Nine years ! A beautiful gestation to give birth to a great book. One of these frescoes dealing with contemporary problems under cover of a fable. From the great Philippe Claudel, therefore, who recalls Gray Souls (Renaudot Prize 2003) or even The Brodeck Report, (Goncourt prize for high school students 2007). However, the Lorrain has not been idle during these nine years, publishing a few works including The Dog Archipelago, german fantasy, Bordersand making a feature film, A childhood. But for this one, he confides to us, he needed time: “It’s a book that required a slow pace, which allowed to integrate in an allegorical and parabolic way everything that telescopes us, whether it is the rewriting of a historical narrative by some leaders, from Trump to Putin, tensions between religious communities, the place of the foreigner, the Weinstein scandal, neo-feminism…”
Initially, a scene ran through the mind of the 60-year-old director, the murder of a priest, and a remark, the sudden confrontation of two religious communities – “I was inspired by the wars in the former Yugoslavia of 1991-1993 where neighbors and friends killed each other overnight; the fire is very easy to set when you are looking for a scapegoat”. history to show that the twilight of empires, Austro-Hungarian, Roman, Tsarist Russia, is always tinged with the same colors.When history stutters…
We are in a small town nestled near the border – this border so dear to the native of Dombasle-sur-Meurthe – a remote region of the Empire, a land of cold and snow. It is Dourio, the Policeman, and Baraj, his Deputy, who are the first on the scene of the crime of the priest. Soon will come into play the Mayor, the Notary, the Reporter of the Imperial Administration, the Shopkeeper (who strangely resembles Zemmour, or “someone who manages to give everyone what he does not need”) ,… so many capital letters to signify that the characters here embody archetypes. Common points of all these notables, “sumptuous cretins”? Cowardice, laziness, deceit and drunkenness.
Even the Policeman, who comes from elsewhere, sees himself decked out with an invading vice, sex… Blinded by his senses and his obsessions, he will go so far as to attack a 13-year-old girl. The only survivor of this game of massacre (with the exception of the women, who will eventually regain control of their destiny), the Deputy, giant with a big head and clumsy shyness, a great figure of good, martyred during childhood… Astonishing confidence from the Academician Goncourt: “In fact, he is a very autobiographical character. Like him, I had to undergo childhood tortures and was taken for a long time for an idiot, I am also this person who adores his dogs and nature, and whose happiness ultimately depends on very few things.
Enough to feed, one imagines, some writings to come. But for now, in Claudel’s crumbling empire, where the old Catholic religion is dying, the assassination of the priest comes at the right time. The dignitaries seize it, to accuse the Muslim community – about fifty souls well integrated, led, once is not custom in a fiction, by an Imam of a benevolent humanity. Soon, outrages and insults burst out at the Muslims. Beyond the suspense and the horror, remain anthology scenes, such as the bear hunt, worthy of the paintings of Bruegel or Bosch and Germanic tales and legends – even series like Game Of Thrones. All carried by a language that is alternately poetic, harsh, violent, earthy and lyrical.
This language, Claudel puts it at the service of truth. Not that, “efficient” and “alternative”, of the powerful, all in their concern for immediacy and profitability, or of the “badgers” of the Internet – “We are in an era where the real no longer really exists , where a guy on Facebook or on TikTok will contradict a mathematician”, protests the author -, but that of artists, whose productions are the only ones, he says, to leave a lasting mark on a civilization. Dusk could well be one of these.
Dusk, by Philippe Claudel. Stock, 512 pages, €23.
