Immensités

by Sylvie Germain

Autour de Prokop Poupa, professeur de littérature réduit à l'état de balayeur dans les rues de Prague, évoluent quelques hommes et femmes marginalisés par la dissidence. Chacun, par dérision, imagine qu'un dieu Lare veille sur lui. L'un le situe dans sa cuisine, un autre sur le balcon, au grenier ou à la cave ; Prokop, lui, place son dieu Lare dans les cabinets qui deviennent un haut lieu de lecture, de méditation et de doutes.Arrive la révolution. Certains de ses amis retrouvent une place, voire de l'importance, dans la nouvelle société ; pour d'autres, il est trop tard. Prokop, lui, dérive hors de ce clivage entre l'ancien et le nouveau, il erre en solitaire dans les immensités du songe, de la folie humaine, et du silence de Dieu, jusqu'à s'échouer parfois dans des rêveries hallucinées sur la douleur de ceux qui ont été déchus du bonheur d'aimer, et plus encore sur le malheur de ceux qui ont été traîtres à l'amour. Toujours déambulant dans les rues de sa ville, entre le vide et l'espérance, Prokop ne sait plus rien sinon qu'il n'est rien, et ce constat est consentement ; il "offre ce rien dans les ténèbres", au fond desquelles peut-être gît l'inespéré.

Genres: France

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Germain received a doctorate in philosophy from the Sorbonne, and taught it at the French School in Prague from 1987 to 1993.
She claimed that philosophy, 'a continuous wonder' to her, was also too 'analytical', and she switched from Descartes and Heidegger to Kafka and Dostoevsky.
She grew up in rural France, in an area steeped in mythology and folklore, and she admitted 'that the power of place had a huge effect on me but it was an unconscious one'. That her prose was 'related to the earth ... the soil, the peasants, the trees', was revealed in her first novel, The Book of Nights (1985), which won six literary awards.
The second novel, Night of Amber (1987) continued from the first, and was followed by Days of Anger (1989). Despite this three-part structure, Germain claimed that she was 'trying only to express an obsessive image and to explain it to myself. I have no pretensions to creating a mythos. Each book begins with an image or a dream and I try to express that and give it coherence.'

Reviews

[Imen Benyoub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prokop se pencha vers la Pénitente au visage de lépreuse, au sourire de Ravie. Un peu d’eau de pluie, restée lovée dans les plis de sa robe, luisait. Une araignée tissait sa toile entre ses deux genoux. Une coccinelle grimpait le long de son épaule nue. Une feuille de chêne frémissait sur son front, et l’ombre des bouleaux berçait la lumière répandue sur son corps. Prokop assit à son chevet et contempla son sourire. La Pudeur ne pouvait pas avoir un plus beau visage sous son voile que cette Pénitente oublieuse de ses péchés pour ne plus songer qu’à la merveille du nouvel amour qui la consumait. Sainte Marie-Madeleine gisait aux pieds de Prokop, et lui offrait à méditer le mystère du pardon..

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is such a pretty piece of mysticism. The words dance seductively through the mind, leaving magical, sparkly imprints:

"A beautiful elsewhere showing through on the surface of the visible world and radiating a childlike joy."

"He was seeing her as all individuals are perhaps perceived after they die, in the absolute nakedness of their being."

"People's smell: that is the first thing that fades in the memory and weeps with pain at times of mourning and separation, the thing that can least endure the absence of the body that carried and emanated it."

"And far from protecting his friends and himself from eternal dangers, they were instead flushing out the internal enemy that each of them was hiding or even unwittingly fostering. Their guardian spirits had in fact infiltrated their inmost being."

"That's how life is. Dogs do smile sometimes. And so I let him into the flat. He stayed there for eighteen years. The reason why he put off dying for so long was that he wanted to delay the moment of separation as much as possible. He knew very well that it would cause me pain. It has, far more even than he imagined."

"I have already said that most human beings are pretty mediocre and uninteresting, and worst of all that many of them are very slovenly in the way they treat the poor little soul they have been given. They tear it to shreds and turn it into a cleaning rag. Dog was different. He didn't have a soul, he was a soul."

"The laws of the body and time are merciless."

"We are never done with the beings that it has been given us to love, whatever form that love may take."

"Alois had died, blinded by the violent shadow thrown by the sublime; so had Ramona, broken by the lie that smoulders in its flank. Both too much in love with the absolute, they had believed that beauty and salvation resided in acting, in art, in human love. But real life was still being acted out, in a different place, in a different way. It was a drama with no beginning, no end, and no script. 'I offer up this nothing to the darkness.' After which all words are superfluous."

Anyway, it is a story of redemption, or self-doubt, of stumbling through being human and tripping over salvation, of moments of openness to infinity and to God, and moments of being utterly hopelessly lost. It takes place in Prague during the revolution from 1988-1992. And it takes place in a realm of awareness at which we do not usually function, but which is very sympathetic to the parts of us that tremor when we perceive miraculous order among the supposedly disconnected events of our lives.

[Charli Mnd]

Une écriture particulière qui me parle tellement dans cette notion des « hautes lumières ». A
travers son personnage, elle arrive à toucher du doigt, et surtout à mettre en mots, les cycles
de pensées qui font vivre une déconnexion avec le monde statique, les détails et les
détorsions du réel qui font côtoyer les limbes. Malheureusement, j’ai compris, aux derniers
chapitres, que cette emphase n’était que la mise en parallèle de l’approche de la foi du personnage face à l’indépendance de la République Tchèque.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I don't know what this was about. Germain has always been capable of beautiful words, but this story is just all over the shop. I highly recommend The Book of Nights, though.

[Violetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книгу подарила мне Сашенька на день рождения много лет назад. Я была в тихом восторге. А потом я дала ее почитать. С тех пор ищу в продаже, и не нахожу нигде, очень жаль.

[Karin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een Franse filosoof schrijft in en over Praag en eindigt met een eerbetoon aan Bach. Mooier Europees kan haast niet.