“Words are much more dangerous than weapons”

Especially since the publisher Léo Scheer, the other man in her life, was taken by a sudden illness last May and is no longer there to accompany her. “This is the first book that he will not have seen finished. Even if we had different lives at one point, that’s also why I’m stopping, I loved him too much,” she confides.

Paris Match: Why are you certain that “Don’t you see that I’m burning” will be your last book?

Nathalie Rheims. While talking with Pierre Assouline, the man who discovered me, he said to me: “Are you aware that you are revealing here the secret of everything you have written, and which revolves around this? And that theoretically, when you give away your secret, it means you have finished?” Indeed, I decided to really stop. Not like Sheila! [Elle rit.] Today, with this 24th book in twenty-five years, what pushes me to stop is to talk about a founding secret that built me, but that could have destroyed me. Without censoring myself.

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It’s about Serge, a famous psychoanalyst, whom you used to visit every Thursday since you were a child. Why didn’t you talk about him earlier?

This story, I have always carried it inside me. I did not give Serge’s last name, but those who are a little curious will guess it. I knew that this book was essential. I made a novelistic attempt that I called “The path of spells” [2008] a few years ago, but I had to wait until I was ready, armed enough, until I had practiced my violin which is writing enough, because I knew it would be difficult. And a farewell to many things.

At what point did you have doubts about the real bonds that united you with Serge, beyond the psychoanalysis sessions?

At first, I didn’t ask myself any questions at all, Thursday was the day we didn’t go to school at the time. In the room there was a big flipchart, felt-tip pens in the little steel groove, and he asked me to draw whatever I wanted. Then we started to verbalize: who is it? My father? My mother? Little by little, the meetings continued, at 9 years old, at 10 years old… And then a little before adolescence, I asked my mother: “But really, why do I see this man I love so much every Thursday?” And she answered me: “Because he saw you being born…”

So, it’s on my mind, and after ten years of psychoanalysis, one day I end up asking Serge this question that he didn’t see coming: “But who’s paying you? Since it’s not me!” He takes a drag on his pipe and answers: “Nobody. The session is over.” In my child’s mind, if nobody pays, while I’m in therapy, it’s because I’m worthless!

But you ended up asking your father, Maurice, your mother, Lili, and Serge who you are the daughter of…

And the three of them gave me a ridiculous answer, each in their own field, by the way. Serge had nevertheless had this universal and so true reply: “We are the daughter of the one who raises us.” At the same time, I told myself that I was incredibly lucky to have found the balance between two exceptional men: Maurice gave me beauty, art, Serge listening. One gave me the eye, the other the sound.

My mother told me: “There is only one way to find out who your father really is, you take a test…” I understood then that if I had the answer to the question, I would lose everything. And that there was only one way to survive this incredible story, and that was to never know. My sister, Bettina, actually told me this extraordinary thing after reading my book: “In the end, it doesn’t matter, you took the best of both of them.”

It goes against the current trend of wanting to absolutely say everything and know everything, doesn’t it?

Yes, it’s true, and I have no moral judgment on the times we live in. On the other hand, we are not obliged to adhere to them. Today we are spectators of terrible things but also of aberrant excesses, which make me think of how many books, films, plays could no longer take place…

Men helped me build myself, they were the greatest heroes of my life, they gave me everything.

Nathalie Rheims

Because we are in the middle of the big MeToo unpacking?

And in great censorship! We can no longer say what is: I love men, passionately, men have helped me to build myself, they have been the greatest heroes of my life, they have given me everything. I must be part of the tiny minority of women who have not been abused. When I wrote “Place Colette”, about ten years ago, I had great reviews, I did all the shows, while I told the story of a very young girl who falls in love with a member of the Comédie-Française, one summer, in Corsica. An initiatory novel like Colette could have done with the Claudines. Today, I could no longer publish this book. For two or three years, people have been asking me: “But don’t you realize that you have been abused!” No! I didn’t experience it like that.

You even say that it was you who harassed him then…

Yes, I harassed him all the way to his dressing room on my 14th birthday because all I wanted was to be kissed by this man. Because that was my way of existing. I was born into a family with huge, overwhelming personalities. All of them! I challenged myself to be looked at for the first time as something other than a frail little girl who is never told anything. Yes, it’s true, he should have told me: “Go home”, but he didn’t. Can we talk about that today? I don’t know.

Yet you grew up as a girl in a patriarchal and rather misogynistic world, right?

Yes, it is analyzed like that, but did it make me a woman who did not take her destiny in hand? No. A weak woman? No. I came across some dirty jerks who behaved badly, but I told them so, I even slapped a director in an elevator one day who had thrown himself on my breasts.

Forty years later, I’m not going to say who it is, finally! I’ve gotten over it! It doesn’t matter: I told him it was a pig, to take his hands off me, and I think I even spat in his face.

Don’t have an account to settle?

Even though I have gone very far, like in “Let the ashes fly away” [2012]about my mother and her departure when I was pregnant, a terrible, extremely violent moment, it is to tell what I experienced. I do not write to destroy, even if I think that today literature, words are much more dangerous than weapons.

Writers have always had a bad reputation in this regard, haven’t they? They plunder the lives of others, of their loved ones…

There are writers – I won’t name names – who put people to death! The power of the French language can kill someone, I’m convinced of that. As soon as I get close to that area, I brake hard because it’s not my nature. Writing is truly a weapon of mass destruction and you have to know how to handle weapons. When you’re a sniper, you know how to control your rifle. I think you can say anything without dragging the other person down with you.

As long as we have nuance?

It’s all in the nuance! We can say terrible things in nuance, settle scores, but in nuance, because we are not angels. We are not infallible, eh?

For you, everyone has their own reasons?

In any case, if you take up a subject, it is because you have reasons. And I hate what is false, what I call “ready-made novels”. “Hey, we have an idea: we’re going to write about this or that machine…” I don’t like concept books.

You want to talk about thesis novels?

No, but novels about characters: the 60,000th book about Bardot or Monroe… We take totems and try to re-appropriate them. But once we’ve done “Blonde” [de Joyce Carol Oates]what can we do after that? We have to stop. And then the writer is his own material. It is we who must put ourselves in danger! Or else we do like these girls who are into feel good – it is the joy of living, the birds sing, I find it wonderful! –, but I do feel bad.

A sentence like “a book from which one does not emerge unscathed”, I imagine that it still makes you smile?

Oh my God ! [Elle rit.] This sentence has become a kind of generic! You have to leave things in their place. Reading is made to dream, think, learn, have fun, cry. Giving emotions is holding up a mirror to the person reading you: “You, what was your relationship with your mother? With motherhood? Fatherhood?” We just have the power to give people who don’t write the opportunity to reflect themselves in things that touch them. It’s a journey.

So you stop today… ChatGPT could take over?

We’re getting there too, it’s a waking nightmare. I’m told that ChatGPT will succeed in “reproducing souls”! But in what way? I’m not saying that in terms of the plot, it won’t be great, but the human dough, the experience, the lived experience?

Do you think about the posterity of your work?

Oh there… I won’t name anyone, but there are people who have entered the Pléiade and who I’m not sure will be remembered in a century. I’m just saying that you have to keep your feet on the ground before being put in the box, and besides, it’s not us who decide. Today, everyone is disposable: singers have a hit and disappear, authors have a success without a future, there are also actors that we don’t see anymore… And then there are those who build “careers”, but it’s getting complicated. I think there will be a little work of repositioning, of modesty, a return to reality. Our period is not very happy, so the problems of Nathalie Rheims who stops writing, it’s not a big deal!

I don’t write to destroy, even if I think that today

“Can’t you see that I’m burning”, by Nathalie Rheims, published by Léo Scheer, 176 pages, 19 euros.