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Muriel Barbery. “Most of our ills come from our inability to change the story we have about ourselves.”

INTERVIEW – Dear people reveal themselves around the deceased. In Thomas Heldera closed door in Obrak’s heart, the writer erases the borders of life and death.

In his new novel. Thomas Helder, Muriel Barbery leaves JapanOne rose (of which a comic book adaptation was published by Rue de Sèvres) andAn hour of excitement For Aubrac, where a ceremony is held in honor of the late Dutch writer Thomas Helder, bringing together all those who loved him. They are joined by Margo, who ran away years ago for mysterious reasons and returns today, perhaps seeking forgiveness…

At the intersection of James Joyce and Ingmar Bergman, the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog signs a text full of ellipses and aphorisms with a delicate form and extremely elegant sentence that focuses on the verbal duel between Margot. The architect working in silence and emptiness and his friend Jorg, a subtle political strategist and the brother of the deceased, who are joined by dialogues with other characters, relatives and friends. An interview about what divides and binds the living and the dead, love and friendship, innocence and corruption, the magic of places and what novels can do.

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Madame Figaro . – After two “Japanese” novels, you take us to Obrak and Amsterdam. For what?
Muriel Barbery. – I gave up Japan because it had become too familiar, too comfortable a space, and it is impossible for me to write something that will teach me something if I stay in the literary comfort zone. However, I write primarily to learn and understand; this is why my books are actually so different from each other. The Japanese inspiration has not disappeared. Margaux’s concepts feed on architecture tea book By Kakuzo Okakura, with the idea that in the Japanese tea room we see the invisible, hear the inaudible, and that truths are revealed there that could not be revealed elsewhere. It is also a place of asymmetry, silence and transparency. Certain natural or man-made places can make us look at our lives in a radically different way. I felt it in Japan, and I wanted to transcribe this feeling, but anchoring it in Obrak, a land of silence and emptiness, where my husband has a family home… As for Amsterdam, I lived there for three years, and I also have the feeling that the architecture of the city, the presence of nature within it, the presence of vegetation and water, and the omnipresence of art perform the same miracle. Certain places, both spare and powerfully poetic, reveal the essence of existence.

A unity of place with this residence of Obrak, a unity of time with this snowy night, a unity of action with this verbal duel… Has theater influenced you?
You might think so, especially since there’s so much dialogue and so little description, but it’s not. An example for me was James Joyce’s story “Men of Dublin” entitled “The Dead”. I’ve always been fascinated by this round of very diverse characters who come together to celebrate New Year’s and whose personalities, their terrors, their daily lives we discover. Three-quarters of the way through the story, a woman tells her husband that she was once loved by a young man who died shortly after of tuberculosis. He sleeps, he stays with this revelation that transforms him forever. Joyce claimed to be a literature of epiphany, he wanted to capture the moments of change, the subtle changes that would transform a being. Here, Margo returns to talk to the ghosts of her past. behind closed doors, a portrait of the missing Thomas takes shape and a profound transformation takes place…

What was the overall thread of the novel for you? Friendship?
Yes, in “An Hour of Warmth” the main character was a man who loves friendship, and “Thomas Helder” is a question of friendship beyond death, because the deceased was Margot’s friend, Jean’s friend, Margot’s brother, and. even his own brother Jorg’s friend. I wanted to explore the way in which the company continues to be absent with those who are absent. To greet a friend who is no longer there, you must empty yourself, be able to leave to interact with others. No doubt this is why Thomas is a novelist whose job it is to forget himself in order to become someone else. For a long time I rejected the idea of ​​including the character of the writer in my own novels, thinking that it risked being a narcissistic reaction, a self-representation. But there, it was necessary. Another common theme was the blurred line that separates the living and the dead, I have an increasingly clear sense that I also write to speak to the dead who listen to me, and I have dramatized this in this text.

For a long time I rejected the idea of ​​incorporating the character of the writer into my own novels, thinking that it risked becoming a narcissistic reaction.

Muriel Barber

Your characters have all failed in their ideals…
They all dreamed of some form of innocence and purity, and they all failed. Une gourmandise, my first novel, painted a portrait of a powerful man, and I knew that the question of power and its impossible exercise, embodied here by Jörg, would come up. Jorg, however, is not a cynic. I wanted to try to understand what power does to men, especially when they are of good will. Jörg, Thomas, Jean all face the impossibility of exercising power, which requires compromise with others and with oneself. And exactly how far can we compromise? When do we deny ourselves? These questions dovetail with another central theme of Thomas Helder: the story we tell about ourselves. I suspect that most of our ills come from our inability to change the story we have about ourselves. It freezes identities, prevents us from growing up and considering otherness. The farther the story we tell ourselves is from reality, the more we suffer, the more willing we are to change this vision of ourselves, the more flexible we are, the better off we are. The novel focuses on people who are faced with the need to change the way they think about themselves. Some succeed, some don’t.

In “Thomas Helder” the novel is discussed as “a certain density of life”. Is this also your vision of literature?
It’s a phrase I borrowed from Milan Kundera, actually he writes “sudden density” and it’s an idea I share. The novel is life next to life, which tries to fix it and thereby causes crystallization, thickness, density. I write and read to learn and understand what and who surrounds me. Novels show life in an incredibly concise way, going beyond the anecdote to reveal the plot of things. That’s what I try to do, beauty is my right arm. The beauty of the world and the beauty of art, which have nothing to do with beauty, are powerful indicators of this density.

“Thomas Helder,” Muriel Barbery, Ed. Actes Sud, 192 p., €19.50.
Patrice Normand / sp

Source: Le Figaro

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