Nathalie Rheims and her latest book, “Don’t you see that I’m burning”: “I’m stopping because, in the world as it is, I no longer feel very comfortable”

With her twenty-fourth work, she closes this literary cycle. “When I gave it to my editor, Léo Scheer, I told him it would be the last one, she remembers. And he died shortly after. Did I have a presentiment? I started writing at 39 when I never had the idea. I was a great reader, but all these prestigious writers who surrounded my father seemed to me to belong to an unattainable world. And my literary career started very quickly since, for my first book, I was invited by Bernard Pivot to Apostrophes. I then had a journey that I wish for all writers.”

“The truth is braver than lies”

This end of career announcement is well thought out.

“I stop because, in the world as it is, I no longer feel very comfortable. Literature is supposed to have complete freedom and put itself in danger, without being immediately murdered on social media. In writing, we are assigned the truth, I don't see the point in lying. I don't like pretense, the truth is braver than lies. But if I put novel on the cover, it's because the memories that come back are those that come back to you at your age. There is a romantic element.”

In Can't you see that I'm burning, exclamation taken from a dream cited by Freud, she returns to the death of her brother at 33, a “cataclysm” for her, and, when she was 16-17 years old, upon the sudden and extremely violent departure of her mother, already separated from her husband. But it is first and foremost around the father figure that this ” revolvestrue novel“. To that of Maurice Rheims, auctioneer and French academician who died in 2003, is added that of a famous psychoanalyst identified only by his first name, Serge. This analyst, with whom she has been in therapy (free) since her earliest days young age and to whom she is deeply attached, was in fact her mother's lover at the time of her conception. Moreover, as if this doubt inhabited her unconsciously, the man whose name she bears, she has. always called Maurice, never dad, unlike her brothers and sister, while she called her mother mom.

“If Maurice taught me to be curious and to look at the beauty that surrounds us, it is surely the fact of having been listened to for so long and in such a profound way that gave me the keys to writeshe believes. Following psychoanalysis at such a young age makes you more lucid about yourself and more mature. At 10 years old, I was already an adult, I knew what I wanted.”

Nathalie Rheims, “Don’t you see that I’m burning”, Léo Scheer, 146 p.