The air of emptiness. “One time nothing is nothing; twice nothing is not much, but for three times nothing, you can already buy something, and for cheap.” By dissecting language, by playing with words, Raymond Devos revealed their hidden meaning. Hélène L’Heuillet does the same with the philosophical question of emptiness. Not emptiness in general, that of physicists, but that which is within us. “The Latin adjective “vastus” means “empty, deserted, ravaged”. It has the same root as “vanus”, “vain”namely, in Latin, the verb “vacation”“to be empty.” Already, with the simple etymology, we glimpse the richness of the subject.
The philosopher and psychoanalyst had thrilled us four years ago with her In Praise of Delay (Albin Michel) who posed the question of time and our relationship to it in an offbeat way. Here she addresses an essential notion, much deeper than it seems, especially when we delve a little into the theme. “Instead of fearing the void, we should rather worry about the full, which, in all its forms, appears as a contemporary ideal while it is the supreme source of alienation.”
She emphasizes how today fullness is associated with pleasure and emptiness with pain. We find the latter in the expression “to have nothing more to wear” which requires stocking up on clothes, hiding a lack, consuming more by using another “empty form”money. The fear of emptiness also brings to mind mourning, the vertigo of absence. “By opening a great gap in us, mourning confronts us with ourselves.”
And what about language, including the language we use to talk about the abyss beneath our existence? Often, our sentences are hollow. “To speak is to make holes.” But holes in what? Holes for what? Paraphrasing The Blue Words of Christophe, it would be a question of saying empty words, those which one says with the heavens, words which say nothing of our earthly stay, preferring the mysteries of a beyond of which one knows little more. “If words of love say something by saying nothing, words of communication say nothing by implying that they say something.” We sometimes see this with certain political speeches.
Through skillfully controlled chapters like stages on a steep path, between Kant and Lacan, Hélène L’Heuillet moves with great elegance through a subject that is by definition dizzying. Her book, which is unusual, helps to fill up on emptiness, to question what we are, to let ourselves go to the joys of language, to the vacancy of the imagination because “With the fear of emptiness comes freedom”. We think of the song by Julien Clerc and Étienne Roda-Gil, It’s nothingwhich she quotes. She completes Devos’ juggling. Little nothings form big wholes, just as voids lead us to fill up on ourselves. With beautiful energy, Hélène L’Heuillet gives us the opportunity to reflect on our lives and do a real mental cleansing. Through emptiness.
Helene L’Heuillet
The emptiness within us
Albin Michel
Print run: 4,500 copies.
Price: €21.90; 288 p.
ISBN: 9782226473400
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