A feature by Éric Chevillard
The coronavirus has embedded itself like one of those secondary characters that the novelist no longer knows what to do with, even though he had assigned him only a lowly or insignificant purpose. How to get rid of him? This miserable wretch has settled down right in the heart of the action. Now he’s calling the shots, dictating the destiny of all the protagonists: I won’t just have to live with him, I’ll have to treat him like the main character, the hero! Nothing will be left for anyone else. At the end of the day, the story will bear his name as its title.
A feature by Éric Chevillard
I thought my little joke about the Zorro masks, which opened this column three weeks ago, was original. No sooner was it published, however, than I began to receive numerous photocollages, drawings, and sketches showing all too clearly that the same idea had germinated simultaneously in multiple brains—as was the case with the invention of photography, and of the phonograph, and even of photosynthesis, which was apparently conceived at the very same moment by a tree fern in La Réunion and a poplar in Maine-et-Loire that had never met one another.
A feature by Éric Chevillard
My older daughter doesn’t like Jerusalem artichokes, her younger sister doesn’t like rutabagas, and just you try preparing a meal in such conditions! All in due measure, of course—except that we’ve lost all sense of measure: our compasses spin endlessly in a vacuum, our tape measures are the streamers of an undertaker delighted by so many mensurations. All out of due measure, then, our current situation calls to mind the great historical restrictions, the siege of Paris, periods of war and occupation.
A feature by Éric Chevillard
We’re still allowed to go out, briefly, for the necessary daily walking of our pets. Let us note that the dog calls “walking” what the human calls “defecating,” and that he requires the street, even the whole city, to deposit his waste—while for us, on the contrary, this rite, this duty, is normally our only daily experience of confinement, in the little room at the end of the hall. In short, this pressing necessity is an occasion for the dog to get out of the house for a spell, and a good reason for his master, on the contrary, to come home running. In both cases, you might say, we get to stretch our legs.
A feature by Éric Chevillard
Confinement’s strict discipline shows us who we really are. Here we are at last, beheld by our own four eyes. That’s right, four eyes, because at least two beings at once are incarnate in each of us. The first one is all nerves, pacing back and forth, biting his fingernails to the quick and then the bone, impatient and furious, while the other one philosophically lets his wise-old-sage beard grow (the metaphor works for comely young ladies too, age and gender meaning nothing anymore) and tries to find something positive in this radical experience.
A feature by Éric Chevillard
I call her Lachesis. It’s a pretty name, I feel, for a spider. For a few days now, in an effort to break up my isolation and not limit my affective interactions to the three members of my family secluded with me, I’ve been working on taming her. Her silk thread is the last link connecting me to the world.
A feature by Éric Chevillard
Meanwhile, outside, nature takes its course. Today all our landscapes resemble a Chernobylian Eden. Animal species threatened by poaching, deforestation, and man’s innumerable destructive activities are reassembling their packs, their flocks, their herds, their hordes. A drone reportedly captured an image of a dodo frolicking in the Loir-et-Cher region. Or was it a baby phoenix?
A feature by Éric Chevillard
Now, the anxiety that comes with menace and peril doesn’t prevent us from also feeling that bitter yet very real pleasure of cancellation. Because everything that must be experienced, everything we have to make time for, these patiently constructed plans, all these prospects disturb us too. Simply because it’s coming, because it’s inescapable, because there’s no way to get past it without going through it, the smallest scheduled event vexes us like a dark omen. . .
A feature by Éric Chevillard
So yes, it’s inevitable, every writer working today is keeping a quarantine journal. It’s a required subject. It’s the only subject. Do not condemn us: it’s by writing that we develop our antibodies. The hippopotamus rolls in the mud to protect his delicate leather from ultraviolet rays. If he didn’t, he would turn pink and we would laugh at him. Nobody would confuse him with the rhinoceros anymore, and he likes being mistaken for that brute; it gives him courage. The writer has similar reflexes. He carries himself onto the page, and there he forges his weapons, his tools of resistance. . .
