Ed. Actes Sud, 250 p., 19,50 EUR.
Au chevet de sa belle-fille qui se meurt d'un cancer dans un hôpital de la banlieue parisienne, Henry Bauchau exhume soudain de son passé deux défunts oubliés, qu'il se met à veiller en
pensée avec une qualité d'écoute hors du commun. Deux êtres extrêmes, l'un par sa pureté omnisciente, l'autre par son diabolisme destructeur, unis par une même initiale dangereusement
serpentine : Stéphane, un ami féru d'escalade tué pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, et le SS Shadow, son tortionnaire au « visage dans lequel on peut tomber ».
Que Henry Bauchau, psychanalyste de 95 ans, pratique la libre association avec une telle maîtrise, quoi de plus naturel ? Que Henry Bauchau, romancier, poète, homme de théâtre,
spécialiste des mythes comme de l'introspection, accole les mots les plus simples aux sensations les plus enfouies, quoi de plus éblouissant ? Toujours humble et vacillant, jusque dans
son écriture qui semble en permanence s'excuser de lever le voile sur l'essentiel, cet écrivain signe un livre de chevet, dans tous les sens du terme. Un ouvrage oxygénant et obsédant,
dont on sent qu'il ne vous quittera plus, et délivrera ses messages au compte-gouttes, au fil des épreuves de la vie. Un traité de la mort, au plus près des trépassés qui nous ont
devancés depuis la nuit des temps, formant une farandole dont Henry Bauchau saisit la dernière main tendue pour entrer en danse. Dans un souffle fragile et léger, imperceptiblement
insistant comme celui de la dernière heure, il chuchote que nous sommes tous liés les uns aux autres, avançant dans un monde en accordéon, portés par la mémoire, ralentis par l'amnésie,
asphyxiés par la peur, dopés par l'amour. Comme les voitures sur « le boulevard périphérique » que Henry Bauchau emprunte quotidiennement pour aller vers l'hôpital, tel le passeur sur le
Styx. L'agonie de sa belle-fille, sur le visage de laquelle « la pensée ne pense déjà plus mais elle éclaire encore », lui ouvre des portes intérieures qu'il n'aurait jamais cru pouvoir
déverrouiller.
Tout mourant lègue donc quelque chose sur la mort à qui sait l'entendre. Comment capter ces signes ? En cessant de « vouloir », en lâchant prise. Henry Bauchau incite à guetter autour de
soi les messagers anonymes, à la fois gouffres et tremplins, qui vous révèlent à vous-mêmes. Dès qu'il croit se cogner à ses propres limites (« chaque fois que je pense, ou que j'essaie
de suivre mes états d'inconscience, je retrouve mon insuffisance »), il les repousse secrètement. Il est de ceux qui savent, comme son ami Stéphane, qu'« il ne faut que regarder en soi
toujours plus fort, toujours plus profondément », jusqu'à ce que les « yeux intérieurs ne soient plus deux, mais toute une constellation, un dôme de regards fixés sur l'obscurité ».
Henry Bauchau fait partie de ces êtres d'exception qui abolissent les murs entre le quotidien le plus routinier et la quête intellectuelle la plus foisonnante, qui luttent contre
l'intermittence de la réflexion et mènent une existence aux aguets. Sur le qui-vive, sur le qui-meure, avec la même foi en l'humanité.
French voters have expressed their dissatisfaction with President Nicolas Sarkozy in local elections. Sarkozy's UMP party has lost control of more than 20 towns and cities, an indication of just how unhappy the French people are with his presidency so far.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is going to have to woo the French all over again after the local elections defeat.
The opposition Socialists wrested control of over 20 cities and towns from the right, including Strasbourg, Toulouse and the UMP strongholds of Amiens, Caen and Reims. They had already secured
Paris and Lyon in last week's first round
The local elections were the first major electoral test of Sarkozy's presidency since coming to office in May 2007 and showed just how much the president has dropped in popularity. While he has
fulfilled some of his pledges to bring in reforms in the public sector and labor market, the promised shake-up of the economy has not happened and he has backed off from or toned down the
sweeping reforms he had promised. Meanwhile ordinary French people are increasingly concerned about their dwindling purchasing power and annoyed by the president's flamboyant lifestyle and
whirlwind romance with his new wife, the former model Carla Bruni
On Sunday night, as the bad results came in, Sarkozy was conspicuous by his absence. It was left to his Prime Minister Francois Fillon to promise to step up efforts to create jobs and increase wages. "You can't change a great country like ours in a few months," he said in a televised address. "Tenacity is needed to reform."
The good showing has given a fresh boost to the Socialists, who had been reeling since the defeat of their candidate, Segolene Royal, in last May's presidential election.
However, Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant, told the La Croix daily that there was "no question of touching the general architecture of the government or the main positions before the beginning of next year."
Nevertheless, the president is expected to change his style of leadership, shedding the celebrity trappings that have earned him the nickname of the "bling-bling president." In the coming days, he intends to make efforts to improve his image as head of state, commemorating both the World War II resistance and the death of France's last World War I soldier.
smd/ap/reuters/afp
JOELLE MESKENS
lundi 17 mars 2008, 07:07
C’est entendu. Les élections qui viennent d’avoir lieu en France étaient d’abord des consultations locales. Les mêmes hommes qui avaient connu leur heure de gloire ou qui avaient été laminés il y a moins d’un an lors d’élections générales subissent aujourd’hui un sort contraire. François Bayrou, après avoir recueilli plus de 18 % à la présidentielle, a été battu à Pau par une figure socialiste béarnaise inconnue du microcosme parisien. Et si Alain Juppé a été triomphalement élu à Bordeaux dès la semaine dernière après avoir été balayé lors des législatives, c’est que les électeurs ont apprécié son bilan de maire plutôt que l’idée de le revoir au premier plan au niveau national.
Pour autant, il faudrait être aveugle et sourd pour ne pas avoir compris le cinglant message adressé aux gouvernants. Celui d’une terrible désillusion.
Si la gauche reconquiert de nombreux bastions urbains, ce n’est pas seulement par l’effet mécanique du retour de balancier. Pas seulement parce que les Français ont coutume, lors d’élections intermédiaires, de rechercher une sorte de rééquilibrage des pouvoirs. Que des grandes villes symboliques comme Toulouse et Strasbourg basculent à gauche prouve qu’un doute est né dans cette France de droite qui, l’an dernier, croyait avoir vu en Nicolas Sarkozy son sauveur. Car ce n’est évidemment pas le Parti socialiste, qui ne s’est jamais remis de sa troisième défaite présidentielle consécutive et qui reste englué dans les querelles de personnes et les batailles de stratégie, qui a gagné ces élections. C’est une droite brouillée avec une partie de son électorat qui les a perdues.
Bien sûr, Nicolas Sarkozy conserve sa légitimité à l’Élysée : son mandat n’expire que dans quatre ans. Mais le président serait bien avisé de tenir compte de l’avertissement. Ses réformes ne sont peut-être pas sanctionnées, mais son style, lui, ne passe décidément pas. Son goût du luxe ostentatoire dans une France qui souffre blesse ceux-là mêmes qu’il avait séduits : les milieux populaires.
L’Élysée laisse entendre que le chef de l’État aurait « changé ». On aimerait le croire : dans trois mois, il ne sera plus seulement aux commandes de l’Hexagone, mais de toute l’Europe.
Vendredi, rendez-vous
des observateurs du ciel sur les blogs. Sur les toits de Dienville, quelques girouettes et un épi de faîtage en étoile à six branches.
First off, technically most of the sites here are not memes. The fact that most of these sites create new questions all the time removes the whole evolving viral concept of a meme. But most people call them that and I liked the word 'meme' so I used meme.
In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).
By some other definitions memes are viral and propagate around sometimes mutating as they propagate. Someone proposed something along the lines of some blog posts are viral, they write about something they see on one blog and the next person does the same sometimes their interpretation varies slightly changing the story (I cannot find this original reference).
Eventually some people decided they were going to creating weekly questionnaires (memes) and post them every week. Some are monthly, a few are daily and some are always there. Some suggest that you get five other people to do the same meme and they have to get five people (and so on), which sometimes increases their propagation. This probably stunts their mutated growth, having a permanent storage place where people go to find them but many people copy them from the site where they see it and they'll still change a bit.
Personally I liked these sites; sometimes they give me things to write about that I would have never started the topic on my own. So I started collecting them here at The Daily Meme http://thedailymeme.com/.
The term and concept of meme is from the 1976 book by Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Though Dawkins defined the meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a
unit of imitation," memeticists vary in their definitions of meme. The lack of a consistent, rigorous definition of what precisely a meme is remains one of the principal criticisms leveled
at memetics, the study of memes. (from the Wikipedia)
J'ai pensé proposer ce "Meme" aux abonnés de ce blog ( il y en aurait 8) plus quelques personnes que je connais.
A vous de décider de faire ou de ne pas faire. Dans tous les cas cela fait partie de l'expérience.
8 faits inconnus me concernant :
. J'ai vécu 2 années dans le Sud de la Tunisie où j'étais enseignant.
. J'ai rencontré ma femme à Stockholm dans un lieu appelé "Teacher's club".
. Ma femme a été professeur de Musique et Directrice d'une école W. Mozart
. Nous avons 2 enfants : un garçon et une fille.
. 4 petits-enfants : 2 citoyens français et 2 possédant la double nationalité suédoise et française.
. I'm fond of rollerblading
. I'm a fan of Leonard Cohen and Patrice Modiano
. My dog is a poodle, it's name is Jules
. My name is not Deslilas but "Chérouvrier", the first time I wrote on a forum I used this alias because I was a "worker" (Human ressources manager" ) in the Paris public transport organisation
(RATP) and I like a lot Serge Gainsbourg and especially his song "Le poinçonneur des Lilas", the "poinçonneur" used to punch the Metro ticket before 1971.
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President Bling Bling: Nicolas Sarkozy has been ridiculed in France
You can get away with a lot as President of the French Republic. You can keep a secret mistress at public expense; you can kidnap and beat up journalists who threaten to expose the existence of your illegitimate daughter; you can salt away a fortune in illegal Swiss bank accounts. You can do all this and you will be buried, like Francois Mitterrand, with full national honours.
But one thing is absolutely out of the question. You cannot make the entire nation feel foolish. And yet that is how millions of French voters feel after weeks of watching their President cavorting around the world with his new bride, the former model Carla Bruni, while simultaneously insulting a host of political allies and the public alike.
Already his behaviour has become so unpredictable that one Spanish newspaper has described the French President as "sick", while the media coverage at home has accused Sarkozy of "turning the country into a magnificent toy for a child" or of "staging Desperate Housewives at the Elysee Palace".
For a man who promised to drag France into a new era of mature prosperity, it is an extraordinary decline.
Sarkozy was elected on a manifesto that was bound to be controversial since he promised "la rupture", a programme of economic and social reform that would mark a clean break with state intervention and over-centralised government.
But the President's recent unpopularity has little to do with his politics.
His ratings have fallen 27 points in eight months, whereas prime minister Francois Fillon, who is in charge of day-to-day government, has lost only five points over the same period. Instead, the popularity plunge has to do with Sarkozy's personal behaviour.
Last week, while officially opening the annual Nation Farmers' Show, Sarkozy was insulted by a man in the crowd who rejected his handshake and shouted: 'Don't touch me, you will make me dirty.' Instead of ignoring him and moving on, the President replied: 'Drop dead, you little cretin.'
This was merely the latest in a long line of gaffes which give the impression that the President of France is simply not up to the job.
The traditional role of the President of the Republic is to be a calm figure above the political battle, someone who can unite the nation, act as a final arbiter and take the long view, a role invented and brilliantly executed by General de Gaulle.
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Whirlwind romance: The president has married Italian supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni
The President is expected to act as a sort of elected constitutional monarch whose responsibility is in defence and foreign policy and who takes a solemn vow to protect France and to be its dignified representative.
But since coming to power Sarkozy has violated almost all of these traditions. Instead of remaining above the battle and resigning as leader of his own political party, the UMP, he remains the party's chief and even holds a weekly meeting of its steering committee at the Elysee Palace.
And he has personally intervened in the forthcoming local elections in his old constituency of Neuilly, a Paris suburb, in favour of his 22-year-old son.
Furthermore, instead of letting his government get on with the job, he interferes, frequently overruling ministers and making policy on the hoof.
Criticised for his policy statements about the importance of Christian traditions, Sarkozy attempted to please the Jewish community and announced that every ten-year-old child in France would have to "adopt" the identity of one of the 11,400 Jewish children who died in Nazi camps after being deported by France's Vichy government during the war.
Much to his surprise, this idea caused outrage even within the Jewish community. Simone Veil, a political veteran and sage, who was herself a childhood victim of deportation, said it 'made her blood run cold'. And the President's idea was dropped.
In another ill-judged attempt at populism, on the eve of local elections that are likely to prove disastrous for the Right, Sarkozy announced that criminals serving long sentences for murder and rape would in future be held indefinitely in mental asylums when their sentences ended, until they were certified as safe.
When France's supreme court, the Constitutional Council, ruled that this measure was unconstitutional, Sarkozy reacted by saying he would find a way round the ruling, so defying the very institution whose independence he is supposed to guarantee.
But the most serious damage Sarkozy has inflicted on himself lies much closer to home. Quite simply, his private life has intruded on his public role to the extent that it resembles the plot of a soap opera.
The saga began before last year's presidential elections, when Sarkozy was humiliated after his glamorous wife Cecilia left him and set up with an American businessman. He managed to patch up the marriage before the poll, and then tried to keep his wife happy by giving her a Hillary Clintonstyle role in government.
But Cecilia's brief period as France's 'First Lady' was marked by a series of disasters. She wrecked her husband's inauguration ceremony by ignoring most of the guests, walked out of two international conferences and then snubbed President Bush during an official visit to Washington.
Worse was to come. Last summer, in attempt to bolster her public role, she flew to Libya where she was said to have personally persuaded Colonel Gaddafi to release an East European medical team who had been held hostage for several years.
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Coffee break: The couple have been pictured in lots of loving clinches
In fact, it soon transpired that the French government had secretly ransomed the hostages, and Cecilia played no part in the negotiations.
Shortly afterwards, the Sarkozys were divorced, with the President's pride suffering a further blow when - two weeks after Cecilia's departure - he was obliged to welcome Colonel Gaddafi on a state visit.
His chosen method of consolation - an affair with a younger woman - was perfectly acceptable to French voters, other than the fact that it was conducted with all the dignity and decorum of a love-struck teenager. In France there is a traditional respect for the privacy of politicians. But instead of being discreet about his love for Carla Bruni, Sarkozy decided to advertise it to the world.
The pair were seen canoodling on official visits the Vatican and Egypt.
In response, the French Press took Sarkozy's violation of his own privacy as an invitation for open day on the presidency. He was christened 'President Bling Bling', in reference to his love of expensive trinkets.
A savage campaign of ridicule culminated on February 7, when a magazine published a text message allegedly sent by Sarkozy to ex-wife Cecilia, just one week before he married Carla Bruni: the text supposedly read: "Return home and I will cancel everything."
But perhaps the most serious evidence that Sarkozy has "lost it", is in his handling of Franco-German relations. For the past 50 years, the combined weight of France and Germany has enabled the two countries to run the European union almost as a private club, but the arrangement has now broken down for two reasons.
The first is that Sarkozy has decided to replace the Franco-German axis with a new closer relationship between France, Washington and London. The second reason is German Chancellor Angela Merkel's intense dislike of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Only yesterday it was announced that Sarkozy had postponed a meeting with Merkel for three months. The immediate disagreement is over the French President's determination to form a "Club Med", a formal union of all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Germany regards this as a threat to European unity and a potential complication in its delicate relationship with Turkey.
The final straw came when Merkel refused to sign a joint newspaper article welcoming the "Club Med". Sarkozy then cancelled his visit.
This characteristically impulsive behaviour confirmed Merkel's low opinion of the President, whom she considers to be disrespectful, overfamiliar, hyperactive and boastful.
When she heard about his passion for Carla Bruni she even nicknamed him "President Duracell", after the long-life battery.
Every day, it seems, there is some fresh embarrassment, or some new Presidential gaffe that erodes his public standing yet further. Yesterday it was even rumoured in Paris that his three-week-old marriage to Carla Bruni was actually illegal because the ceremony took place in a private room in the Elysee Palace and not, as the law requires, in a public place.
The result of this ignominy? The man who promised to be France's Mrs Thatcher has instead turned into its Alan Clark - an arrogant playboy who appears to believe the normal rules of office do not apply to him.
Far from counting it as in insult, the Queen may consider herself fortunate that her forthcoming guest has opted to cut his visit short.
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Is he related to Tony?
- Ed, Bromley
Even the French deserve better than Mister Tea-Cosy.
- J R J, Glen Vine
He sounds like the kind of guy that will get on very well with our present government.
- Stewart Fisher, London England
Présentation de l’éditeur :
« J’ai fait un rêve », slogan repris à Martin Luther King, fut l’un des moteurs de la campagne présidentielle de Nicolas
Sarkozy. Tout a été dit sur cette victoire sauf peut-être l’essentiel : et si elle correspondait au triomphe d’une nouvelle forme d’imaginaire politique ?
Mona Chollet décortique les principaux éléments de l’univers sarkozyste : la « machine de guerre fictionnelle » que représente la success story, le mythe du self-made man, l’identification illusoire aux riches et aux puissants, le mépris des « perdants », l’individualisme borné, le triomphe de l’anecdote et du people...
Aux antipodes de la fascination béate et complaisante d’une Yasmina Reza, elle critique les impostures idéologiques du nouveau pouvoir : un démontage sans concession des valeurs de la droite bling bling, dans un style incisif, souvent drôle, toujours fin, mêlant l’enquête journalistique, l’écriture littéraire et la critique sociale.
Lucide, elle pointe également la faiblesse alarmante de l’imaginaire de gauche, radicalement incapable de relever le défi. Contre le cynisme et les renoncements, il est urgent de réinventer un nouvel imaginaire émancipateur, en commençant par se réapproprier l’aspiration légitime à l’épanouissement personnel, aujourd’hui fourvoyée dans les mirages de la « société-casino ».
Mona Chollet, 34 ans, journaliste au Monde diplomatique, coanimatrice du site Peripheries.net, est l’auteur de La tyrannie de la réalité (Calmann-Lévy, 2004 / Folio - Gallimard, 2006).
Conformément à la politique éditoriale de « Zones »,
le texte intégral du livre est en libre accès sur le site de l’éditeur.
Pour plus d’information sur le sens de cette démarche, lire le texte de Michel Valensi, directeur des éditions de l’Eclat, qui en a été l’initiateur en France : « Petit traité plié en dix sur le Lyber ».
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Comments (11)
Le rebond du modèle scandinave