Literature

Light on every level of life

6 reading minutes

écrit par Arthur Billerey · 18 January 2022 · 0 commentaire

De la lumière à tous les étages de la vie

Somewhere between a tale and a fable, Antonio Moresco paints a luminous tale of solitude, cradled by life and death, in the midst of forests as flourishing as they are scarred. Review of The little light, published published by Editions Verdier.

At table, in the L'Istanbul restaurant in Lausanne's Flon district, writer Corinne Desarzens hands me a book as a gift. She says to me:

«The book is for you, it's a gift. Open it and read the first sentence.»

I obey, open the book and read the first sentence. Without really understanding it, and out of politeness, I nodded, as one nods for wine, after a pout drawn by ignorance and meditation. That first sentence, which I hadn't understood - because, as in the case of small literary masterpieces, it's sometimes necessary to finish the book to finally grasp that everything was already there, right from the start, well in place in the roundness of the letters - that first sentence, pretty certainly, poetic a brown, impenetrable on the edges, finally carried within it, behind its delicate bark, all the sap of this tale as marvellous as it is disquieting. This first sentence, which forms the incipit, is as follows:

«I came here to disappear, to this deserted, abandoned hamlet of which I am the only inhabitant.»

Between tale and fable

The narrator lives alone in an abandoned hamlet, totally withdrawn from the world, yet so much in the heart of it, in a small stone house surrounded by mountains and abundant forests. Suddenly, he realizes that, on the mountain opposite him, in the middle of the woods, on the ridge line to be precise, every night at the same time, a small light goes on. The little light aroused his curiosity, to the point of turning it into an obsession. After many reflections and attempts, he manages to find the origin of this little light, and there he finds the person who turns it on every night: a child in shorts. A mysterious, veiled and intimate relationship develops between them, which only reading the book will bring to light.

Somewhere between a tale and a fable, with few characters, effervescent landscapes, poetic, rhythmic writing that's a joy to read, a rich vocabulary and intense descriptions of nature, plants and animal life that swarm and bustle even in the dark of night, Antonio Moresco has written a little masterpiece that also reads like a detective story that you have to finish quickly to unravel the mystery, that you have to finish quickly to find out.

«What on earth is that little light? Who could be turning it on?», I ask myself as I walk along the cobbled streets of this little hamlet where no one has stayed. «Is it a light filtering from a lonely little house in the woods? Is it the light from a street lamp left up there, in another uninhabited hamlet like this one, but obviously still connected to the power grid, which a simple impulse always turns on at the same time?»

The vertigo of contrasts

The narrator, whose name will never be revealed, is constantly on the move, obsessed with unraveling the mystery of the little light. He wanders, questioning his perceptions and what really exists. He questions his presence in the world and the world around him. He dreams, lies down and wakes up. He scrutinizes both the tiny glimmer of fireflies on the path and the immense light of the star-drenched universe. There's a tension in the story that's inexplicable, bigger than ourselves, and that rises in the reader from heel to toe, without us knowing why or where it comes from. So space and time, light and darkness, life and death, night and day, dream and reality are all contrasts that worry, reminding us that anxiety is perhaps also one of the fuels that irrigate the narrator's curiosity.

The gentle ferocity of plants

The tension that runs through the story also runs through the landscapes. A fever of growth embraces them. Plant and animal life never cease to die, to writhe, to be reborn, feeding the narrator's reflections. The passages make him question himself, philosophize, he does his metaphysics, and his contemplations allow the reader to forget the plot for a few passages, only to return to it afterwards. And these passages are wonderful. The narrator appreciates the beauty of nature as much as its severity, its surface as much as its depth, which is also reminiscent of Alexandre Voisard's approach, with Children in the trees, This is a reminder that between earth and heaven, because they question death, there are writers who bring light to every level of life.

«Why is there all this bad undergrowth, I wonder. That tries to envelop and obliterate and smother the taller trees. Why all this miserable, desperate ferocity that disfigures everything? Why all this swarming of bodies trying to exhaust other bodies by sucking up their sap with their thousand and thousand unchained roots and their little forcible suckers to divert chemical power towards themselves, to create new plant fronts capable of annihilating and massacring everything? Where can I go to stop seeing this carnage, this irreparable and blind twisting we've called life?»

Write to the author: arthur.billerey@leregardlibre.com