Rencontre

by Jaqueline de Romilly

Pendant les années de sa carrière universitaire, Jacqueline de Romilly s'amusa plusieurs fois à écrire des romans et des nouvelles que, par discrétion, elle s'interdit de publier, ou qu'elle fit paraitre sous un pseudonyme. "Rencontre" est l'un d'eux, écrit en 1966.

308 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

Reviews

[Pascale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anne, a 34 year old widow with a married lover and a job as a translator, bumps into her first lover Paul in the Luxembourg gardens. Or at least, she bumps into a guy who reminds her so much of Paul that she suddenly moves heaven and earth to pick up the trail of this man, whom she had left quite abruptly after an inconclusive romance. While making phone calls and even an improvised trip to Brussels, where Paul had a job at some point, Anne reviews the past and confronts a number of uncomfortable truths about her aborted relationship with Paul: how she never really cared to know about his politics or his friends, how she resented him not proposing to her, how she kept hoping against all hope that he'd suddenly turn into the steady, boring husband her parents had in mind for her. So while her obsession with finding Paul again and starting where they left off is more than a little pathetic, the emotional journey it takes her on yields new insights into her failings and limitations. Eventually she meets the stranger who triggered the whole thing, and who turns out to be a slightly pedantic but rather charming librarian. Will Anne be able to make do with what this man is offering, instead of pining for her idealized lost love? This is no masterpiece but a good deal better than Romilly's insufferable memoir about her mother. Romilly proves rather adept at psychological analysis and this slightly sentimental tale isn't as full of clichés as I initially feared it might be.

[tomasawyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai failli adorer ce livre. Il me parle énormément. Tout ce que j'aime dans la vie. Le jardin du Luxembourg. Une non rencontre. Une vague ressemblance qui réveille le passé et l'imagination qui fait le reste. Elle aurait pu broder sur mille pages sans parvenir à ses fins sans que je me lasse. Je conseillerai probablement jamais ce livre à personne, le romantisme ça emmerde tout le monde mais perso ça me parle. Et chaque fois que je retire mes lunettes dans le métro, j'peux me servir d'une vague ressemblance pour partir dans un délire d'imagination. On croise plus facilement des fantômes du passé lorsqu'on est myope. Ce qui m'a un peu refroidi, c'est le dernier chapitre. Mon côté maso-niais aurait voulu une fin plus romantique ou carrément tragique, pas cette acceptation adulte du réel. Et en même, j'ai envie de la féliciter de pas être tombé dans le pathos total.