A beautiful night dawns for Elisabeth Quin

Tuesday's books - Jonas Follonier

French TV presenter Elisabeth Quin, who is also a writer, has dedicated her latest book, published in early 2019, to a hell she herself is going through: that of losing her sight. Extremely sensitive, this gem of a book has above all one great virtue: that of the direct truth of sensations.

Elisabeth Quin has chosen one of the best literary and philosophical subjects of all: sight. After all, sight is the most spiritual of all senses. To see is to understand, to learn, to discover. Aristotle was the first to sense this and theorize about it. «Felt» is the key to this book. Night rises published earlier this year by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle. Elisabeth Quin - as you can see more than ever from this highly literary personal account - is a sensitive and, I'd go so far as to say, sensational person, thanks to her talent for send sensations. By sensations, let's understand their primary meaning: sensitive impressions, i.e. coming directly from the five senses. As the author so aptly puts it, it's when one of these senses is lost that its importance takes on its full meaning. Night rises, from start to finish.

«Sight is self-evident, until the day something goes wrong in this little seven-gram conjunctive and molecular cosmos, a perfect and miraculous object, requiring so little maintenance that we neglect it.»

If people wearing sunglasses are for Elisabeth Quin - who comes across them in the street - a symbol of the world. «deplorable, heartbreaking look-alikes of Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, and also Gilbert Montagné».», For her part, the author can be seen as a literary reincarnation of Michel Polnareff. When Polnareff was diagnosed with a double cataract, he, too, had to deal with an unpleasant experience. fear of going blind. It was at the end of the eighties and the very beginning of the nineties, when the intriguing singer-songwriter had remained cloistered for eight hundred days at the palace Royal Monceau, composing and recording his album Kâma-Sûtrâ with the nugget Goodbye Marylou. There's no doubt that the tone and purpose of this admirable work owe part of their power to the malaise of a Polnareff tetanized by his failing eyesight, who had chosen to remain a hermit in this establishment after learning its contours.

And so it is with Elisabeth Quin's story, a stunningly sincere artistic transcription of her own experience. The author flirt with the fear of the death of an organ, the death of a sense, death at all, but also frequent philosophy, present on every page in its most accessible and universal sense. Comparing her eyeballs to the terrestrial globe (which is also diseased), questioning what would become of her relationship with her partner if she were to lose her sight completely, evoking a medical session as an intimate relationship (which it is), Elisabeth Quin above all puts it all into a most sublime, if very direct, form. No doubt this transparency is even necessary for such stylistic clarity. A style, in fact, that imposes itself.

«She opens her eyes, stares at me, and opposes a stubborn silence to each of my questions. Doesn't want to talk. I put on my coat and chirp in an infantilizing voice: ‘My little darling mommy, I'm off to work, it's 9:30, I'll call you tonight‘. Her gaze holds mine, unblinking, and in those eyes whose acuity was her pride and joy, ’can you believe it,’ she said to me at eighty-five, ‘I've got 10/10 in each eye!’’, In the eyes of this woman who has never had the slightest idea of who I really am, I see fear, I read a reproach, an angry challenge, a real despair, I read ‘you've abandoned me, I'm letting myself die, look what you're doing with me‘.’’. I run away. Guilty to the end, and unable to find comfort with her. On the first floor, a flood of tears.»

In addition to the artistic genius of this story, as the passage I've just quoted will no doubt have shown you, Night rises is also full of humor. Fine humor, but not smart humor. Humor that requires an intelligence to express it, but which doesn't presuppose that the recipient is particularly brilliant. Added to this humor are reflections on television, of course. And this is undoubtedly the most exciting aspect of this Grasset publication: the treatment of the theme of the gaze. For it would seem that Elisabeth Quin is the person who, by the very fact of having glaucoma, relearns, or quite simply learns, her gaze. That she shapes it. That she reflects on it. And delivers it to us. A look for her guests on Arte, a look for her readers. A liberated gaze. A free look.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © YouTube / La Grande Librairie

Elisabeth Quin
Night rises
Editions Grasset & Fasquelle
2019
141 pages