In “Cytomegalovirus”, a text published posthumously in 1992, Hervé Guibert recounts his hospitalization in the fall of 1991 from day to day. It was imposed on him by yet another opportunistic infection, typical of the disease, which could well cost him view.
The writer-photographer is not the first to write about his AIDS, but the success of “To the friend who did not save my life” has established him as one of the essential authors on the subject. . Faithful to the last part of his work, he describes here in detail his daily life as a condemned HIV-positive person, a few weeks before a death which was still, at the start of the second decade of the pandemic, inevitable.
another agony
Behind the subject of the one who recounts his death to come frankly, this evil which has gradually taken hold of him for several novels, another agony, more discreet but just as tangible, takes shape in the background, that of the institution that hosts it.
Guibert discovers old bandages under his bed as soon as he arrives. For lack of sufficient staff, the immunocompromised is installed in a room which has not been cleaned or disinfected.
Part of his story tells of the author’s futile quest to obtain a wheeled IV rack without which he is doomed to stay in bed. Despite her requests, the nurses are unable to provide her with this basic accessory. We are in September 1991 and the writer announces something of the world that is coming. When the person in charge of the service herself undertakes to find him one, Guibert must finally be satisfied with a rickety and rusty IV holder.
The controversies around Annie Ernaux’s Nobel reminded us of this. Even in literature, one can look at the finger more than the moon, speak of style more than substance. This background precisely testifies to the world in which we live, questions us and forces us to think. No doubt we will soon read books that will tell the story of spring 2020, with these caregivers deprived of gowns and masks, these missing resuscitation beds, these patients on respiratory assistance transferred hundreds of kilometers from their loved ones, these dead buried at the go quickly. No doubt we will find beautiful turns of phrase, metaphors to describe the courage of our caregivers, enough to discuss endlessly the style, the intrinsic quality of these texts. It will perhaps be exciting, certainly, but above all less distressing than grasping the depths of it.
What books can
The hospital did not wait for the flu, bronchiolitis, Covid, not even AIDS to tremble. It is repeated on television, on the radio, in the newspapers and even in books, these books of which it is said that some can contribute to changing the world. But that didn’t seem to be enough. This is all the more astonishing in a country that devotes so much space to literature, in which people love to talk about what books say.
We still need to hear them.
The 2022 Wepler-La Poste Foundation Prize for Anthony Passeron
Latest book: Sleeping ChildrenGlobe, 288 pages, 20 euros.The Taste of Others Festival will be held in Le Havre from January 19 to 22. We can meet Brigitte Giraud (Goncourt prize), Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam (Médicis prize), Sabyl Ghoussoub (Goncourt prize for high school students), Giuliano da Empoli (Grand Prix of the Novel of the French Academy), Laurent Gaudé, Lionel Shriver, Mariana Enriquez, Diaty Diallo, Anthony Passeron, Hadrien Bels and many more… legoutdesautre.lehavre.frAnthony Passeron will notably participate in a meeting entitled “The things of life”, with Brigitte Giraud, on Saturday January 21 at 6 p.m. at the La Galerne bookstore.
