A new book by Pierre Michon just been published.
is, every time, great joy, great joy and rare because Michon published shortly. Here
someone in my personal pantheon in a place like that of Gracq or Yourcenar, neither more nor less. An important author, whose books have profoundly affected.
I can not say yet that book, the latest, The Eleven, I could not read because I like someone has promised to offer me (wait, delicious event !)...
I already know, however, that talks about an imaginary picture of an imaginary painter who were ordered group portrait of eleven members of the Committee of Public Hi, this is in the Terror: the portrait of Robespierre and his family, then.
Having myself been permanently fascinated by the figure of Saint-Just, by the mixture of charisma, moral rectitude and absolute cruelty that characterizes for me (wrongly or rightly), I was surprised find this fascination with two of my favorite writers, Yourcenar first, and now Michon.
she evokes facts borrowed from history, places and landscapes, some leading figures in art or literature, or fate beings "tiny" Michon's work always exceeds his subject, endlessly, speaking of the ratio of men to desire, power and glory to the father figure, God ... But as I find it difficult to develop any further comment on a work that touches me too deeply, I decided to defer to others ... Michon
Word to himself, first, the literature
What matters is that with the world we make of countries and languages, with the chaos of the senses, with the meadows battlefields, with our acts of legends and this sophisticated form of the legend is history, with the common names of the proper name. Things of the summer, love, faith and zeal, freeze in the winter to finish perfect books. And yet in the ice a little life remains caught, fresh guarantees our existence and our freedom.
The same, responding to questions from Didier Jacob (about The Eleven) for Le Nouvel Observateur No. 2323, May 2009 (excerpts):
What has for you a very attractive is also the sacred language, which has never been so feverish that during this period [the French Revolution].
They were all writers in power. They had a vocation as a writer. They reintroduced without any shade Roman political discourse, the great political rhetoric. And there was a special lexical invention. Yes, it was of great creators of language. They developed a very strong set language. Who is not born from nothing. It comes from the great mystics, Pascal, for example. I think this sentence from Saint-Just, who is a marvel: "I despise the dust that composes and me talking to you. "
Language wooden language of death ...
Done to death. Just as in the tragedy. What serves Racine otherwise fine speech to introduce the death of the protagonists?
You see, these members? Eleven of these, these killers?
Yes. These are people who adored each other and that gun. As if the last friendship was to send itself to the guillotine. Robespierre was the same as Danton, Desmoulins. Robespierre was a witness at the wedding of Desmoulins. They were brothers. And between-killing was especially strong that they were brothers. They were in absolute disproportion in the Greek hubris. They were in a trance, trance speech, heated to death. Death was more than an accident. Yes, I understand, I absolved and I admire them.
Finally, as a wink, speaking to Eric Chevillard who, on his blog , ironically Michon undertaker in four lines and four lines instead reflects both central and eccentric (eccentric ?) it occupies in contemporary literature (Thursday, 7 May 2009): Pierre Michon
that can be seen from far away, here or there, drunk, cynical, messy as one who has jumped with his bomb, and every five year published a book unstoppable when literature is getting a healthy, having recovered from his mistakes in the books of others, finally freed of its pans.
(Portrait de Saint-Just, French school of the eighteenth century.)
