An intimate trip dedicated to his hometown but also at the existence this pamphlet written by Christian Bobin, L'Amour des Fantomes
published by l'Editions de L'Herne.
The author and poet won't forget to visiting the most important places of his existence, remembering people, remembering after all the phantoms of what has been because with the time people disappear, buildings are destroyed for creating something new
although life lives a perennial mutation, remaining at the same time the old one knew by everyone with its big and little miseries.
Born in Creusot, precisely in rue d'Allevard the poet remarks that our real existence is not the one of the day of our birth but the one of the birth of our spirit. We born at intermittance precises Bobin, and this history is never realistically ended or just started.
His governess has been a rose found in the garden, his chinese teacher a cloud and his traveller companions dandelions; although being a poet and wanted to become a poet, Bobin insists he is never born in Creusot, finding immobility the biggest adventure discovered at school.
What it is important to do is not leaving the black butterfly in its immobility thanks to the knowledge of many languages; after all everything is alive in the world, apart the world.
What is the world, if not, looking at the black butterfly, the ecstatic state of immobility sometimes a precise state of mind of our existence?There are moments in which we are more lethargic, in which we procrastinate, in which we are like the black butterfly.
The departure of a leaf, starts in autumn when she falls on the ground, and when she becomes more frail, dying; when her pieces are transported somewhere else thanks to the wind or when some people destroy walking the poor leaf; but the myracle is this one; the resurrection of the tree and the new born of other leaves once in spring.
And that leaf, undermarks the poet, is the first material of his real city, the indestructible foundation. Looking at a place he loves so much reflects that has been sweet that desire of dying, sincerity in motion. His town is like a boat water landed at the river of XX century.
And in this place the story of a lot of men and women has been written as if the one of a bird in a branch.
What is a town if not the essence of its citizens? Bernard is the protagonist of one of his poems because of its eccentricities. Emmanuel is another typical character of the town. You can ask him everything: painting your house, cleaning, everything: he has this motto: if my work is not perfect, I could feel sick.
Nothing change in this world; wars start continuouslu because of religion, pestilences are still in our society, at the moment the ones brought by the modernity (Covid wasn't still a reality) under the shape of technology.
Who is a man when nothing mind?
There is strong melancholy for the first years of the existence when there is that "bleu perdu", that innocence, but also that brise that maybe won't never return anymore in the existence, once grown-up but it is comforting to think that we don't live in the town
where we live in, nor in the land where we live in but in a bit of sky. There is the concept of elevation of spirit and the meaning of something aeternum.
Christian Bobin remarks also the importance of written letters when he imagines Rue Leclerc. Close to it there is the local post office and he must sends several letters.People at the moment don't write anymore as in the past, but it's in the past that people left us memoirs and stunning existential evidences of their passage on this Earth. Rue Leclerc is important because of the two librarians Sylvie and Veronique and their work.
Continuing the walk all along the town, Villedieu is another special corner for the author; the oldest part of the city; the immortality remains young.
I like so badly the comparison of a leaf and a dancer and the evolution that, both a body and a leaf do when, the dancer reach harmonically the whole universe and the leaf dances its last dance before ending the existence.
A theater, Copy Jet is replacing the old maternal school where Bobin studied.
Oh,a theather is a magical place where life is constantly in motion, and where there is a perennial representiation of the existence under all its aspects.
The road and house where he spent his childhood but also the melancholic moments of his lost childhood, "la construction the mon coeur, sa premiere pierre posée, est une marche d'escalier dans la coeur d'enfance" writes Bobin.
There is, during that beautiful moments a book he remembered he loved a lot when a kid. Old, very used it was: Le Chevalier de maison rouge, The Knight of the Red House by Dumas and he dreams...The time is like a weight in the heart, and sometimes it is a physical sensation.
The kid, now a man, understands something terrible: that his reality starts to be surrounded by shadows, phantoms, who slowly will penentrate in his thoughts, phrases, letters, and at least, poems.
Enchanting! You'll love it
I thank L'Editions L'Herne for the physical copy of the book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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