"Her royal face was as bare as a belly: and within this face, beneath raven hair were such pale eyes, eyes forever the miraculous preserve of the fair, a secret light beneath darkness that if by some miracle you might have such a woman would nonetheless remain an enigma that nothing, neither lifted dresses nor heightened voices, can ever lay bare."
Pierre Michon is among the masters of contemporary French literature. Reading The Origin of the World, any reader will certainly see why. His highly poetic, lyrical prose is breathtaking – nearly every single sentence is a literary jewel worthy of several rereads. The above quote is but one example.
A personal confession, if I may: I find writing a review for a book of poetry exceedingly difficult since poems are all about the exactitude and flow of specific words. Thus, I'm reluctant to transcribe the poet's language or reduce the poet's precise expression into general observations on such elements as theme, shape or mood. I have similar feelings with The Origin of the World, a short novel written in intimate first-person where the protagonist is a randy twenty-year-old elementary school teacher recently arrived in a small village along a river in southern France.
Our passionate, sexually charged narrator has both the eyes of a painter (say, Degas or Renoir) and the heart of a poet, perhaps even the heart of Arthur Rimbaud (Pierre Michon authored a book about the French poet in the years prior to writing The Origin). Here's a snippet of the narrator's first encounter with the alluring lady behind the counter at the local newspaper and tobacco shop who will instantly become the object of his obsessive desire: "This woman, her lips lightly parted, benevolent and mildly surprised, patiently considered my silence. She was waiting to hear what I wanted. I spoke in a dream, in a voice nonetheless clear. She turned around, her armpit appearing when she lifted her arm to the shelves, and her hand, smooth and beringed, opened under my eyes with a red-and-white box of Marlboros in its palm. I brushed it while taking the box. Perhaps to see this gesture again - the coins resting in her palm, painted nails joining and separating - I also bought the postcard of the arrowed saint. She smiled, broadly."
One especial feature of this Pierre Michon tale continues to haunt long after the book is put down: the juxtaposition of nature's lightness and brutality. " There wasn't a breath of wind along the edge of the woods. She was in her Sunday best, in one of those ample brown car coasts that one imagines draped from the shoulders of haughty young ladies from the turn of the century who, with a little finger raised skyward and a cherry red mouth, look through a lorgnette at jockeys weighing in; underneath she wore pearls that despite winter she left bare at her neck; earrings, as always, and fine icy stockings beneath which a tormented whiteness had begun to blush pink in the cold. All this chic at the edge of a lost wood was as out of place as a pornographic doodle on a jockey's pristine shirt. I tried in vain to catch my breath, what cut it short now came from below, sharp as a razor. I believe that she had run as well, her heavy breaths sweeping through her throat, her car coat, her pearls; the scene shook; moreover, the frost revealed these brief breaths, spoke of her willingness or her upset. The cold had slapped her in the face, her lips were raw, chafed, but lipstick covered the gash."
Pierre Michon's first novel, Small Lives, was published in 1984 when he was nearing his fortieth year. I sense it took some time for the French author to find his voice as a novelist; after all, his language possess such a distinctive elegance and grace. I also sense Pierre Michon devoted enormous chunks of time over the course of several years in composing his 1996 The Origin of the World, a sparse novel (even with large font the book is less than 80 pages) but a novel of intense power - the image I keep returning to is a wild horse (the cover of the English paperback edition).
Again, I have always had difficulty writing a review for a book of poetry - and the same holds true for The Origin of the World. I'll simply conclude with two words: highly recommended.
French novelist Pierre Michon, born 1945
"Everything about her screamed desire, something that people say enough that's it's almost meaningless, but it was a quality that she gave of generously to everyone, to herself, to nothing, when she was alone and had forgotten herself, setting something in motion while settling a fingertip to the counter, turning her head slightly, gold earrings brushing her cheek while she watched you or watched nothing at all: this desire was open, like a wound: and she knew it, wore it with valor, with passion. But what are words?" - Pierre Michon, The Origin of the World
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