Si Béatrice Commengé never seems to arrive at her destination, in Never arriveit gives the impression of traveling, really. Once we closed the book and read it, we almost had the impression, paradoxically, of having gone with her to Contantza, in Romania, on the shores of the Black Sea.
Initially, she came across an image by chance, that of a tiny island, Ovidiu islandlocated in the middle of Lake Siutghiol which forms a tongue of sandy land opposite the town of Contantza or Tomis, the name given to designate the place where Ovid died at the very beginning of our era, in 17 AD. AD, after its relegation decreed by Augustus in the year 8 and which determined its destiny. From there, Béatrice Commengé began to dream while traveling the 2000 km which separated her from the 20 centuries of Ovid’s death or rather of his birth, on March 20, in the year 43 BC, since she preferred this date, the spring day that she calls the “superfluous day”, to arrive in Constantza, 2066 years later, in 2023, celebrating alone the birthday of the “cantor of love”. A choice which is not without repercussions. “Everything that had made him so sad made me happy,” she wrote; everything that had made Ovid so sad, as we can rightly read in The Sad Onesor The Ponticsthe two books of “exile”, and not in The Metamorphoses or The Art of Loving (we refer to the very beautiful translations by Danièle Robert published by Actes Sud).
Thus, when reading Béatrice Commengé, sadness transforms into joy, as the attraction of going to Constantza seems irrepressible despite the fact that she had to postpone her trip due to the health crisis which began in 2020 and then the invasion from Ukraine in February 2022. It would be a journey in reverse. Béatrice Commengé, going back in time, becomes younger. She remembers the teenager she was when she went to Rome with a friend, the first romantic emotions she experienced, etc. “Never arrive” reflects a double experience: that of noticing on the Constantza pier that the tourist season in spring 2023 had not started and that no shuttle made it possible to reach theovid island, the dreamed island, therefore left free to the space of reverie; that of never ending, of believing that Ovid is not dead, that we continue to read the author of Metamorphoses or from The Art of Loving. Born in the middle of the civil war (the same year as the assassination of Cicero and a year after that of Julius Caesar), it was not until the year -27 that Octavian reestablished order by taking the name of Augustus and establishing the Pax Romana. Then, after the death of Virgil in -19 or in -8 of Horace, this new, imperial “order” will gradually be transformed. Augustus grants himself all powers (political and religious), proclaimed himself the father of the country by condemning a certain “art of loving” (licentious?). Perhaps one of the causes of Ovid’s relegation in 8 AD. AD
Beyond the nightmares of history (Romania is not exempt from them, far from it) or the absurdities of the present time (including the consumerist ugliness which is spread almost everywhere), the names to which Béatrice Commengé travels are always magnificent (Nietzche, Joyce, Heidegger…). If her dream clashes with reality, she slips between two uncertainties with a subtle art of narrative topography to recompose “her” landscape, “her” island, following in her little car which swallows centuries and kilometers, a road which never ends. he never happens anywhere, from Rome to Constantza via Brindisi, Trieste and Messkirch or the Paris of Modiano. To paraphrase Victor Segalen, whom she quotes, her imagination disappoints her as much as it strengthens when confronted with reality.
Béatrice Commengé, Never arriveValues, 2024, 156 p., €18
Traveling to Magnificent NamesVerdier poche, 2024, 91 p., 9 €
