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Centre Présence en Ardèche

Culture et coups de cœur

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood): a beautiful, surprising, humorous and deeply moving movie.

Nedjma (Kateb Yacine) : "un des romans les plus lumineux qu'il nous soit donné de lire" (G. Carpentier). Je ne saurais pas dire mieux. Nedjma, c'est l'astre sombre, la femme-patrie, une œuvre fascinante et mélodieuse. Point intéressant : le livre (la matière) est lui-même souple comme s'il souhaitait épouser les courbes mouvantes d'un roman qui se dérobe sans cesse.

Conteur, conteuse, frère ou sœur de mots (signes)

N.B. : La lenteur donne de la saveur aux mots.

In defense of fiction

Fiction has often been called a lie and seen as inferior to reality. But it helps us to accept reality. A telltale example: Waltz with Bashir. The animated cartoons shows us the truth, or a truth, and makes it more understandable, acceptable to us than the film archives of the end. The last minutes seem more unreal than the whole movie although it is reality. The role of fiction is to give us access to some truth that we cannot grasp or cannot accept in a normal way.

Conclusion: a beautiful movie which you must absolutely see.

Seconde conclusion: Fiction, Art, is necessary to us. It is not something unconnected to reality; on the contrary it helps us to live more completely in reality. It is useless in the way that we can survive without it unlike food. But precisely it is thus what makes us human.

About the end of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys used to say that “no one knows anything but himself or herself.” Yet literature takes up the paradoxical task of giving us a closer experience of the inexpressible otherness. With Wide Sargasso Sea she leads this task to its extreme point: madness, the absolute otherness. She wrote the story of Bertha (or Antoinette) who is Mr Rochester’s wife in Jane Eyre and has become mad. The book ends with Bertha’s relating a dream that she had and which drove her to burn the manor and to commit suicide. The wonder of it is how the author managed through writing to abolish the frontier between us who are considered as sane and her, the insane woman. Through Bertha we are made to live a very unsettling experience of a dream and of madness, which blurs the gap with the other and forces us to reconsider our vision of alienation. Her strikingly vivid account of a dream immerses us in her mind and make us painfully aware of her humaneness.

The situation for the reader is very uncomfortable as it is a dream and thus not reassuring, usual and logical vision of life. Things are never completely clear and the usual bearings are confused. Time and space are shifting and allow no certainty. Two places far away from each other suddenly mingle (images of the manor in England and of the Caribbean are mixed). It is not sure when events took place (“yesterday” or “quite long ago”). Memories and impressions become suddenly compressed but we never know exactly how long Bertha’s actions take. For example how long did she stay in the red and white room? The frontier between reality, dream and memory is blurred what produces a strange feeling of mixed familiarity and unknown or unusual. The description of the manor and her assertion that things are as she remembers them makes her dream takes an aspect of reality. But at the same time her memories are very precise (with even more details; for example she does not simply say that there are flowers but that she sees “the orchids and the stephanotis and the jasmine”) and collide with the present of the dream with a counterpoint of phantasmagoria (the ghost). The result for the reader is an impression of having lost his bearings.
Yet it is normal that a dream does not abide by the usual rules of reality. Thus it delays our becoming aware of her madness and makes it easier for us to enter it. We see clues of it without realizing immediately what they mean. Her speech seems at first very logical (“for… and so…”) but her conclusions and her reactions are surprising (there is no logic in concluding that they worship gold just because she saw a gold object and fleeing from a painting). We progressively come to see her as an unreliable narrator and build another image of her. We wonder if the atmosphere of fear and danger which she conjures up with a threatening and unspecified “they” comes from a real danger or from paranoia. Likewise her relationship to the fire, spreading it carelessly and considering it as a beautiful protector, suggests that she is a pyromaniac. Her sense of danger is not the same as ours for we would be more afraid of the fire than of a ghost (which is a painting) and we would never believe the wind to be able to lift us. Her problems of identity are underlined by her saying “someone screamed” and then realizing that it was her. Was it her also her who laughed at the beginning or did she have a hallucination? Still, thanks to the dream we have entered her alienation and we understand her. We are with her alienated from the other characters.

Dreams reveal what troubles our minds thus they give a very interesting insight in a character’s feelings. It enables us to see that she is not a mad animal with no reason at all but a very sensitive and desperate woman looking for a way out of her prison. The recurrence of “but” conveys both the idea of everything being against her and of her powerlessness and confinement. Her loneliness and isolation is highlighted by her refusal to speak to the others. She cannot or does not want to communicate with them (she does not answer to the man calling “Bertha” nor to Grace Poole and tries not to make any noise) because they do not understand her (“they think I don’t remember but I do”). She is alone in a hostile world characterized by a diffused fear and hatred. Her sensitivity appears under her words and her comparisons (such as the one between her hair and wings). She does not belong there. We even wonder if she is not herself the ghost for she wanders silently in the castle, careful not to be seen, her hair stream like those of the woman painted and she always seem to be flying rather than running. Her language is gripping, fascinating and haunting by its numerous repetitions which give a tone of urgency to it. The important point is that the reader’s process of assimilation to the protagonist can still take place. We feel concerned by her fate.
We understand her desperate and maddening need to escape this place which is associated to death. The dark, the white ( a cold, inhuman color), the clock, the candles burning out and the couch so soft and deep that it seems to invite to a neverending sleep (the last sleep), everything speaks of death. It is made more obvious by the contrast with the place of her childhood which is described as full of life, plants and colors. But her present situation always catches her back just as the calls of the parrot are replaced by those of the man. Her longing for the past reveals itself in the profusion of details and the precise, personal aspect of its description (its characters are called by their first name while the man is characterized by his hate and her keeper is named by both her Christian and family name). There seem to be no familiar person nor thing in the manor. The rhythm of this passage is as frantic as her frightened race and emphasized by her refusal to stop and watch (twice she says “but I did not stay to watch”). The comparison with the Church reflects her need for spiritual comfort but in this place it is denied to her. The fire which for us symbolizes destruction then becomes a symbol of life, light, color and warmth. It becomes her ally. It colors the sky and her seeing all her life in this color is another proof of her close death (it is a common belief that someone who is about to die sees back one’s whole life). Her desperate need makes it understandable that she wants to believe the wind capable of lifting her up and taking her away flying and fleeing. A doom-laden atmosphere hovers on the scene and the end of the story (the end of her life) announces itself. Because she says “now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do” her dream seems ominously prophetic as if madness made her a seer but it is just normal that she reproduces it in reality for it offers her an escape. The last words complete a circle with the beginning of the dream and we know that if we want the description of her last moments and of her suicide we just have to read again her dream. The last image of her walking in the dark with a small candle could be compared to her being on her way out of despair with the small light of the hope given by her dream and at the same time she seems more fragile than ever. Thus it is a most beautiful and striking image much more telltale than if the book ended on her jumping and crushing herself on the ground. Its emotional effect on the reader is overpowering and forces us to accept her choice as unavoidable.

Thanks to this text our vision of Jane Eyre and of alienation is deeply and irreversibly modified. It does not make Bertha less than a human but on the contrary a deeply and beautifully human being who needs help. It has reversed the process of alienation as the other characters are isolated while we are with her. She cannot communicate with them but literature makes it possible with us.

Atropa

Dear friends,
Before Christmas I was supposed to present you a play that I have seen. We did not have time for it and it is probably better this way. It was then too fresh in my mind and I had great difficulties to summarize it. Anyway time fled away and I have worked again on what I have written so I submit it to you. I felt really moved by this play and I found some interesting links or variations with Shakespeare’s Richard III. The first thing I want you to know about it is that it was a very feminist play and that I do not claim neutrality. What I wrote about it is what struck me, what it inspired me, what I found interesting in it. So now for those who want to know more about it, let’s begin.



Atropa or the revenge of peace



Atropa was the last of three plays that formed a cycle about power and violence. It was created by Guy Cassiers and Tom Lanoye who based it on Euripides, Aeschylus, Georges W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Curzio Malaparte’s texts. It was performed in Dutch with French subtitles. This tragedy goes back to the “mother of every war”, Troy, with a focus on Agamemnon (the only man on stage) and some of the women he wronged in the name of duty or love – Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, Helena, Andromache, Hecuba and Cassandra (yes, the seer one). Actually he is the only man in this play and each of the women will defy him until they eventually defeat him. This story proves that ancient tragedies are still interesting nowadays because they have a universal aim. It was Troy but it could be Baghdad, Manhattan, or England during the War of the Roses that are described.

I do not intend to develop the feminist point much. You just need to know that it is an indictment of women’s oppression and abuse by men throughout History. As I said it could be any war of our time or another. But it is also a war between feminine and masculine principles. Women represent life itself and their voices are those of the cities. Helena especially has two voices: one is her own and the other is Troy. Sometimes they are completely dissociated and sometimes completely mingled reflecting their interwoven fates.


→ Division and unity:

We are confronted to women, to mothers who have lost their children, to wives who have lost their husbands, to daughters whose fathers and brothers have been killed. Their grief divides them so deeply (let us not forget that they are Greeks and Trojans i.e. enemies) that their loneliness seems unavoidable. They have to stand alone faced to the depths of their sorrow, anguish and anger. Still they need a comfort in their distress, someone to acknowledge it, to grant them social recognition, mourning and relief. Denying the reality of their grief would be denying them any importance as human beings capable of feeling and suffering. Helena is the first to proclaim this unity between them although all reject her. Finally they provoke Agamemnon’s defeat by reaching some point of common understanding.

→About the setting:

Just as in Shakespeare’s tragedy language overwhelms everything and makes the setting almost disappear but its remnants are all the more important. There are a screen, some flagstones, a podium (made of flagstones) and a chair.

-The chair shows women’s weakness: they sit down when despair takes away their strength.
-The podium represents Troy’s walls. At the beginning Helena stands alone on it, showing only her back to the audience and holding a mirror. When the city loses, Agamemnon bullies Helena off it and takes her place.
-The reflection of Helena’s face appears on the screen, backstage, enlarged more than ten times its normal size. As she speaks her face seems more and more blurred, misshapen and at last looks like a skull. The screen has something ominously prophetic. It announces the death of both the city and the women in that never-ending war.
-The actors move the flagstones for each important event (a new flagstone is put down for a death, Andromache obsessively piles them up after her son’s murder…).
-Throughout the play a vertical string alights on the stage for each of the women’s deaths until in the last scene Agamemnon stands alone with all these strings, speaks, stammers (“we… we… we”) and suddenly falls silent as the strings all disappear thus emphasizing his absolute abandonment and loneliness.


→A battle for power: violence, language, legitimacy and free will.

Atropa also starts a reflection on what is legitimate, what is worth giving one’s life for.
We are confronted to three different choices in front of violence:
-Iphigenia’s behaviour (she accepts to be sacrificed for honour) which could appear as very noble proves to be no more than indoctrination and lack of judgement.
-Cassandra is willing to fight because for her the only way to defeat Agamemnon is to use the same weapons.
-Hecuba refuses to fight or use violence arguing that it would only continue the cycle of revenge which must be stopped.
The main question is: does violence legitimize violence?
And their problem is about their own responsibility. Here victims though innocent can be guilty if they do not fight fiercely enough… but what way of fighting is legitimate?

Agamemnon needs to legitimize his actions, his deeds and his war but he never takes his responsibility. He justifies them saying that he defends liberty and civilisation against evil and destruction. But he is evil. He embodies evil.
e.g.: he pretends that he has to sacrifice his daughter lest he might appear a coward to his men and get deposed.
e.g.: He dares say to a mother that he understands her, that he has no choice, that she must forgive him because he is only a miserable, helpless man grieved by what he has to do… when what he “has” to do is take her son from her and flung him from the highest tower unto the ground. But Andromache immediately points out his cowardice and asks something that we discussed not so long ago: how can soldiers, how can men who are supposed to be heroes be so frightened by a little baby that only his horrid death can reassure them?


➢ What about free will?

Gods are totally absent from this play and Agamemnon does not even pretend to sacrifice Iphigenia for them. He accuses seers to manipulate religion for political purposes. Nevertheless he always pretends not to have any responsibility in his acts: they were always due to some duty or to fate as if he had no free will. He wants to show himself as a victim, an honest and helpless man and tries to convince his own victims that he is not guilty and that they have to forgive him. The difference with Richard III is that Agamemnon feels the need to be forgiven (he is like those rapers who complain about having been seduced by their victims) while Richard only begs for pardon if it suits his political purpose. In both plays words are perverted.
e.g.: love meaning hate or a rape being called love.
But the women one by one refuse to grant him comfort, power or pardon. They accuse him and refuse to forgive him. Eventually Clytemnestra points out the hollowness of his words and principles and denounces his concern for his own glory and Helena’s being nothing but a pretext.


➢ Language:

Like Richard III it is a play on language with verbal battles to death for power. All the possibilities of language are explored, all its dimensions (words, meanings and music). It is incredible to think that although it was in a foreign language it kept all its strength and still powerfully impressed the audience.
Agamemnon always bellows and Bush’s words in his mouth have a strikingly infuriating effect on spectators. He tries to silence his adversaries by drowning their words under his howls but when Helena stands up against him and starts bellowing he has to use physical violence (throw her off her podium and take her place). Eventually he is himself silenced by their absence. It forbids him to say “we” and he cannot speak anymore. All along the play the women scarcely raise up their voices. They always keep calmer, softer and lower voices than his. Andromache does not cry nor scream when he takes her child. She simply accuses him of cruelty and uses reason when he is driven by madness and superstition. The softness of their voices is much more powerful and threatening. They reach their highest degree of power with a song, which conveys first relief and then an increasing, frightening anguish. This effect is far stronger than Agamemnon’s violent, noisy speeches. At last Clytemnestra refuses his words, takes them from him and defeats him in a dialogue playing with repetitions of “hit” and “the world is vast”. Agamemnon’s language is based on concepts which enable him to create a vision of the world that is not real. Reason is absent from them. He tries exclusively to manipulate feelings and wins only with Iphigenia (she speaks like him). But the other women keep their words sensible and anchored in reality. They speak with reason and yet their feelings are communicated more directly to the audience. While we reject Agamemnon, we sympathize with them. Their language is more constructed, poetic and beautiful. Agamemnon uses a simple syntax in order to create an immediate effect without reflection. He perverts the meaning of words and uses too many symbols. They give back to words their share of reality linking them anew to their meanings. They protect life when Agamemnon only wants destruction and they win by denying him the ability to change the meaning of words or cut the bound between language and reality.


➢ The women’s victory:

The whole tragedy is built on growing tensions and violence. Even the sounds are violent. For each death they hit the flagstones with an axe thus producing an awful, unbearable, piercing and deafening sound. Agamemnon wins as long as he manages to keep everyone (including the audience) in this violence. Its highest degree of intensity is reached when Agamemnon comes back to Clytemnestra who is waiting for him with an axe for then the spectator longs to see his death. But she overcomes this desire of violence and thus wins.
As he had denied death to these women they ask Clytemnestra to kill them or they commit suicide. She accepts out of sympathy not hatred.
Thus they put an end to their grief. Then she wins by her refusal to kill him (for he asked it too). His death would have robbed the others of the value of their deaths. She simply orders him to kill himself if he wants to die. By that she condemns him to live and despair (the opposite of Richard III) just as he had condemned them to live. He cannot stand by his own contrary to Clytemnestra who manages to take her own responsibility (she says “I” not “we”) and have a life of her own. His downfall is her rebirth. The last dialogue brings relief and even laughter (thanks to the play of repetitions with “you hit”). It brings back peacefulness making violence useless and unnecessary. The cycle of violence and revenge is ended.
Actually this tragedy is a beautiful message of hope.





Now do not hesitate in asking me questions if it is not complete or clear enough.