{"id":43188,"date":"2021-10-26T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=43188"},"modified":"2022-09-25T16:04:05","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T14:04:05","slug":"leila-slimani-a-writer-locked-up-for-a-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/literature\/leila-slimani-a-writer-locked-up-for-a-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Le\u00efla Slimani, a writer locked up for a night"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday books - Lauriane Pipoz<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her latest book, Moroccan author Le\u00efla Slimani immerses herself in introspection during the unusual experience of sleeping in a museum. Her essay recounts the emotions she felt, and serves as the basis for a dive into her memories.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Locked up in a museum? That's the experience Le\u00efla Slimani tried, and the basis of her latest book, The scent of flowers at night<\/em>. On a terrace, her editor suggested that she spend the night \u00abat the Punta Dogana, a mythical Venetian monument transformed into a museum of contemporary art\u00bb. She accepts; not for \u00abthe prospect of sleeping close to works of art\u00bb, but for the simple experience of being locked in. A situation she cherishes as a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abWhat pushed me to accept [the proposal] was the idea of being locked up. That no one could reach me and that the outside world was inaccessible to me. To be alone in a place I couldn't get out of, where no one could get in. No doubt this is a novelist's fantasy.\u00bb<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n

This confinement soon leads to introspection. The Moroccan author indulges in digressions, becoming the sole subject of the story. Of course, by recounting the activity she cannot dissociate from herself: writing. In this way, she gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the writer's craft, which is so much the stuff of dreams. But it's more an art of living: you have to be disciplined, know how to fight off distractions when you've got a subject on your mind, and know how to say no to invitations so as not to interfere with your creativity. An art, a passion, but one that can almost seem painful under her pen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abWhen you're writing, there are times when chatter attacks you, when the exercise of conversation proves unbearable. Perhaps because it contains everything you dread: the clich\u00e9s, the commonplaces, the ready-made phrases you say but don't mean. Proverbs and established expressions can be extremely violent in those moments of writing when you're trying to capture the ambiguous, the blurred, the gray.\u00bb<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Le\u00efla Slimani also makes confessions linked to her own history, such as the accusations against her father (who spent a year in prison), her adolescence and, above all, the dualities that drive her. Her nationality: having grown up in an Arab country in a French-speaking family, she reveals that she always feels as if she's living in someone else's country. The will to be confined: she longs to be in captivity and at the same time wants to escape it, \u00abto conquer the outside\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abNow, alone and barefoot in this museum, I wonder why I wanted to be locked up here so badly. How can the feminist, the activist, the writer I aspire to be, fantasize about four walls and a locked door [...] To have peace is a selfish fantasy.\u00bb<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u00abWriting is playing with silence\u00bb.\u00bb<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The art of writing is measured in \u00abwhat you don't say\u00bb. From the anecdotes the author declaims and the personalities or artists she quotes, the reader can guess the emotions that ran through her when she spent the night in this museum. Because, in the end, we know very little about this privileged moment: the works serve only as a pretext, a starting point for recalling memories and reflecting on her own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

In this book, Le\u00efla Slimani reveals nostalgia and takes a critical, sometimes harsh, look at her own life, offering keys to her other works. Her words, as when she speaks of the death of her father, which in a way enabled her to emancipate herself, are sometimes violent, but never exaggerated: they contain a certain modesty. However, she makes no secret of her taste for lies. In this book, what's true and what's false? It doesn't matter; the words ring true to whoever wants to hear them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n