Gabriel Josipovici

Il existe un pays quelque part, dit-il, quelque part entre le cynisme et l'idéalisme, qui attend qu'on l'explore. C'est un immense pays. Incroyablement varié et beau. On se réveille et on pense savoir comment y entrer. Et puis on s'assied à son bureau et la route disparaît. On se retrouve avec les vieux clichés. Les vieux échecs. La dignité humaine, dit-il. Voilà ce qu'il nous faut défendre. Mais y a-t-il quelque chose de plus ridicule qu'un homme qui insiste sur sa dignité ? Non, dit-il, nous ne pouvons la défendre qu'en étant ce que nous sommes, en faisant ce que nous avons à faire et qui est en nous. Il faut que le corps soit épuisé, dit-il, si l'esprit livre ce qu'il a en lui à livrer. Il faut parfois marcher jusqu'à l'épuisement, dit-il, et puis se relever, rentrer chez soi, s'asseoir sur sa chaise et se remettre au travail. Naturellement, dit-il, la plupart du temps cela n'a aucun effet, on est assis sur sa chaise et on est tellement fatigué qu'on finit par s'endormir. Mais au moins ainsi on se donne une possibilité, alors que si on reste chez soi toute la journée il n'y a aucune possibilité. Ce parc est le plus agréable de Londres, dit-il quand nous nous assîmes sur la terrasse avec nos cafés. Ce n'est pas le plus beau, Hyde Park est le plus beau. Ce n'est pas le plus varié, Hampstead Heath est le plus varié. Mais c'est le plus agréable, le plus charmant. Malamud a dit que ce n'était qu'au moment de ses tout derniers livres qu'il s'est mis à écrire sur son propre monde, dit-il, jusqu'alors il avait écrit, sans s'en rendre compte, sur le monde de son père. Mais c'est tout naturel. Nous pensons tous à la vie comme étant la vie qu'ont vécu nos parents, parce que nous sommes tous des imitateurs par nature et nous ne voyons pas ce que les autres n'ont pas vu avant nous, même quand nous l'avons directement sous le nez. Alors, dit-il, à la fin de notre vie, si nous avons de la chance, nous disons tout à coup : Ainsi, ceci est ma vie, ma vie à moi, voilà ce qu'elle a été, voilà ce qu'elle est. Mais même cet aperçu doit provenir de nos parents, dit-il, doit provenir du passé. Je pense aux grands parcs dans les villes comme à des lieux appartenant au monde de mes parents, dit-il, ou même à celui de mes grands-parents, le monde de l'Europe d'avant la Première Guerre mondiale. Nous avons l'impression, dit-il, que si nous parvenons à vivre la vie de nos grands-parents, alors, d'une manière étrange, nous vivons vraiment. Ce qui se passe à notre propre époque ne paraît pas réel, pas réellement réel. Nous sentons que nous devrions en laisser la description aux journalistes qui en rendent compte, ce n'est pas ce que nous pensons être essentiel, durable.

I remember the man I was. But he is like a puppet. i do not know what kept him going. Perhaps it was nothing except a sense of duty. I see him bustle. He was a great bustler. I sometimes think I am still there. That I still work there, do what I have to do about the house, take orders from him, from the boy now, while she stands simpering by. I hate her for that, for what she let them do to me and for standing by now and doting on that boy.
But I am not there. I know I am not there. I turned my back on them forever and walked out, vowing revenge. Yet I was not interested in revenge. I only wanted to forget them. To start again elsewhere. But I could not. The song would not let me go. It was like a leash he had attached to me when he saw that I was determined to go. I sleep and it comes to me in my dreams.
I wake and it creeps up on me in the daytime. I plotted revenge. I thought I would find my way back there and take up my post with them again. I would steal her handkerchief and poison his mind. He would have killed her for that. Killed her first and the himself. He was capable of it, he went for Andrew the minute he saw him, broke his head and then blamed Toby. They would have taken me back. I know ho she felt about me. I would have played on that feelings. I would have made him kill her and the, in despair, he would have done away with himself.
At other moments I thougt of other, sillier kinds of revenge. I would have them all on an island. I would be able to control the wind and the waves. I would wreck them on my island. The drunken idiots would be pinched and bruised and bitten by spirits, and the others, the others would get their deserts - the whole lot of them. I would frighten them with ghosts made of old sheets. I would lead them into swamps and then reveal myself to them - it would be the silliness of the punishments that would be the most shaming.
Idle thougts. I am surprised that I can remember them. At moments they were there, so strong, so clearly formulated. But I do not think I ever took them seriously. Because it was as if I had lost the ability to act. As if his song had drained me of my will. When it flooded through my head I cried. I cried a lot. There was another music too, unearthly, and fragments of speeches, but not speeches in the ordinary sense. I understood what they said, but not the meaning of the individual words and phrases. It was as though their souls had found words. In such a night, was the refrain. The names of Cressida and of Dido, of Thisbe and of Medea came into it. The floor of heaven like a carpet thick inlaid with patines of bright gold. I remember that. It was like a music I had never heard before and never imagined could exist. And then I was in the dark but it was peaceful, quite different form that other dark, and there was another song, ear no more the heat of the sun, and home art gone and ta'en thy wages. It merged with the other voices, telling of Dido and Medea and Thisbe and Cressida. But when I tried to hear them more clearly, to focus on them better, they faded away and vanished altogether. I went out through a door and instead of the garden I had expected was a desert, dirt, an old newspaper blowing across a filthy street, decaying tenements. I turned back and there was the music again, but now the door was locked and I could not get in. Why do I know nothing about music ? Why have I always feared it? Not just the drunken catches but the pure sweet music of the viols, the pure sweet melancholy songs. I fear them all.