Pain is an artist's breeding ground in Yann Moix's ’Orléans«.

Tuesday books - Loris S. Musumeci

«From then on, I would have to live clandestinely with my parents, an orphan albeit in their company. From that day on, I denied them the quality of parents - in my eyes, they were only what they thought they were: mere progenitors. Only biology bound me to them, and biology isn't much. But it does carry a curse: that physical resemblance, that inherited gesture that, when the hour is late and you find yourself facing the mirror of an empty apartment or hotel room on an August Sunday, makes you want to shoot yourself in the head. Death would sooner or later rid me of myself, which means them.»

The tone is set. The tone we know so well from Yann Moix: that of radicalism, that of integrity. Orléans marks a turning point in the writer's career: it definitively lays the foundations for his art. He grew up in suffering, in the violence inflicted by parents relegated to the status of progenitors. Dalida once said that «pain is the breeding ground of the artist. And she was right.

«Inside», «Outside». These are the titles of the book's two parts. The first tells the story of domestic martyrdom. It attracted the attention of critics as well as the main people involved: father, mother, brother, Alexandre. Polemics swirled, only to begin to subside.      

«My screams were such that my mother ran to me in panic: ‘Stop it! You're going to kill him!’ To which my father replied without hesitation: ‘So what? That's what you want, isn't it?’ My mother ended the conversation with a ‘Think of the neighbors!’ which stopped the flogging session dead in its tracks.»

And that's no mean feat. Yann Moix's family took issue with his comments, which were seen as unprecedented revelations of his youth. Sulphurous elements emerge. The author lies! That psychopath! Worse still, he reverses the situation. What he describes as his suffering is in fact the suffering he inflicted on his grandbrother. The proof: for a few months of his misguided youth, he produced anti-Semitic drawings. CQFD.

It all seems so simple, so obvious. Yet I don't believe a word of it. The drawings do exist. Yann Moix admits it. Without trying to justify himself, he asks forgiveness for the horrors that have slipped under his pencil. This in no way diminishes my confidence in the man. He made a mistake, and no doubt others. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I myself have uttered enormities on certain occasions, but that doesn't make me damned for life. The same goes for Monsieur Moix, whom some jealous people were already looking forward to seeing crumble.

He's not just another writer. His talent is staggering. A talent that is not to the taste of so many censors who wallow in mediocrity. Yes, the character is arrogant, yes, he provokes, yes, he surprises. And he's right to do so. Where everything is smooth and polished, he tears apart the obvious, the taboos, the secrets, the a priori of the cathodic kingdom.

Moreover, his talented freedom is part of a line of writers of which he has proclaimed himself a member, following in the footsteps of Péguy, his god, and into which I am taking advantage, precociously and superbly, to fit in. Even if, unlike Moix and Péguy, I haven't yet written anything substantial, and I'm not from Orléans. As for writing, that'll come; as for Orléans citizenship, that'll be more complicated.

«Solid as bronze, fragile as a child, Péguy resembles the idea I have of myself: unjust, irascible, temperamental, but endearing, touching - childlike. I don't throw flowers at myself; I aspire, as on a battlefield, to tell the truth. Modesty is nothing compared to humility. Péguy and I are humble people - humble and Orléanais.»

Enough of my own musings. Let's get back to Orleans. «Dedans» aroused passions. Both positive and negative. If it was fertile with polemics, it also gave rise to voyeurism masquerading as admiration. The story of the blows and backlashes has been praised. However, there are a few reservations that stand in the way of my idea of the book. Disgust is just around the corner. Yann Moix tells us too much. Certain details deserve to be hushed up in the light of suggestion.

This first part is no less exciting. As usual, the artist spoils us with little treasures. Treasures that are the prerogative of great authors. Buried in a story, the reflections we receive as a gift for life explode. Thus, at the-Inside of family drama, we find universal words of classics.

Georges Steiner, recently read, says in Errata that classics can be recognized by the fact that reading is not a one-way street. We read the classic, but it also reads us. Because it constantly questions us. Clearly, Yann Moix's works are still classics in the making. Let's not rush things, but let's note the power of passages that are naturally integrated into the story, and that will remain companions for the reader:

«There's nothing like pedagogy; it holds the secret to bringing vocations into the world. In it lies the possibility of intellectual birth. Birth cannot be strictly physiological; our very presence in the world requires that we embrace this world and find our place in it. It is pedagogy, more than matter itself, that holds the power to make us love not only our lives, but life itself. Entering a passion cannot always be done alone; the teacher who becomes our guide, and why not our friend, if he accompanies us to the threshold of our future loves, having sown in us the seed of curiosity and feverishness, the taste for obstinacy and drilling, can then abandon us: we'll never be alone again.»

«Dehors», the second part of the novel, has been less talked about. It is, however, the most moixienne of the two. Because she is A simple love letter, as can be found in all of Moix's writings - particularly in Jubilations towards heaven. And understand «love» in the latter's most honest and profound sense: failure. Any passion for love is doomed to failure, whether through marriage or break-up.

From failure to failure, we travel between the shapes of the women desired by the protagonist in his late childhood and early adolescence. This is the part I enjoyed most, as we rise from the particular experience to the universal human sentiment. From desire to desire, we touch on the ever-real, ever-frustrated sensuality that, from adolescence, accompanies us throughout life.

«We were frustrated; while we could, theoretically and legally, without the slightest embarrassment, kiss these girls everywhere, all day long, caress their buttocks, salivate in their mouths, groping their flesh, sucking their nipples, we weren't doing anything about it. Everyone, they and we boys, thought of nothing but sex, day and night. All of us, deep in bed, in the shower, in the bathroom, wiping our genitals to the point of dizziness, thinking about each other. But once we were in class, once we were facing each other, once we were mixed up with each other, a leaden blanket came over the nocturnal frenzies that solitude allowed endlessly.»

Uncomfortable? Yes, perhaps a little, reading such a truth. And yet, how good it feels! Reading and rereading this passage is a real pleasure. jubilation - perhaps not to the sky, But still. She puts words to mountains. Of desires, which are questioned, which accumulate, until a writer comes to elucidate the difficulties by climbing them. Reading Yann Moix is always like climbing a mountain. You get angry, you get tired of it, and then when you reach the top, you contemplate. The landscapes of the human condition, which are sometimes unpleasant to look at, but which can't help but teach us more and more, and accompany us.

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

Photo credits: © Lauriane Pipoz for Le Regard Libre

Orleans
Yann Moix
Editions Grasset
2019
262 p.