Archives de Simpolitique

André Gide

[center]La Porte Étroite[/center]

Others could have made it into a book; but for the story I am telling here, I put all my strength to live it and my virtue Get worn. I would therefore very simply write my memories, and if they are ragged in some places I will not have resort to any invention for mending or joining them; I would make the effort to hamper their finish last pleasure I hope to find to say them.

I was not twelve years old when I lost my father. My mother, that nothing was holding in Le Havre anymore , where my father had been a doctor, decided to come and live in Paris, saying that I would better work here to finish my studies . She rented, near Luxembourg, a small apartment, that Miss Ashburton came to live in with us. Miss Flora Ashburton, who had no family, had first been the teacher of my mother, and then her companion and soon her friend.
One day, which I think was quite long after my father death , my mother had changed the black ribbon of its morning bonnet for a purple one :
O mother, this colour is so much inappropriate for you ! I said in an outcry.
The day after, she had put a black ribbon again ...
I was of a fragile condition . The solicitude of my mother and Miss A. could have turned me into a loafer if I did not find some pleasure in work . As soon as better days came , they both decided to send me out of the city, that I am getting paler there . In Mid-June , we left Paris to go to Fougeusemare , around Le Havre , where my uncle housed us each summer.
In a not so vast and so nice garden that nothing really particular could set apart from other Norman gardens , lies the Bucolin's white double-storey house , looking much like a lot of other Norman houses built in the before last century. It got around twenty windows facing east and also facing west and nothing on the other sides .

The windows have small panes : some of them have been recently renewed , and seem too bright among the older other ones which then seem green and tarnished . Some of them have defaults that our parents were calling : bouillons => when you look through it , the tree in front becomes all awry and the postman suddenly gain a bulge .
The rectangular garden is walled on all sides , forming around the house a rather large shadowy lawn circled with an alley of sand gravels . On this side , the wall is less high , allowing to see the farmyard that surrounds the garden , delimited with an avenue of beeches in the local manner.





Behind the house on its western side , the garden gets more space a joyful flowered alley, in front of the espaliers toward the South is covered against the sea winds by a thick curtain of Portuguese laurels and a few trees . Another alley alongside the northern wall disappear under the branches .
My female cousins were calling it the " Black Alley " , and didn't often dare to venture there .
Both were leading toward the kitchen garden , that is extended downwards the garden after a few steps . Then in the end of the kitchen garden , on the other side of the wall once passed a small hidden door, there is a coppiced wood where the avenue of beeches ends on both sides .
From the front porch on the western side , one could admire above the thicket of this plateau the harvest that covers it . On the horizon , not so far away, there is the church of a small village , and at dusk in a calm weather, the smoke of some houses .

On each nice summer evening , we would descend to " the lower garden " : leaving through the small secret door, we were reaching the banks in the avenue from which we could see the entire zone .
There , next to the thatched roof of an abandoned chalk pit , my uncle , my mother, and Miss Ashburton were sitting down . In front of us , the small valley was getting full of mist and the sky was gilding above the farer wood . Then we would get some time in the already dark end of the garden .
And we would get back home , meeting our aunt that was almost never going out with us .
For us , the children , the evening was over by then . But quite often we were still reading when later we would hear our parents coming up .

Le Grand Meaulnes

We left on the snow , absolutely silentful . Meaulnes was walking in front of us , projecting the gleaming light of its barred lantern . We just came out through the large gate when , behind the municipal public balance that is leaning against the wall of our covered courtyard , two hooded persons ran away like some surprised partridges .
Whether it was as mockery , as some pleasure caused by the strange game that they were then playing or as nervous excitation from fear to get caught , I couldn’t say, but they laughingly said a few things while running away .
Meaulnes has dropped its lantern in the snow , shouting at me : Follow me , François !
So we left there the two elders , unable to continue such a race , and we started to track down these two shadows who , after skirting around the lowest part of the burg , following the Old-Plank Path went deliberately up to the church . They were running but not hurrying , with a regular pace so we didn’t really have trouble to follow them . They crossed the church street where everything was asleep and silent , and after the graveyard entered in a labyrinth of narrow streets and deadends .
There was a borough of day laborers , streamstresses and weavers , which was nicknamed the Small Corners . We didn’t knew it really well and we’ve never been there in the night .
The place was deserted during the day , with the day laborers absents and the weavers enclosed .
And during this night of great silence , it seemed even more abandoned and asleep than the others borough of the burg . In no way could anyone come and help us . I only knew a path between these small houses randomly scattered like cardboard boxes : it was the one that was heading toward the needlewoman that was nicknamed : the speechless dummy . One has to came down a vaguely paved quite steep slope , then after a few corners , between small courts of weavers or empty stables , you would arrive in a large stalemate , ending in the courtyard of a farm that has been abandoned for long .

When he opened the door, all the eyes got fixed upon him :

What do you want from me ? He said .

Laurent was sitting astride on a chair in front of the fire .
I need to know to know whether it is fixed or not , regarding next morning , said Laurent .

Tomorrow . He looked around him . The room was smelling like detergent and cabbage soup .
Madeleine was smoking , with her elbows on the tablemat . Denise had a book in front of her.
They were alive . For them , this night shall have an end ; there shall be dawn . Laurent looked him .

We cannot wait , he said softly. If I was to go there , I would have to be there at eight o'clock .
He was talking with precaution , like a sick person .
Of course .
He knew he got to answer, but couldn't .
Listen : come to see me when you're awake , just knock on . I need to think about it .
Alright , I then shall come at six o'clock , said Laurent .
How is she ? asked Denise .
She's sleeping , for the moment, he answered , walking toward the door.
Call us if you need something said Madeleine . Laurent will get rest , but we will stay there throughout the night .
Thanks .

He pushed the door. Decide . The eyes are closed , a moan came out through the lips .
The bed sheet got up and down , it is getting up too much . Life is too much visible and noisy.
It strives , it's going to be extinct , it will be extinct before dawn , because of me .
First Jacques and now Helen . Because I didn't love him nor her, cause she came so close and stayed so far away. Because I exist . I exist and she , once free , solitary and eternal , is now submitted to my existence , unable to avoid the brutal fact of my existence , scotched to the mechanical progression of its moments . And at the end of the fatal chain , touched in its core by the blind steel , the harsh metallic presence : mine , is her death . Because I was there, opaque, unavoidable, without purpose .
I should rather not been existent . First Jacques and now Helen .

Outside is the night without streetlamp , stars nor voice . Just now a patrol passed . By now nobody is passing anymore . The streets are deserted . In front of the major hotels and the ministries are guardsmen to guard them . Nothing happens . But here is something happening : she's dying .
Jacques first . Still these fixed words . But in the slow flow of the night , through other words and ancient images , the original scandal unfurls its story . He took the particular face of a story , as if anything else could have been possible , as if as soon as I was born , everything was not given :
The absolute rottenness hidden inside any human destiny .

For a long time I would go to bed early . Sometimes , when my candle had only just been put out , my eyes would close themselves so fast that I didn’t have the time to say to myself : I’m drifting off to sleep . And half an hour after the thought that it was time to try and get to sleep would wake me up : I wanted to put down the heavy book which I thought still had in my hands and to blow out the light .
I wasn’t stopping to think about what I just read , but those thoughts had took a particular turn : it seemed to me as if I was myself part of what the piece of work was about . A kirk , a quartet, the rivalry between Francois the 1st and Charles V … This belief was surviving for some seconds after I woke up : it did not disturb my mind but it laid as scales upon my eyes and prevent them to realize that the candle was no longer alight . Then it began to seems to me unintelligible , like the thoughts of a past life after the metempsychosis ; the topic of the book was detaching itself away from me , I was free to apply or not to it . Immediately I recovered my sight and quite surprised to find around me a soft and calming darkness , but even more maybe to my mind , to which it was belonging like a incomprehensible thing without a cause , like a truly dark thing . I would wonder what time it was ; I was hearing the whistle of the trains , more or less afar , like a singing bird in a forest , noting the distances , was describing to me the immensity of the deserted countryside where the traveler is hasting himself toward the next station and the narrow path he’s following shall be fixed into his memory with the excitement he got from new places , unusual dos , to the recent chat and to the farewells in the shadow of a foreign lamp , that still follow him in the stillness of the night , to the awaiting delightfulness of the arrival .
I would tenderly put my cheeks upon the pillow’s which , full and fresh , are like the cheeks of our childhood . I cracked a matchstick to look at my watch . It will soon be midnight . It is the instant on which the sick one who’s been forced to go abroad and to sleep in an unknown hostel , awaken by a episode , is glad to distinguish under the door a strait of daylight . Bless thee ! It is already morning !
In a moment the domestics would be awaken too , he will be able to call for them, they will help him.
Hope for relief gives him strength to endure . And indeed , he heard someone footsteps coming and going away . And the daylight strait has disappeared . It was Midnight , they just turned off the gaslights . The last domestic is gone , and the traveler will have to suffer throughout the night without a cure .

They still ain’t managed to convince him .
We’ve been near to lose our passports .
He can barely remembers their names .
I’m wondering how he managed to deceive the customs .
It seemed to us he enjoyed a little bit too much the whiskies .
He hardly managed to open his umbrella that the rain stopped .
Don’t forget to come and see us when you’ll be in France .
I almost told him what I think of him .

C) Because there is reactions against the notion of genre itself, it must be that this idea of classification emerged before literature and thus doesn't correspond to the realities of subsequent creations . As such , contrary to the mainstream opinion , it should be evicted to now consider the individual creations .

D) Because of the classical critics have sometimes been authoritarian , showing the dangers that are inherent to classifications , the notion of genre in literature has been radically rejected , in their own rights , by the contemporary writers , from the romantics to nowadays , in favor, not of theoretical classifications , but of objective and recurrent patterns in order to reach a compromise between generalization and saturation from individual works .

E) Our modern notion of genre shows it's inappropriate in the sense that those we now consider as the flagship of one genre or another, were then themselves transgressing the accepted tendencies of their times : it is the incarnation of the idea of "positive destruction", in which the dismantling of the old world is the foundation for a new one , like The Charterhouse of Parma , and thus we must examine any piece of literature in their two sides .

F) However, there are two categories of art and thus literature , i.e. fine art and popular art , and it can be said that popular literature is the opposite of what has been said and is true for the fine one .
No Orchids for Miss Blandish for example perfectly embodies this dichotomy, and as such the fact that in popular literature the observance of preexisting rules creates the masterpieces .

G) Considering detective fiction as popular literature , it can be classified , if not in genres at least in kinds , considering how much the author, not much obey rules but rather regular patterns , such as the twenty rules defined by the American writer SS Van Dine , and that can be concentrated in the definition given in Passing Time by the French writer Michel Butor, who's confirming in it that any great detective fiction is the ideal and subtle entanglement of the timelines of both the murder and the following investigation .

H) The most direct consequence of this dualism is that in the most radical detective fiction novels the two are fundamentally set apart one from the other, constituting two books in the same work :
though entangled , the whole novel doesn’t constitute its meeting point , and the best example of all that is The “ Canary “ Murder Case by Van Dine . Moreover, it is a common feature that the detective could not die , as it would go against the very purpose of the book that is of a person that is enabled to break a mystery, and to do so it has to be kept alive , though Hercule Poirot did died in the end of Christie’s lifework .

In this pattern , the second story is often in the best workpieces of the genre a second-hand tale of the investigation , of this second book of the novel , while the part dedicated to the ascension toward the crime and the latter itself is not any kind of literature , but pure geometry, linear concentric circles in a spiral toward the truth .
And detective fiction illustrates the fact that any work of literature responds to two separate notions that are those of story and discourse , seeing that the first which is describing the murder and its roots and as such the original truth , is more realistic and objective than the second one that mainly relies on the author’s style , and is only the interpretation of those who come after to retrace the timeline to an acceptable explanation .

Un jour, j'étais âgée déjà, dans le hall d'un lieu public, un homme est venu vers moi. Il s'est fait connaître et il m'a dit: "Je vous connais depuis toujours. Tout le monde dit que vous étiez belle lorsque vous étiez jeune, je suis venu pour vous dire que pour moi je vous trouve plus belle maintenant que lorsque vous étiez jeune, j'aimais moins votre visage de jeune femme que celui que vous avez maintenant, dévasté". Je pense souvent à cette image que je suis seule à voir encore et dont je n'ai jamais parlé. Elle est toujours là dans le même silence, émerveillante. C'est entre toutes celle qui me plaît de moimême, celle où je me reconnais, où je m'enchante. Très vite dans ma vie il a été trop tard. A dix-huit ans il était déjà trop tard. Entre dix-huit ans et vingt-cinq ans mon visage est parti dans une direction imprévue. A dix-huit ans j'ai vieilli. Je ne sais pas si c'est tout le monde, je n'ai jamais demandé. Il me semble qu'on m'a parlé de cette poussée du temps qui vous frappe quelquefois alors qu'on traverse les âges les plus jeunes, les plus célèbres de la vie. Ce vieillissement a été brutal. Je l'ai vu gagner mes traits un à un, changer le rapport qu'il n'y avait entre eux, faire les yeux plus grands, le regard plus triste, la bouche plus définitive, marquer le front de cassures profondes. Au contraire d'en être effrayée j'ai vu s'opérer ce vieillissement de mon visage avec l'intérêt que j'aurais pris par exemple au déroulement d'une lecture. Je savais aussi que je ne me trompais pas, qu'un jour il se ralentirait et qu'il prendrait son cours normal. Les gens qui m'avaient connue à dix-sept ans lors de mon voyage en France ont été impressionnés quand ils m'ont revue, deux ans après, à dix-neuf ans. Ce visage-là, nouveau, je l'ai gardé. Il a été mon visage. Il a vieilli encore bien sûr, mais relativement moins qu'il n'aurait dû. J'ai un visage lacéré de rides sèches et profondes, à la peau cassée. Il ne s'est pas affaissé comme certains visages à traits fins, il a gardé les mêmes contours mais sa matière est détruite. J'ai un visage détruit. Que je vous dise encore, j'ai quinze ans et demi. C'est le passage d'un bac sur le Mékong. L'image dure pendant toute la traversée du fleuve. J'ai quinze ans et demi, il n'y a pas de saisons dans ce pays-là, nous sommes dans une saison unique, chaude, monotone, nous sommes dans la longue zone chaude de la terre, pas de printemps, pas de renouveau.
2
Je suis dans une pension d'Etat à Saigon. Je dors et je mange là, dans cette pension, mais je vais en classe au-dehors, au lycée français. Ma mère, institutrice, veut le secondaire pour sa petite fille. Pour toi c'est le secondaire qu'il faudra. Ce qui était suffisant pour elle ne l'est plus pour la petite. Le secondaire et puis une bonne agrégation de mathématiques. J'ai toujours entendu cette rengaine depuis mes premières années d'école. Je n'ai jamais imaginé que je pourrais échapper à l'agrégation de mathématiques, j'étais heureuse de la faire espérer. J'ai toujours vu ma mère faire chaque jour l'avenir de ses enfants et le sien. Un jour, elle n'a plus été à même d'en faire de grandioses pour ses fils, alors elle en a fait d'autres, des avenirs de bouts de ficelle, mais de la sorte, eux aussi, ils remplissaient leur fonction, ils bouchaient le temps devant soi. Je me souviens des cours de comptabilité pour mon petit frère. De l'école Universelle, tous les ans, à tous les niveaux. Il faut rattraper, disait ma mère. Ça durait trois jours, jamais quatre, jamais. Jamais. On jetait l'école Universelle quand on changeait de poste. On recommençait dans le nouveau. Ma mère a tenu dix ans. Rien n'y a fait. Le petit frère est devenu un petit comptable à Saigon. L'école Violet n'existant pas à la colonie, nous lui devons le départ de mon frère aîné pour la France. Pendant quelques années il est resté en France pour faire l'école Violet. Il ne l'a pas faite. Ma mère ne devait pas être dupe. Mais elle n'avait pas le choix, il fallait séparer ce fils des deux autres enfants. Pendant quelques années il n'a plus fait partie de la famille. C'est en son absence que la mère a acheté la concession. Terrible aventure, mais pour nous les enfants qui restaient, moins terrible que n'aurait été la présence de l'assassin des enfants de la nuit, de la nuit du chasseur.
Marguerite Duras, L'amant