% in France!)leaning to the right. And he will serve American interests first and foremost. So I think that Obama is doomed to disappoint, especially outside of America.

It isn't that I want to rain on everybody's parade and play the cynic – after all the election of President Barack Obama may do some good in his country and abroad, if only by reconciling the world to America or changing some attitudes in our old European political parties–it's just that it's interesting to analyze what just happened.

Actually I am not surprised that he won. His campaign was good while his rival's was not. Obama played the card of the American dream, using all the key elements from the American mythology (the freedom, the frontier and the melting-pot)...which was exactly what America needed at the moment. Bush had become a shame, Obama could be an American pride. He's the spiritual son of an inspiring threesome, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and Ronald Reagan !

One of my friends, commenting on how Europeans were into the campaign, said that watching the American election was like watching a good tv show. I think that her remark was spot-on.

There're several interesting books explaining very well how American politics is based on the principles of storytelling, and how our politicians in Europe are following the trend (Sarkozy, for instance, learnt it and put it into practice very well. ). Storytelling management is the new smart thing; for a few years it has been an important training in business schools. Stephen Denning, who wrote A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling (2004) and co-wrote Storytelling in Organizations: Why Storytelling Is Transforming 21st Century Organizations and Management, is one of his gurus.

Actually storytelling is everywhere now, especially on the web, through social networks and blogs...where we are the story. But I'm digressing...

For years advertising executive, spin doctors, and, above all, Hollywood writers have been hired to work in politics, to use the storytelling methods in the political field, not only for campains but also for term of office, in order to conceal problems. Stories slowly took the place of articulate argument.

I believe it really started with Bill Clinton (but let's not forget that Reagan was an actor once upon a time, and came from Hollywood...).

"I grew up in the pre-television age, in a family of uneducated but smart, hard-working, caring storytellers. They taught me that everyone has a story. And that made politics intensely personal to me. It was about giving people better stories."

-President Bill Clinton

The problem with storytelling is that it may backfire (you know like the Irak episode, or lately the story of Joe The Plumber)...unless you have a fresh one to take the citizens' mind off the current issue. Media always need fresh meat, more stories (Chomsky, where are you?). One story must always chase the old one away.

In January 1985, Reagan talked about American heroes in his speech to the Congress, just like Obama in several speeches of his this year. Reagan used Jean Nguyen at the time, and started a pattern. In 1991, Colin Powel was introduced by Bush as « A great American story... »

For a long time, the Bush administration was a pretty efficient storyteller...until reality, finally, imposed itself and screwed its story up.

McCain, the wounded veteran, the Maverick, had a good story to tell but it was...dated, and he made the mistake of Bush-ifying himself during the campaign, the G.O.P not getting that that story was over. Palin also had a good story (there's a rumour that it was Obama's first words when he heard about her being picked, interesting...)but part of the story she told, scared some people out, making them switch over another programme.

Obama definitely offered, and is telling, the best story. He won because he was the best storyteller.

How long before reality screws it up?

Parce qu'il faut cultiver son jardin

Yesterday I re-watched The Constant Gardener, a film I loved when it was released a few years ago.

Based on a novel by John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener could be described as a political thriller, or as belonging to social realism, but I don't think it is the most interesting side of the movie, and there isn't much suspense at the end of the day. Yes there are murders and there's a conspiracy; corruption is pointed out on the highest levels, the plot shows the collusion between the Foreign Office and multinational firms to the detriment of the most vulnerable populations, how fragile humanitarian action is and how commercial interest overcomes helpless NGOs. The film denounces powerful white men using black countries, people ready to do anything to save millions of $, all sort of compromises with one's conscience. The malpractice of major pharmaceutical companies and neocolonialism are indeed the context of the film if not the framework. Sadly, unless you live under a rock, there's nothing really new under the sun...especially in Africa. If there's a message here, it isn't a new one either. But I think that the movie is much more than a film with a message on capitalism and free-market globalization.

First, there's the undisputable artistic side; you can tell that Fernando Meirelles worked on the form. The cinematography is excellent. There's a nice contrast between the documentary-like style of the movie– the use of hand-held camera sequences and webcam pictures, and the breathtaking beauty of certain African landscapes (especially at the end of the movie, at the Lake). The main protagonists in the story, Ralph Fiennes playing Justin and Rachel Weisz playing his wife Tessa, are beautiful too. She's a social activist, he's a shy diplomat. Thanks to flashbacks we get to see their meeting, and glimpses of their life together. The shaky camera, that follows their journey in Africa, provides a feeling of urgency and plays on the character's paranoia, goes very soft and gentle when we leave the outer world to get into their intimacy, creating a cocoon.

The romance isn't a minor detail, it is what makes of The Constant Gardener, a special film and a beautiful one. I haven't read the book, but it seems that there's always a romantic motive in John Le Carré's stories and it's often what shines in the adaptations on screen. For instance Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer were a great couple in The Russia House (if you wanna see the most beautiful declaration of love on screen, watch that movie!). The Constant Gardener has flaws of course, Africa may be a bit too colourful (while England is grey and cold)and the director indulges with many visuals to cause an impact, but it does tell a moving love story.

To me, the movie first and foremost tells Justin's personal journey and a story about that improbable couple, about how loving someone doesn't mean you can share everything or understand exactly the other's own world. The relationship between Tessa and Justin is really touching. My favourite parts were when he filmed her, as she was in a tub, with the webcam, pretending to be Le Commandant Cousteau, and later when he discovered a file in which there was a clip she had made with the same webcam, featuring him asleep, probably dreaming of ...weeds!

Justin is a man, but his name reminded me of Sade's heroin, Justine.
He's a straight-forward man, a virtuous person, but there are many vicious and nasty people around him and he slowly realizes it. Actually Justin is really a mix of Sade's heroin and Voltaire's Candide. He's naive and quiet, a pure gentle man. Ralph Fiennes is simply excellent. His face is open and conveyes such kindness. Rachel Weisz is also perfect, entrancing(the flashbacks put the viewers in Justin's shoes and make them fall in love with Tessa along with him), vibrant and yet like from another world, fleeting and almost iconic, which makes sense since we discovered her through flashbacks after she's died at the beginning of the film.

In my opinion, Justin's journey isn't a journey towards truth or justice. It's a journey towards his wife–so the ending does make sense– and a journey towards the "real" world and far from innocence and stock thoughts. It is a new version of Candide by Voltaire. Between optimism and pessimism, Justin didn't really "choose" (even though he couldn't help even one kid when he wanted to, because of the U.N's rules, which is kinda depressing), or rather he chose loving which might be the more down-to-earth option eventually. But choosing love doesn't necessary lead to a happy ending, and Justin is running towards self-destruction. Nothing melodramatic here, but a bit of tragedy since our heroes are crushed by the forces of modern gods.

At the beginning of the film, Justin Quayle is forced to leave his protective shell, his beloved garden– où tout allait pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes, to face the ugliness, the lies, the betrayals, the misery, the blood...and all the small acts of cowardice which includes his own suspicions about his wife's infidelity and the fact she might have only used him. While investigating her death, he revisits moments of their life together, puzzling out both mysteries.

Being a diplomat he could have been a Pangloss (the character is a sort of sophist, known for his logorrhea in Voltaire's tale), but he's truly Candide and, little by little, he frees himself from Pellegrin/Pangloss' influence. By the way, in one of the first flashbacks we can see Justin, delivering a dull speech, in lieu of sir Bernard Pellegrin, voicing the philosophy of the Foreign Office...then the man of words slowly becomes a man of actions during the movie.

But maybe he always was, as a constant gardener. Tending a garden might be the contrary of a contemplative life. There might have been only a change of scale in his action. He left his safe garden and went on a journey to act in a largest one: the world.

And he did it because of his Cunéguonde, Tessa, and because "Il faut cultiver notre jardin !"

Cette petite phrase a suscité bien des lectures et des interprétations, parfois contradictoires. Que signifie donc la métaphore choisie par Voltaire? Est-ce vraiment une ultime recommendation du philosophe à la fin du conte, ou une simple pirouette qui permet à Candide de clouer le bec à son vieux sophiste de maître? Peut-être un peu des deux...

S'agit-il d'un jardin secret qu'il faudrait préserver pour durer? C'est la solution que Justin et Tessa semblent avoir choisi au début de leur mariage. Il cultive ses plantes, s'occupe de ses pousses, tandis qu'elle mène son action de passionaria dans les quartiers déshérités de Nairobi et dans les villages kényans. Se battre pour les autres est ce qui définit Tessa, et c'est un jardin auquel Justin n' a pas vraiment accès comme il le comprend trop tard. Il va l'entrevoir à travers des bribes offertes par d'autres personnes, ou les fichiers laissés dans un ordinateur. Tessa de son côté veut préserver le jardin de son mari, sa pureté, son innocence– "she thought you didn't need to know", dit un personnage dans le film.

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin !"
Certains y ont vu une morale du travail et de l'action. Cultiver son jardin, accomplir un travail manuel protégerait des vices et éloignerait l'ennui. On est pas loin de l'opus dei monastique ici. C'est aussi avoir les mains dans la terre (à défaut d'avoir les pieds dessus!) et donc ne pas oublier l'essentiel, c'est à dire le concret. C'est surtout pour Candide se retirer loin des philosophies, ne croire ni en l'optimisme de Pangloss ni au pessimisme absolu. C'est ne pas attendre du monde ni le bonheur ni le malheur, mais fabriquer son monde de ses propres mains.
Justin a l'air d'un doux rêveur au sécateur alors que Tessa la révolutionnaire paraît affronter la réalité, la prendre à bras le corps, tous deux cultivent leur jardin mais qui des deux est le plus réaliste enfin de compte?

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin !"
C'est donc faire pousser des choses et faire en sorte que la vie germe toujours, sans cesse (Justin a une jolie et triste réplique à propos des tombes couvertes de ciment pour empêcher les pillages, ils s'insurge contre la pratique car rien ne peut pousser dans le ciment). "Notre jardin" serait le jardin commun à l'humanité. A commencer par l'Afrique, berceau de l'humanité, grevée de maux et couvertes d'immondices comme le rappelle très justement le film. Je me demande ce que Voltaire aurait pensé de la notion de "développement durable"!

D'autres ont lu dans "il faut cultiver notre jardin" une invitation à s'occuper de ses propres affaires avant tout. Cultivons notre jardin et ne regardons pas trop de l'autre côté du mur...ou dans ce cas précis de l'autre côté de la Méditerranée. C'est un peu l'attitude de Justin au début du film, en particulier lorsqu'il renonce à secourir une famille parmi des milliers et dit avoir Tessa pour priorité.
C'est également décider d'agir uniquement sur ce qu'on peut maîtriser, être raisonnable et se contenter de son petit bout de terre sans rêver d'Eldorado. Son jardin passe encore, mais s'attaquer au champs mondial, quelle folie, quelle hybris! Ce serait en fin de compte un conseil pour vivre heureux. Un conseil que Tessa, elle, ne suit pas.

Ainsi Justin a changé au cours de son odyssée, moins passif, il prend de plus en plus de risque au fil du temps, sort de sa réserve, et avant la fin du film, l'idée de ne pas aider un seul enfant lui est devenue insupportable.
Pourtant au bout du compte (et du conte), Justin paraît renoncer à l'action, ou plus exactement il passe la main à d'autres, ne se faisant plus d'illusion sur son sort personnel. Il est résigné mais non sans espoir. Son jardin se révèle finallement romantique et mystique, c'est un Eden perdu ("home") qu'il tente de retrouver, au bord d'un lac.

To kill a canary

Oops wrong film!

Anyway, I'm sorry Marlon, you had your moments and really nailed it here and there in On The Waterfront, especially in the scenes with Eva Marie-Saint, but that taxi scene between Terry and Charley? Rod Steiger totally stole it! He's simply amazing.

"how much you weigh, son? When you weighed one hundred and sixty-eight pounds you were beautiful. "

Oh the a posteriori irony !

Higher than clouds

Monsoon season isn't the best time to visit Kerala but, if you can live with sudden showers outside of your private bathroom, it has its charm.

When you cross the Western ghats up to Munnar or Periyar, you're likely to be less hot but pretty much wetter.
Actually I was cold in Thekkady, and we couldn't do the long trek in the tiger sanctuary because of the leeches, so we left the forest to drive on winding roads, among the plantations, up the hills in the mountain, to remarkable viewpoints. I did my best to capture the moment and the changing sight. Some good shots were missed, some pictures were lost.

The sky was low and heavy; the residual fog made us believe we stood higher than clouds...

...walking in green pastures, with animals of the sacred variety.

















But there's always a moment that comes, when you have to go down.





And that's when the mists won.

The backwaters

The backwaters are a huge network of rivers, canals and lakes and it's simply beautiful. The best way to visit them is, of course, by boat, so we left our car and our driver (yes we had a driver; it's one of the perks of coming from a rich country and it's almost necessary when you rent a car in India unless you have suicide tendancies) and spent the day (and the night) on a houseboat. Houseboats are mostly tourism-oriented now but used to be traditional crafts to transport rice . It's quite expensive but was worth every roupie. They say that waterways are heaven for photographers and it's true. While gliding over the water we went into a symphony of green and blue, of clouds and water lilies...of convexity and concavity!

Since houseboats are quite comfy, we found out we had a CD player. We also happened to have a bunch of CDs(not my idea and I was happy we did)so we got to listen music while sailing. Among other pieces, we listened to Tom McRae's third album, All Maps Welcome; "For the Restless" or "The humming bird" especially fitted in the moment. Yeah me! I brought Tom's music to the backwaters. I may have converted some of the inhabitants. Maybe a water snake?

We were lucky on that day for the monsoon gave us some respite and we even saw the sun shine at some point. So I stayed behind the captain who was at the helm, sitting in the sun; I could take many pictures of the beautiful scenery, of the everyday "water-life" people lead on the shores.

I really liked this fishing man...










...and those lonely boats

On holiday

Being on holiday makes me nostalgic for previous vacations, for countries visited, enjoyed and deserted...for old boilers left on the promenade in Fort Kochi.

Les plus désespérés sont souvent les chants les plus beaux

Lorsque nous étions en Inde C. m'a dit un jour: "Mais c'est fou, tu n'aimes que les oeuvres tristes!"

Je reconnais avoir une nature contemplative et mélancolique qui peut parfois se complaire dans la peine et les larmes. Et si je critique avec bonheur mélodrames et happy endings, parce qu'ils représentent pour moi une sorte de médiocrité et de facilité artitistiques, j'apprécie volontiers la tragédie. Ce n'est pas pour rien que j'ai reconnu en Daniel Mendelssohn une âme soeur.

J'aime le "Lacrimosa" du Requiem de Verdi, les sonates tristes de Beethoven, les morceaux les plus lents et déchirants de son Concerto à l'Empereur ou l' Allegretto – si souvent galvaudé– de la Septième symphonie en la majeur. J'adore à peu près tout chez Chopin, "la chanson de Solveig" chez Grieg, l'adieu de Wotan à Brünnehilde à la fin Die Walküre ou la mort de Siegfried dans le Götterdämmerung de Wagner. Je l'ai déjà écrit, mais je le redis encore, la mort de Didon par Purcell dans Dido & Aeneas est une des plus belles pages musicales jamais composées. J'aime Tom McRae.

Mon grand-père paternel jouait du violon; quand mes parents ont vendu la maison de l'aieül à Villeneuve-les-Avignons, après la mort de ma grand-mère, le nouveau propriétaire – lui-même musicien soliste – a conservé l'instrument. Je me demande combien de familles connaissent ainsi un instrument perdu, un instrument fantôme dont les échos résonnent insidieusement à travers les générations. Mon grand-père jouait du violon, et ses plaintes ont du marquer les gènes paternels et, au-delà, laisser leur empreinte en moi.

Les chants désespérés sont souvent les plus beaux. J'altère ici volontairement le fameux vers de Musset car la règle édictée par le poète n'est pas toujours juste. C'est vrai que j'ai le goût des cordes et des élégies, des poèmes qui disent l'obscurité, des livres noirs, des nouvelles tristes d'un Jules Supervielle ou d'une Karen Blixen, mais j'aime aussi la danse, l'ironie et le rire. J'aime aussi les oeuvres qui m'enchantent et me font sourire, comme ces Contes Carnivores de Bernard Quiriny.

Et ne me dites pas que le concerto pour violon de Tchaikovsky en ré majeur est triste! Comme c'est souvent le cas avec les Russes, il y a quelque chose de viscéralement joyeux dans le premier mouvement, quand le violon entraîne l'orchestre, prend son élan et semble le propulser tout entier vers la lumière, comme on lance un enfant en l'air pour qu'il rit ensuite aux éclats...en plein soleil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MJItGkrUbE&feature=related

Agacement du jour

Sommes nous encore dans un pays laïc où tous nos beaux principes ne tiennent-ils plus lieu que de façade au mieux, d'étendard anti musulman au pire? Que reste-t-il de la dignité de l'Etat? La séparation des pouvoirs et la séparation de l'Eglise et de l'Etat n'ont-elles pas fait place au mélange des genres le plus indécent?

Quand on voit tous ses ministres qui se sont pressés à la messe du pape ce matin, on est en droit de s'interroger. Qu'une dame Boutin y aille n'a plus rien d 'étonnant, elle qui brandissait naguère sa bible à l'assemblée. Que Rachida Dati, pécheresse mahométane - de surcroît enceinte jusqu'aux yeux, soit présente peut encore se concevoir. Après tout elle a bien racolé dans les églises du VIIème arrondissement au moment des élections municipales!

Mais les autres? Ils sont là à l'évidence parce que c'est là qu'il faut être aujourd'hui. Le pape est un "people" comme ils disent. Sa messe, largement médiatisée, fait l'événement, et tous ont voulu être vus à ses côtés. Ils ne pouvaient pas manquer ça! Si Sarkozy n'était pas divorcé, il est fort à parier, qu'il serait là en train de communier devant les caméras.

Il fut un temps justement où il fallait ne pas être vu quand on avait des fonctions politiques au sommet de l'Etat. Chirac, en dépit de toutes ses fautes, avait le bon goût d'aller à la messe en cachette.

Anciens et modernes, sans querelle

Mars, parce que ces dernières semaines ont eu à mon travail un arrière goût de tragédie, et avec ma soirée musicale d'après l'Enéide, semble avoir été placé sous le signe de l' Antiquité.

Parce que je possède désormais la série en DVD j'ai pu revoir toute la première saison de l'excellente Rome, et par un curieux hasard, alors que César venait de rendre l'âme aux Ides de Mars dans le douzième et dernier épisode, je suis tombée sur Gladiator à la télé...

Nonobstant quelques inexactitudes historiques çà et là, et quelques complaisances hollywoodiennes (bizarrement je peux encaisser la mort fictive de Commode sans broncher mais le discours final de sa soeur à la fin de Gladiator me donne envie de sortir le glaive et de faire un carnage...) j' aime le film de Ridley Scott et la série de HBO.

Je soupçonne que mon enthousiasme a peut-être à voir avec quelque part sombre de ma personnalité qu'excite la vue de ces personnages virils qui portent la robe, ne craignent pas le corps à corps et taillent joyeusement dans les chairs de leurs ennemis. La scène de l'arène dans l'épisode 11 de Rome restera à tout jamais pour moi un moment d'anthologie.

Bref sentant qu'un thème latin (;- )) s'imposait à moi, j'ai pris un dernier coup de Rome, et visionné le premier épisode de la saison 2, que j'avais conservé sur mon ordinateur (ah merveilleurx Titus Pullo consolant son ami Vorenus, et Marc Antoine se jouant de Brutus et tuant Quintus!), avant de me plonger dans une lecture de mon adolescence, les Mémoires d' Hadrien de Marguerite Yourcenar.

Je ne me rappelais guère de l'ouvrage. On m'aurait questionnée dessus, je n'aurais pas eu grand chose à évoquer si ce n' était un vague souvenir de prose poétique, l' omniprésence pesante de la maladie qui ronge, et aussi la douleur d'Hadrien à la mort de son amant, le jeune Antinoüs. J'imagine que pour l'adolescente que j'étais alors, cette liaison pédéraste dut être marquante.

En relisant l'ouvrage je me suis pourtant rendue compte que d'autres éléments étaient restés avec moi, à mon insu, pour résonner encore en moi aujourd'hui dans la forme comme dans le fond, et m'avaient finalement beaucoup plus profondément marquée alors même que je les avais oubliés.

En voici quelques extraits déterminants pour moi:

"De tous les bonheurs qui lentement m'abandonnent, le sommeil est l'un des plus précieux, des plus communs aussi. Un homme qui dort peu dort mal, appuyé sur de nombreux coussins, médite tout à loisir sur cette particulière volupté. J'accorde que le sommeil le plus parfait reste presque nécessairement une annexe de l'amour: repos réfléchi, reflété dans deux corps. (...) Ce qui nous rassure du sommeil, c'est qu'on en sort, et qu'on en sort inchangé, puisqu'une interdiction bizarre nous empêche de rapporter avec nous l'exact résidu de nos songes. Ce qui nous rassure aussi, c'est qu'il guérit de la fatigue, mais il nous en guérit, temporairement, par le plus radical des procédés, en s'arrangeant pour que nous ne soyons plus. Là, comme ailleurs, le plaisir et l'art consistent à s'abandonner consciemment à cette bienheureuse inconscience, à accepter d'être subtilement plus faible, plus lourd, plus léger, et plus confus que soi. (...) Je tâche de ressaisir la précise sensation de tels sommeils foudroyants de l'adolescence, où l'on s'endormait sur ses livres, tout habillé, transporté d'un seul coup de la mathématique et du droit à l'intérieur d'un sommeil solide et plein, si rempli d'énergie inemployée qu'on y goûtait, pour ainsi dire, le pur sens de l'être à travers des paupières fermées. (...) Si totale était l'éclipse, que j'aurais pu chaque fois me retrouver autre, et je m'étonnais, ou parfois m'attristais, du strict agencement qui me rmaenait de si loin dans cet étroit canton d'humanité qu'est moi-même. Qu'étaient ces particularités auxquelles nous tenons le plus, puisqu'elles comptaient si peu pour le libre dormeur, et que pour une seconde, avant de rentrer à regret dans la peau d' Hadrien, je parvenais à savourer à peu près consciemment cet homme vide, cette existence sans passé? (...) Un court moment d'assoupissement complet à mon âge, devient l'équivalent des sommeils qui duraient autrefois toute une demi-révolution des astres; mon temps se mesure désormais en unités beaucoup plus petites. (...) Le sommeil, en si peu de temps, avait réparé mes excès de vertu avec la même impartialité qu'il eût mise à réparer ceux de mes vices. Car la divinité du grand restaurateur tient à ce que ses bienfaits s'exercent sur le dormeur sans tenir compte de lui, de même que l'eau chargée de pouvoir curatifs ne s'inquiète en rien de qui boit à la source. (...) Qu'est notre insomnie, sinon l'obstination maniaque de notre intelligence à manufacturer des pensées, des suites de raisonnements, des syllogismes et des définitions bien à elle, son refus d'abdiquer en faveur de la divine stupidité des yeux clos ou de la sage folie des songes? (...) Je n'ai jamais regardé volontiers dormir ceux que j'aimais; ils se reposaient de moi, je le sais; ils m'échappaient aussi. Et chaque homme a honte de son visage entaché de sommeil. que de fois, levé de très bonne heure pour étudier ou pour lire, j'ai moi-même rétabli ces oreillers fripés, ces couvertures en désordre, évidences presque obscènes de nos rencontres avec le néant, preuves que chaque nuit nous ne sommes déjà plus..."

Edition Gallimard 1974, Folio, p25-26-27-28.

"J'essayai d'aller en pensée jusqu'à cette révolution par où nous passerons tous, le coeur qui renonce, le cerveau qui s'enraye, les poumons qui cessent d'aspirer la vie. Je subirai un bouleversement analogue; je mourrai un jour. Mais chaque agonie est différente; mes efforts pour imaginer la sienne n'aboutissaient qu'à une fabrication sans valeur: il était mort seul."

Ibidem, p 224-225.

"Une haleine humide s'exhalait de la mer; les étoiles montaient une à une à leur place assignée; le navire penché par le vent filait vers l'Occident où s'éraillait encore une dernière bande rouge; un sillage phosphorescent s'étirait derrière nous, bientôt recouvert par les masses noire des vagues. Je me disais que seules deux affaires importantes m'attendaient à Rome; l'une était le choix de mon successeur, qui intéressait tout l'empire; l'autre était ma mort, et ne concernait que moi."

Ibidem, p 270.

"Toute ma vie, j'ai fait confiance à la sagesse de mon corps; j'ai tâché de goûter avec discernement les sensations que me procurait cet ami: je me dois d'apprécier aussi les dernières. Je ne refuse plus cette agonie faite pour moi, cette fin lentement élaborée au fond de mes artères, héritée peut-être d'un ancêtre, née de mon tempérament, préparée peu à peu par chacun de mes actes au cours de ma vie. L'heure de l'impatience est passée; au point où j'en suis, le désespoir serait d'aussi mauvais goût que l'espérance. J'ai renoncé à brusquer ma mort."

Ibidem, p 302-303.

"La vie est atroce; nous savons cela. Mais précisément parce que j'attends peu de chose de la condition humaine, les périodes de bonheur, les progrès partiels, les efforts de recommencement et de continuité me semblent autant de prodiges qui compensent presque l'immense masse des maux, des échecs, de l'incurie et de l'erreur."

Ibidem, p 313-314.

Et enfin ces paroles finales que j'ai faites miennes dans tant de questionnaires:"Un instant encore, regardons ensemble les rives familières, les objets sans doute que nous ne reverrons plus... Tâchons d'entrer dans la mort les yeux ouverts..."

Looks like John Boorman, who made the wonderful and unforgettable Excalibur (my favourite movie when I was in my teens), has been filming an adptation of the book. with Antonio Banderas playing Hadrian...

Une madeleine américaine

The Lost, ou Les Disparus en Français est un des meilleurs livres que j'ai lus depuis très longtemps. Il s'agit d'un histoire vraie, d'une enquête quasi journalistique et pourtant c'est vraiment de la Littérature.

Les Disparus mérite tout à fait ce prix Médicis du meilleur roman étranger obtenu fin 2007. Il gagne à être lu.

Le plus amusant est que j'ai longtemps résisté à ce livre. Pendant des mois il m'a tentée et exaspérée tout à la fois. Il me lorgnait et me défiait , en pile, depuis les étalages de la Fnac ou dans ma librairie de quartier où j'aime à errer. Je l'avais repéré assez tôt, je lui jetais des coups d'oeil furtifs, le soupesant du regard. Mais jamais je ne l'ai feuilleté ou même effleuré. Toujours je le fuyais, en raison surtout du bandeau sur la couverture qui le vendait comme étant "l'anti-Bienveillantes". J' y voyais simplement un coup marketing et un livre surfant sur la vague de celui de Littell(que je n'avais d'ailleurs pas trouvé très bon). Et puis un jour une collègue que j'estime, et qui enseigne la littérature, m'a confié avoir été enthousiasmée par le travail de Mendelsohn et j'ai commencé à me dire que j'avais peut-être eu tord de repousser les avances de l'ouvrage! J'ai alors demandé à une autre collègue de me le prêter.

Les grandes histoires d'amour commencent parfois comme ça. Un premier rendez-vous manqué, une longue parade amoureuse, des rebuffades, et puis l'intervention d'un tiers qui permet finalement la rencontre. J'ignorais tout de l'auteur, mais rencontre il y eut. Ce n'est pas la première fois que je tombe ainsi amoureuse d'un auteur, que je trouve une âme soeur en un écrivain, mais ils sont en général morts depuis longtemps. Celui-ci est bien vivant, bien que New-Yorkais, homosexuel et juif.

A bien y réfléchir, c' était une rencontre à la fois improbable et évidente. Un Américain, juif, enquête et écrit sur la mort de ses lointains parents (son grand-oncle Shmiel et la femme et les filles de ce dernier) dont il sait qu'il furent tués par les Nazis dans un petit village de Galicie, Bolechow, (Ukraine actuelle) pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. Dès le départ on baigne dans la judeité familiale et il émaille son récit d'exégèse de la Torah. Il y avait de quoi me faire prendre mes jambes à mon cou, moi qui suis athée et ai en horreur toute forme de communautarisme. Et puis je n'ai pas de fascination macabre pour ce qu'on appelle la littérature des camps ou les récits de génocide. Et puis, en tant qu' historienne et professeur d'Histoire, je regrette la trop grande place prise par la seconde guerre mondiale dans l'enseignement et surtout je ne cesse de pester contre le mélange des genres, le règne du pathos et ce devoir de mémoire que politiques et groupes de pression ont sorti de leur chapeau il y a quelques années et dont on nous rebat les oreilles depuis. Inutile de dire ici ce que je pense de la dernière trouvaille sarkozyenne (enfin de Klarsfeld) sur l'enseignement primaire, ou des prises de position de gens comme Finkelkraut.

Mais dans le livre de Mendelsohn, il n'y a rien de tout cela ! Ce n'est pas un livre qui prétend participer à la construction de l'Histoire, ce n'est pas un livre sur le génocide juif, ce n'est pas un livre religieux, et ça n'est certainement pas un livre communautariste. Le livre ne cherche pas à faire dans l'émotion facile, le cinématographique et le mélodrame. On ne nage jamais dans le pathos, et pourtant il m'a remuée en profondeur.Il s'ouvre par une citation de Proust, tirée de La Prisonnière, sixième tome de A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. Et là tout est dit, évident.

J'aime ce livre car, en partant de souvenirs personnels et d'une quête individuelle, c'est un livre sur la famille, sur les relations que l'on noue avec les êtres qui nous sont proches ou que l'on rencontre en chemin et sur la mémoire. Et non pas un livre sur UNE mémoire. La traduction du titre pose d'ailleurs problème, mais comme le dit Eco, traduire c'est dire PRESQUE la même chose. The Lost, ce sont les disparus en effet, les oubliés, ceux qui ne sont plus là car la mort et l'oubli les a emportés, mais c'est aussi tout ce qui se perd en chemin, tout ce qui est perdu dans une vie. Le Français hélas ne permet pas de rendre compte de la richesse du titre. Mendelsohn oscille entre la lucidité (il sait au fond que certaines pertes sont irrémédiables, qu'une vérité se dérobe inévitablement et reste inaccessible) et le fol espoir de pouvoir combattre le néant qui dévore tout, de pouvoir redonner vie aux êtres par les mots, de retrouver ce qui a été perdu . Il sait aussi que le temps est compté, qu'il faut agir pendant que les êtres sont là et que ce que la mort a pris reste perdu malgré tous les efforts entrepris. Le livre est donc très mélancolique, nostalgique, et comporte ce sens du tragique cher à l'auteur puisqu'il est Hélléniste, mais on y trouve aussi des moments de grâce et le sentiment que la quête n'est pas vaine. En chemin, Daniel a trouvé ou retrouvé en partie ce qui avait été perdu.

En postface il écrit d'ailleurs ceci, à propos de son frère Matt, qu'il a réussi à entraîner dans sa quête et dont les belles photographies illustrent le livre:

"It would be an injustice, however, not to mark especially my deepest gratitude to Matt above all, since he has been a full collaborator in this project from start to finish; the tale told in this book owes as much to him as it does to me, and not simply because so many of its pages give evidence of his extraordinary talent. If I say that he has a beautiful way of seeing things, I am referring to more than his professional eye; in the end, his profound humaneness made itself felt in the words as much as the pictures. Of all that I found during my search, he is the greatest treasure."

La réflexion sur la fratrie est sans doute un des aspects les plus intéressants du livre. Mendelsohn rumine cet examen chapitre après chapitre, montrant que des sentiments complexes entrent en jeu. Très habilement, avec une grande intelligence mais aussi avec élégance et délicatesse, il articule ses réflexions autour de souvenirs, de son enquête, des témoignages recueillis, sur des extraits de la Torah ou plus exactement sur des exégèses de la Torah. Je dois dire que c'est passionnant, et j'ai particulièrement aimé la manière dont il traite le texte, comme une oeuvre littéraire (et on sent là le professeur de Grec ancien qu'il est!) et non comme un livre sacré. Et il le fait sans prétention, sans cuistrerie. Il ne s'agit pas de plaquages artificiels pour faire érudit. Tout est magnifiquement bien agencés et trouve une place inconstestable. Les exégètes qu'il invoque, l'un rabbi de la Californie moderne, Friedman, l'autre rabbi de la France médiévale, Rashi, deviennent au fil des pages des compagnons évidents dont les commentaires sont de charmantes diversions/digressions, que Mendelsohn commente à son tour en une sorte de méta-exégèse.

Ce qui frappe chez Daniel Mendelsohn à la fin, outre ce style proustien où il déroule le texte en spirales digressives et où il cultive l'art de l'intertextualité et de l'histoire à l'intérieur de l'histoire, c'est son intelligence des êtres, c'est tout simplement son humanité. Et l'homme a de l'humour. Il sait se montrer malicieux et espiègle. A de nombreuse reprises il fait sourire le lecteur, y compris dans les passages les plus ardus ou les plus secs.

Voici enfin une longue citation (avec coupure toutefois) pour terminer - mais c'est un passage merveilleux- concernant Sodome et Gomorrhe (évidemment!), qui intervient alors que le récit se déroule en Israël, et où Mendelsohn conteste le commentaire érudit de Rashi pour expliquer la transformation en statue de sel de la femme de Loth. Je trouve que cet extrait, qui n'aborde pourtant ni la guerre en Europe, ni les parents perdus, dit tout du livre et de son auteur, et explique bien que je sois tombée en amour.

"As ingenious as this explanation is, it seems to me to miss entirely the emotional significance of the text- its beautiful and beautifully economical evocation of certain difficult feelings that most ordinary people, at least, are all too familiar with: searing regret for the past we must abandon, tragic longing for what must be left behind. (...) Still, perhaps that's the pagan, the Hellenist in me talking. (Rabbi Friedman, by contrast, cannot bring himself even to contemplate that what the people of Sodom intend to do to the two male angels, as they crowd around Lot's house at the beginning of theis narrative, is to rape them, and interpretation blandly accepted by Rashi, who blithely points out thta if the Sodomites hadn't wanted sexual pleasure from the angels, Lot wouldn't have suggested, as he rather startingly does, that the Sodomites take his two daughter as subsitutes. But then, Rashi was French.)It is this temperamental failure to understand Sodom in its own context, as an ancient metropolis of the Near East, as a site of sophisticated, even decadent delights and hyper-civilized beauties, that results in the commentator's inability to see the true meaning of the two crucial elements of this story: the angel's command to Lot's family not to turn and look back at the city they are fleeing, and the transformation of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. For if you see Sodom as beautiful -which it will seem to be all the more so, no doubt, for having to be abandoned and lost forever, precisely the way in which, say, relatives who are dead are always somehow more beautiful and good than those who still live- then it seems clear that Lot and his family are commanded not to look back at it not as a punishment, but for a practical reason:because regret for what we have lost, for the pasts we have to abandon, often poisons any attempts to make a new life, which is what Lot and his family now must do, as Noah and his family once had to do, as indeed all those who survive awful annihilations must somehow do. This explanation, in turn, helps explain the form that the punishment of Lot's wife took- if indeed it was a punishment to begin with, which I personally do not believe it was, since to me it seems far more like a natural process, the inevitable outcome of her character. For those who are compelled by their natures always to be looking back at what has been, rather than forward into the future, the great danger is tears, the unstoppable weeping that the Greeks, if not the author of Genesis, knew was not only a pain but a narcotic pleasure, too: a mournful contemplation so flawless, so crystalline, that it can, in the end, immobilize you."

L'Affaire du chien des Baskervilles

Last week, I read an entertaining book by Pierre Bayard whom I knew for his brilliant Comment parler des livres qu'on a pas lus. By the way there's a good article on Pierre Bayard here (it's from the French newspaper, Libération).Well, entertaining might not be the most accurate word here. It's very clever, recreational and intellectual at once. The tittle is L'affaire du chien des Baskerville. Bayard's idea is that Sherlock Holmes got it all wrong (he isn't the first to think so, the Holmesians had alreay pointed out many anomalies and Christopher Gelly or François Hoff also wrote articles on a possible miscarriage of justice) . Basically Pierre Bayard leads a counter-investigation (and does find/reveal another guilty party) while writing an essay on literature (he teaches Literature in a Parisian University but he's also a psychoanalyst) . Bayard has started what he called himself "une critique policière" which is literary critic applied to detective novels. He has already done it with Agatha Christie (Qui a tué Roger Ackroyd ?) and Shakespeare's Hamlet (he proved Claudius innocent of the murder of Hamlet's father)I must say that I am not completely convinced by his solution here, and the final truth he gives us when he unmasks the murderer left me sceptical. However it's quite playful and all the work he does- about Holmes' method and his obvious mistakes, about the hound's innocence(the chapter "Plaidoyer pour le chien" is hilarious), about Stapleton's doubtful guilt and finally about Conan Doyle's ambivalence when it comes to his famous detective- before pointing out the true killer, well that work of his is SO smart and just fun. It's an exercice in style of exegesis and critic brilliantly accomplished by an Academic who fights with the text so it could be boring and could seem pointless but Bayard's tongue-in-cheek humour is simply priceless. It's even more priceless if you have enjoyed Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, if you have seen the BBC's programme The Reichenbach Falls based on an idea by Ian Rankin and if you think of that recent poll done in the UK wherein it turned out that 25% of British teenagers thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character but more than 50% believed that Sherlock Holmes did exist and used to live in Baker Street!

See, everything is connected...

At the beginning of his book, Bayard quotes Jasper Fforde, then in the preface, after recalling the origin of the legendary hound of Baskerville, he writes(my own comments being in italics):

"Comment Conan Doyle a-t-il pu se tromper à ce point? Il lui manquait sans doute, pour résoudre une énigme aussi complexe, les outils de la réflexion contemporaine sur les personnages littéraires. [note here that Bayard ironically used some of the tricks that Conan Doyle or Holmes himself wouldn't have disowned !] Ceux-ci ne sont pas, comme one le croit trop souvent, des êtres de papier , mais des créatures vivantes, qui mènent dans les livres une existence autonome, allant parfois jusqu'à commettre des meurtres à l'insu de l'auteur. Faute de mesurer cette indépendance, Conan Doyle ne s'est pas aperçu que l'un de ses personnages avait définitevement échappé à son contrôle et s'amusait à induire son détective en erreur.Cet essai, en engageant une véritable réflexion théorique sur la nature des personnages littéraires , leurs compétences insoupçonnées et les droits qu'ils peuvent revendiquer, se propose donc de rouvrir le dossier du Chien des Baskerville et de résoudre enfin l'enquête inachevée de Sherlock Holmes, permettant par là à la jeune morte de la lande de Dartmoor, errante depuis des siècles dans l'un de ces mondes intermédiaires qui environnent la littérature, de trouver le repos."The theory of autonomous fictional characters is funny even though it isn't the most interesting side of the book actually and don't worry I won't spoil you about who did what crime-wise.The core of Bayard's essay, its morceau de bravoure, is how he connects The Hound of the Baskervilles, and all the anomalies that the author allowed, to the relationship between Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. Because that case is the case of Holmes' resurrection even though it is supposed to have taken place before Holmes ' death."Ayant, dans des circonstances sur lesquelles nous allons revenir, mis à mort son détective, Conan Doyle, sous la pression du public, est contraint quelques années plus tard, la mort dans l'âme, de le ressusciter. Et c'est cette résurrection qui donne lieu au Chien des Baskerville.(...)Curieusement, personne à ma connaissance n'a jamais tenté d'établir un lien entre la mise à mort de Sherlock Holmes, sa réapparition et l'affaire du chien des Baskerville, alors que ces événements sont concomitants. Tout indique pourtant, non seulement que le roman en porte les traces, mais que l'analyse de celles-ci est déterminante si l'on entend ne pas s'en tenir à la vérité officelle et reconsituter ce qui s'est réellement passé sur la lande de Dartmoor."

By the way I learned on this book that Conan Doyle wanted to get rid of Holmes for a while but his own mother loved Holmes and whispered ideas and plots to Arthur's ear in order to prolonge the detective's life! And it worked during a few years until he couldn't take it anymore and killed off his hero. Bayard doesn't say it explicitly but the detail is significant and may colour the death of Sherlock Holmes in the Reichenbach Falls as a oedipean crime committed by Conan Doyle!Here I couldn't not think of the tv film The Reichenbach Falls and how the author (Harvey)and his detective (Buchan) were old pals who had become rivals. According to Bayard there was a love/hate relationship between the author and his creature. At some point hatred won, devoured Conan Doyle and Moriarty was made to do the dirty job.Anyway Conan Doyle had to ressurect Holmes. Looks like his readership's reactions were extreme, people mourned Holmes, were agressive (Conan Doyle even recieved death threats).

"Il y a bien quelque chose de fantastique dans la manière dont les admirateurs de Sherlock Holmes d'une part, Conan Doyle de l'autre, considèrent le détective à l'instar d'une personne vivante, dont ils souhaitaient, selon les cas, la résurrection ou la mort. C'est que dans ce monde intermédiaire qu'ils habitent en commun avec les créatures de la fiction il n' y a plus guère de différence entre les modalités d'existence des uns et des autres.(...) Cette autonomie du personnage atteint son apogée lorsqu'il refuse de se faire exécuter. Du combat entre Conan Doyle et Holmes, ce dernier sort en effet vainqueur. L'écrivain doit accepter en un premier temps de le faire revivre, probablement sous la pressin de sa victime, puis doit renoncer définitevement- après Le Chien des Baskerville où il le ressuscite- à le mettre à mort, contraint de le laisser vivre d'autres aventures où il apparaît de nouveau au premier plan."

From there, Bayard says that Conan Doyle suffered from "le complexe de Holmes" and carries out a brilliant study of The Hound of the Baskervilles, demonstrating how the author deliberately, although probably unconsciously, undermined the investigation, left Holmes in the background and portrayed the famous detective in an unflattering, or at least ambiguous, way. I mostly loved the moment he shows the parallel between the detective and the Hound, pointing out that Sherlock Holmes had often been compared to a dog in previous works but that the analogy reached a peak there, on several moments, including the last scene wherein the hound dies.

"Que Holmes ait une tête de loup et que le chien évoque le détective montre l'importance des brouillages identificatoires à l'oeuvre dans cette dernière scène et marque combien le fantasme de mise à mort de Holmes reste prégnant dans l'imaginaire de Conan Doyle, au point d'infiltrer le dénouement du livre.Il suffirait d'ailleurs pour s'en convaincre de noter l'étrange ressemblance entre le nom de Baskerville et celui de la célèbre rue où habite Holmes- Baker Street-, une ressemblance encore accentuée par la symétrie entre les deux noms de lieu, "ville" et "street", comme si Conan Doyle avait voulu inconsciemment, dès le titre du livre, qualifier Holmes de chien de Baker Street."

So Conan Doyle still wanted Holmes dead but couldn't kill him apart from a symbolical death so transfered onto the hound which, according to Bayard, screwed up the whole investigation and consequently hid an unsuspected kill and the real murderer in the book.The most intriguing part of the essay might be that Bayard actually keeps behaving like Holmes, spotting unsuspected clues, using deduction and logic, but also disregarding certain facts or making statements that are rather doubtful (about the size of mysterious character who followed Holmes in London or about the reason Stapleton went to the marsh). By leading the counter-inquiry, Bayard turned himself into Sherlock Holmes and seetled the score with Conan Doyle. But he also behaves like Conan Doyle himself, telling a tale like a narrator, knowing out to make the most of his effects:

"Absorbé par sa rivalité avec Holmes et ne cessant jamais de lui nuire à son insu, Conan Doyle n'a pas pris conscience que celui-ci ne disposait pas de forces suffisantes pour mener efficacement l'enquête et s'opposer à la volonté meurtirère d'un autre personnage. Dévoré par sa haine pour sa créature, il n'a pas prêté attention à la seconde histoire de haine que le livre raconte à l'insu du lecteur, et a ainsi laissé le champ libre aux activités criminelles d'un golem plus discret, mais beaucoup plus terrifiant que son détective."

I'm sure he did it on purpose to give a new layer to his little game and to please/fool the readership!At the end of the day Pierre Bayard shows us that when you really want to find something in a book you can and the connections you draw will work because there's a sweet insanity and a real freedom in the process of reading, and a reader is just as part of a book as its writer and its characters.

Où il est question de

liens, connections, mise en relation, parallèles, échanges, communication réciproque, pratique épistolaire, principe de Bohr, intertextualité et aussi peu ou prou de Baudelaire.