The husband / Patrick AURREAUX / GALLIMARD, coll. “Sygne”, 208 p., 20 euros.
Most of the books by Patrick Autreaux are autobiographical. Reading them one after the other, we recognize certain events there – in particular his crossing, still young, of cancer, and his remission, to which he devoted a cycle of four pounds -, but approached with different lighting and especially another focal length. Because each book follows a singular trackendeavors to extract from the author’s intimate journey of the determining landmarks, the factors of explanation and emancipation, which all refer to the need for writing.
The husband opens onto the marriage between the narrator – alter ego of the author – and his companion, celebrated as soon as the law allowed it. Immediately antagonisms are installed. Two in particular: on the one hand, the parents of his companion badly accept the homosexuality of their offspring, more difficult to find their (future) steps; On the other hand, the rejection of homosexuality by the Catholic religion (as well as by all the others), which nevertheless had an important importance for the narrator. The book will post on these two fronts.
On the first, his in-laws, installed in Israel because his companion is of Jewish family, operate a trench warfarewith a few periods of relaxation. On the second, what the narrator will account is the way he followed him leading him to “decry”, to turn away from faith. It was not a heritage-it does not come from a pious environment. As he says himself, he entered it “By the bushy door”. He does not come out with losses and a crash, renegat way.
God is no longer a mystery, but has not become a honest figure. Because, without named it thus, the narrator continues to desire to live one night in him that no determinismno conscious reason. “How can we no longer believe without losing infinity?” »»brightly speed. Writing will be the appeal, which allows him to join the “Souls well”.
Learning
The husband is thus a learning book where it is often linked, sometimes closely, readings and meetings – especially the meeting with the companion, first lover, then husband, a love story that was not made by itself, whose development has requested several years. A series of books punctuates the intellectual journey that traces The husbandwhich is not the least interesting of the axes of the book as it is a question of knowledge which influence the existence of the narrator, and not of a sterile accumulation of knowledge.
The husband is undoubtedly the text of Patrick Alleaux most imbued with lyricism, yet worked from the inside by its very opposite.
The first of them is The Book of Questionsso well named, by Edmond Jabès, which he takes in the library of his lover and which leads him towards Jewish culture. From then on, “Reading is a way of loving”. Or again: “Through you and for you, I enter Judaism. »» His trips to Israel, in particular in Jerusalem, a biblical city, in addition to the unfortunate reception of his parents-in-law, disappoint him and make him take the measure of this “Ghetto of the winners”an expression of Mahmoud Darwich, which he quotes, facing the denial Of so many Israelis as to the injustice made to the Palestinians.
On the same subject: Patrick AURREAUX: “At the heart of writing, there is:” I don’t know “”
The author’s taste for biology, he who has followed medical studies, also constituted a emancipation key. He reveals that he had made his own, a teenager, this motto: “To the truth of knowledge” (“Go to the truth by science”). Not without smiling of this naivety, he did not abandon this part of the exploration of the world. He notably recounts his discovery of the essay by Jean-Jacques Kupiec, The origin of individualswhich introduces the possibility of chance in genetics, delivering it from a heavy representation of its inheritance.
The husband is undoubtedly the text of Patrick Autreaux most imbued with lyricism: “Oh, the fervor of words that burn and calm!” »» A lyricism yet worked from the inside by its opposite Even: an inclination to the destitution emblamatized by his companion, economical of words, to which he devotes illuminated and grateful pages. “What I’m looking for starts to dance with my love for you. »» The husband is the story of this cheerful quest.
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