Wednesday, January 28, 2009

OOPS... He Did It Again!

Some amongst you, I'm sure, will end up thinking I am on a personal crusade, or vendetta, against Pope Benedict XVI, or the Roman Catholic Church at large. To be honest, sometimes I wonder myself... However, it did not used to be so. I am all in favor of Coexistence of all faiths or lack thereof, as long as no proselytizing is involved, such as trying to convince me that your faith (or lack thereof) is better, more real, is the one and only Truth, than my faith (or lack thereof). To clarify my situation, let's say that at this stage in my life, I am "a" believer -but not a Roman Catholic-, trying not to drown in the tsunami of doubt that has been overwhelming me for 3 years now.



I went to a French Roman Catholic school from K to 8 and then another one from 9 to 12. Not that my parents were devout Catholics.

My father decided on a Catholic education, because of the riots of May 1968, because of the numerous public school teachers' strikes which interrupted, according to him, the necessary momentum of a child's education (tomorrow the French public school teachers will be again on strike, nothing changes!), because he had been sent to a Roman Catholic School in Paris, a guarantee of the best education possible at the time (1930s) for a child whose parents lived in the French West Indies. My father's parents, although baptized, were not, as far as I can recall and as far as I have been told, pious and practicing Catholics.

My mother attended the French public school system from K to 12. However, her family was a practicing and devout Roman Catholic family: my grand-parents attended Sunday Mass and sometimes weekday mass, my grand-father crossed himself before each meal, and my grand-mother's brother was a priest and an abbott. They went on regular pilgrimages to Lourdes and Pibrac, and I still remember my grand-mother's frying pan voice singing a hymn to "Le Petit Jesus" with tearful eyes.



When my mother married my father -a civil wedding only, in front of "Monsieur le Maire", the town mayor- , she entered a very long "traversee du desert" -crossing of the desert. Her spiritual life was emptied of its very essence. She was denied Communion, not allowed to partake of the Eucharist, because her choice for a spouse -my dad-, was a divorcee and divorce is NOT an option in the Roman Catholic Canon Law. This official "shunning" ended in 1991 when, the victim of a car accident that gave her three long agonizing years as a "vegetable" (a "Terri Schiavo", to be more explicit), the priest gave her the last rites, absolving her of all her sins -including having lived maritally with a divorcee- and put a holy host into her mouth. From June 16, 1964 (the day when she married my father) to July 22, 1991 (a couple of months before her actual death, when I asked the priest to come to her bedside on her birthday date), my mother was a "canonical outlaw". She was NOT excommunicated, but in a way it was worse than an official excommunication. She attended Church on Sundays, at least until 1985 when, I think, she lost her faith or at least started to seriously doubt the tenets of her church at the same time as she was entering a tumultuous phase in her life, what we now call MLC (midlife crisis). She took us to Church too, made sure we went through all the required sacraments, at least until we started to rebel, partly out of procrastination (we wanted to sleep in on Sundays), mostly because it downed on my sisters and myself that there was something "not right", something "not fair": Why could we take communion and she could not? Why is divorce a "bad" thing? Where was that "love that endures all"? Where was the God of compassion and forgiveness in this edict?





I did not mean to linger for so long on my family's religious background and adventures. But again, it may be my way of sorting out my concerned "anger", of pursuing my own little war against what I find to be the enduring hypocrisy or lasting "double standard" of the Roman Catholic Church.



When the Church of England decided to ordain women to the priesthood, many married Anglican priests and bishops asked to be restored in the ranks of the Catholic Church. Not only did it happen, but they were welcomed with open arms and given dispensations to derogate to the requirement of celibacy. (As is already the case with the Uniates in Ukraine or the Maronites in Lebanon). Meanwhile, the few Catholic priests, worldwide, who have been lobbying for the right to marry... cannot and will not be able to do so anytime soon (Benedict XVI is fiercely against it). Their alternatives are but a few: to resist the temptation of the flesh (and of love), to not resist the temptation and secretly live in mortal sin (or not so secretly, depending on the parishioners, I suppose), or lastly, to officially renounce the priesthood.



In the last few years since his election to the Holy Seat (pun intended), we have been able to witness again this "double standard" and even "double entendre". At times, it almost feels like a bad rewriting of George Orwell's 1984, especially the chapters where "double think" and "newspeak" are mentioned. Maybe Benedict XVI is an aficionado? True, the guy is a theologian and a philosopher, so playing with words is not a problem for him.



As one can recall, his first blunder dates back to September 12, 2006, in Ratisbonne. His choice of quote infuriated the Muslim world almost as much as the Danish cartoons did (and actually, if I am not mistaken, an Italian nun was murdered in Mogadiscio, Somalia, because of what he said).

On September 23, 2007, he "did it again" when he criticized the Muslims for persecuting Christians (which is unfortunately the case in some countries), or berating them for not allowing conversions to another religion. He did not mean converting from Islam to Judaism or Hinduism, he meant converting from Islam to Christianity, i.e., in his mind, Catholicism. Not that he must be singing Hallelujahs when a Catholic becomes Lutheran, or Jewish, or Muslim...Not that he encourages this either, does he?



With the Jews, Benedict XVI took a less straightforward, less frontal and less confrontational approach... until last week. Was he being facetious, Machiavellian? Was he trying to buy time?

To follow in his Polish predecessor's steps, he visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 2005, then the Juden Platz in Vienna, Austria, in September 2007. He received two of Israel's Great Rabbis in Rome in September 2005, as well as Rome's own Great Rabbi in January 2006.

In April 2008, following an earlier decision to allow the Tridentine Mass to be said in lieu of Vatican 2 Liturgy, should parishioner wish to follow this earlier style in Latin, the relationship between the Vatican and the Jewish community tensed. Indeed, one of the components of the Tridentine Mass is a "Prayer for the Jews" that is a more than probable root and cause of Catholic Antisemitism.



Allowing the Tridentine Mass in itself is nothing to raise a ruckus for: again, everyone should worship and pray in the words that suit one best. For the most part of it, Catholic Antisemitism
arose amongst populations that were either barely educated (the Spaniards at the time of the Reconquista), or not at all (the Polish peasantry, for example) or who felt threatened because times were "a-changin'" too quickly for their taste (Dreyfuss Affair in France in the late 19th century, and later on in economically depressed Europe between 1929 and 1939). The Jew was the ideal scapegoat: accused of ritual crime at Easter (a rumor that started in Catholic Eastern Europe and spread into Germanic Central Europe), of holding the reins of power -albeit secretly- (the Protocols of Sion, -a known fake- is still Gospel for others), of money, etc. And the Christian texts presented him as Christ's murderer, while at the same time forgetting that Christ... was Jewish!... until 1965 when the Vatican officially removed the burden of Christ's death from the shoulders of the Jews.

Still, what is at stake in the decision to allow the Tridentine Mass is the very fact that it contains a pre-Vatican 2 "Prayer for the Jews" for the Good Friday Liturgy, of a more conservative tone than its 1970 rewriting by Pope Paul VI.



Here is the text from 1960, rewritten by Pope John XXIII. The word "faithless" is shown between ['''] because it is the one word that John XXIII removed. In the Latin original, it is "perfidis" which was unfortunately often translated by "perfidious", which is probably the cause of the antisemitic image of "the perfidious Jew". A better translation of the Latin would have been "faithless".



"Let us pray also for the [faithless] Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost also not exclude from thy mercy the Jews: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen."



The text rewritten in 1970 by Pope Paul VI is very different in essence:



"Let us pray for the Jewish people, the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and in faithfulness to his covenant. Almighty and eternal God, long ago you gave your promise to Abraham and his posterity. Listen to your Church as we pray that the people you first made your own may arrive at the fullness of redemption. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen."



If the aim of the message is basically the same -the conversion of the Jews-, the means to get there and the presentation of the people to be converted is very different. The pre-Vatican 2 prayer is based on Pauline texts, and probably on Paul's own experience. If my memory is good, he was "blinded" on the way to Damascus, when he met Christ.

The 1970 text follows in the steps of the 1965 pontifical encyclic letter, Nostra Aestate, in as much as it recognizes the precedence of Judaism and indeed, acknowledges that there would be no Christianity without Judaism, since Abraham's descendants are both Jews and Gentiles (Isaac and Ismael).



Did Benedict XVI allow the return of the Tridentine Mass only as an "offering of peace" and as a first step towards reconciliation with the Integrist fringe of the Catholic faith? Did he not take the full measure of the words of the Good Friday prayer? Why does he think his version is even better than that of Pope Paul VI? Here is Benedict's version, dated February 2008:



Align Left

"Let us also pray for the Jews that God our Lord should illuminate their hearts, so that they will recognize Jesus Christ, the Savior of all men. Let us pray. Let us genuflect. Rise. All-powerful and eternal God, you who wish that all men be saved and come to the recognition of truth, graciously grant that when the fullness of peoples enters your Church all of Israel will be saved."


The conversion of the Jews is again the goal, but gone is Pope Paul VI's recognizance of the Judaic faith as preceding the Christian, gone is the acknowledgment of Abraham and his descendance, gone is the acceptation that some may reach God's Love by other means than the Catholic faith, and back is the allusion to the "blindness" under the euphemism of the verb "illuminate".


Which brings me back to the latest step in the ongoing "counter-Vatican 2" guerilla, and the most recent "twist" in the Judeo-Christian relationships.


A few days ago Benedict XVI welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church four bishops from the Integrist fringe known as the Society of Saint Pius X, created by French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre who opposed the Vatican 2 reforms, ordained his own bishops and was henceforward excommunicated by Pope John Paul II. Amongst the four reinstated bishops, negationnist British Richard Williamson who denies the scope and the veracity of the Holocaust. I am including the YouTube.com video excerpt of his interview with Swedish radio/TV.
I was appalled at what I heard, the total denial of the gas chambers, the refusal to believe that 6 million Jews died, the charge of economical conspiracy. He ends his interview by asking the journalist not to show this on German TV because "[speaking like I do is] against the law in Germany." Well, it is also against the law in many other European countries...

How could Benedict XVI knowingly welcome back such a bishop? Notwithstanding the fact that the leader of the ultra-conservative fringe, Mgr Fellay, asked for forgiveness for what Mgr Williamson said, it is a known fact that Integrist Catholics are strongly influenced by Charles Maurras and the early XX century Christian Antisemitism, that the most reactionary Catholicism alive today can be found either in contemporary Spain (which never gave up Franco as lost) and Poland (which enjoys a resurgence of Catholic Antisemitism since the fall of communism).
Indeed, forgiveness is one of Jesus's commandments and the Prodigal Son was forgiven and celebrated back in the fold of his father's family and abode. However, he was repentant. Mgr Williamson is NOT repentant and has no intention to apologize for his statement. He is, after all, only following in the steps of the late Marcel Lefebvre's very own words, those words pronounced in the latter's Easter 1986 Homily, in Econe, or his article in Fideliter #49, Jan-Feb, 1986 (see the Index Thematique under Liberte religieuse)



The Forum Catholique website (if you read French, enjoy!)

http://www.leforumcatholique.org/message.php?num=461813 is also a great source of information about the ordinary Catholic worshipper and his or her position on the topics of Judaism, Holocaust and the recent developments with Mgr Williamson's statement and Benedict XVI's official reconciliation with, -who knows?-, his own personal demons. He was enrolled in the Hitler Jugend, wasn't he? He still is very conservative and getting more and more so, isn't he?
Or should I conclude using Jesus's very own words: "Father, Forgive them, for they know not what they do?"


Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Mytho et Megalo, Sego!

Ségolène Royal, c'est la grenouille qui voulait être aussi grosse que le bœuf!

Non seulement, l'équipe d'Obama ne s'est pas inspirée d'elle, mais en Française ayant la mémoire courte, c'est elle qui oublie qu'elle s'est inspirée d'un mouvement qui date d'avant elle: celui d'Howard Dean, Sénateur du Vermont, candidat démocrate -malchanceux!- à la présidence des Etats-Unis en 2004 et chef du parti démocrate jusqu'à une date récente. C'est lui qui est le premier candidat à avoir recouru aux emails, au "grassroots movement", travail sur la base et avec la base.

Avant Howard Dean, il y a eu l'avènement du mouvement de base MoveOn en l'an 1998, mouvement originel de Berkeley, California, contre l'"impeachment" de Clinton pour frasques sexuelles, mouvement anti-Bush s'il en est, dont le site web est : http://www.moveon.org/ . MoveOn a marché main dans la main avec Obama pendant toute la campagne électorale et Obama s'en est largement inspiré, notamment pour les demandes de fonds. Ce sont les millions de personnes ayant donné, par Internet, $10.00 en moyenne qui ont financé sa campagne (et avant, celle de Dean).

Voici une série de liens qui prouve que Ségo est mytho et mégalo :
de CBS News en juin 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/04/politics/main557004.shtml (CBSNews, June 4, 2003, Howard Dean’s Internet Love-In, by Joel Roberts),
à Wired
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html (Wired, How the Internet Invented Howard Dean, by Gary Wolf, January 2004) ,
au San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0113-02.htm (Article paru aujourd'hui est une reprise d'un article paru originellement dans le San Francisco Chronicle le 13 Janvier 2004, par Mark Simon)
et la BBC News en janvier 2004 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3394897.stm (BBCNews, Jan 14, 2004, Internet Insurgent Howard Dean, by Kevin Anderson BBC News Online Washington)
en passant par le très sérieux et réputé New York Times http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B06EFDB1330F931A35752C1A9659C8B63 (New York Times, The Nation; Howard Dean’s Internet Push: Where Will It Lead? , by Glen Justice, Nov 2, 2003)
ainsi que le New York Magazine http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/medialife/n_9188/ (New York Magazine News and Features, Candidate.com, by Michael Wolff, September 8, 2003).

Et puis, si Ségo est mytho et mégalo, et qu’elle a la mémoire courte (parce que quand même, elle sort de l’ENA, elle a du entendre parler d’Howard Dean !), cela n’excuse toujours pas les journalistes des quotidiens, Le Monde (pourtant a priori aussi sérieux et réputé que NYT)
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/reactions/0,1-0@2-3210,36-1143977,0.html
et Libération (moins sérieux, plus dans le m'as-tu-vu)
http://www.liberation.fr/politiques/0101313168-le-desir-de-venir-a-washington-de-segolene-royal
qui n’ont fait ni leur travail préliminaire de recherche, ni vérifié les dires de leur source ! De l'amateurisme, vous dis-je.

Les menteurs (et menteuses) à la guillotine!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

No Salvation for Humanity

It may seem trivial to blog about the current Middle East situation. What? More words? Hasn't everyone and anyone already written, blogged, videotaped, posted, analyzed, spoken on TV and radio? Isn't it a permanent ongoing race to the latest dead bodies's and injured's count? Doesn't it feel as if we were hyenas eating up the corpses of what the media have already chewed up? Aren't we replaying this ugly war in the comfort of our houses, hypnotized by the 24 hour news and the nightscope images on our big screen TVs, as if it were a mere video game? As if it were a game... It seems so far away.

Are we the ultimate voyeurs? You would have thought that after all the decades since World War 2 and the increasing communication means we would have had enough pictures of genocide, violence, war, enough to demonstrate and call for peace instead of conjuring up new blood. Nor the picture of the little Vietnamese girl burnt by napalm, nor the Killing Fields of Cambodia, nor the photography of the famished little African boy barely alive and about to eaten by the fuzzy vulture in the distance, nor the American soldier lynched in Somalia, nor the thousands dead in a couple of hours on 9/11, nor the discovery of mass graves, rapes and murders in the name of "ethnic cleansing" or political ideology on all the continents, nothing will be of use to humanity.

No images are strong enough to make nations stop and think that children's lives are too precious to be sacrificed on the altar of God, State or citizenship. Where is the new John Lennon who would be singing "Imagine...no religion, no country, nothing to kill or die for"?
Is History deemed to repeat itself senselessly?

We are all Cains, vindinctive and jealous, envious and murderous. Are we even worthy of some form of redemption?

These last weeks have borne a toll on my sanity. All the explanations provided right and left: the pro-Israeli prejudice in the main stream American press, the pro-Palestinian prejudice in the main stream European press, the omissions of both media with regards to pro-peace demonstrators (Israeli against what is happening in Gaza and Palestinians against another war with Israel), the blogs putting oil on this information fire, the comments on the blogs exuding hatred, calling to murder of one or the other, the one mountain of now fallacious religious, racist, historical, and political grounds on which one side bases its claims and the other mountain of the reversely qualified grounds of the other side.... The synagogue attacked in my hometown in France, the shouts of "Death to the Jews" in the streets of Paris, sung by Muslims and Christians alike, or should I say by Muslims and secular French alike? The calls for eradication of the State of Israel by some and of the Palestinians by others, the anger, the hatred...

There is NO salvation for humanity!

The hypocritical or fearful silence of those, in the Middle East, from Egypt, to Saoudi Arabia, to Lebanon, and the PA themselves, who wish for Hamas to be gone, to disappear, but who would never say it aloud, who wish for peace with Israel and look back with nostalgia at the year 2000 before the Second Intifada as a "golden age" of Israeli-Palestinian relationships, who wish that the unilateral negotiations between Syria and Israel had borne fruit in order to isolate Iran, their enemy within Islam, who lip-condemn the attacks for fear of enraging their own population, for fear of losing their own power...

Obama's election and a potential change in the American Foreign Policy as the possible reason for this attack on Gaza? Would the Israeli have measured the risk of "change" in the White House and decided to go ahead while Bush was still in power? Do they think that Rahm Emanuel is not hawkish enough, will not lobbby enough in their favor?

The stubborn attitude of the Israeli government who puts at risk not only the existence of the Hebrew State, but of all the Jewish populations scattered around the world, who may now fall victims of terrorist's attacks, of antisemitic acts, who puts the world at risk of a World War if Iran decides that it is time to enter the game.

Both sides playing at being more democratic than the other, more deserving than the other, when none is one or the other...

Indeed, there is NO salvation for humanity!

Monday, January 5, 2009

Les Déferlantes, de Claudie Gallay

Voilà un roman dont l’épaisseur laisse supposer qu’il obéit aux canons de la tradition littéraire classique… Quelle surprise, pour le lecteur ainsi prédisposé, de découvrir que l’écriture rappelle parfois Michel Déon dans Le taxi mauve, parfois Andrei Makine pour le traitement du narrateur ! Contre toute attente le style de Claudie Gallay exhibe une force peu commune, plus proche d’une écriture dite « masculine » que des écritures considérées comme « féminines » de Duras, Nothomb, Darrieussecq, Angot, Laurens ! Muriel Barbéry et Catherine Cusset seraient peut-être les auteures dont le style de Claudie Gallay se rapprocherait le plus. Les déferlantes, tout comme La haine de la famille ou Un brillant avenir, de Cusset, ou encore L’élégance du hérisson de Barbéry, font partie des livres que l’on n’oublie pas, qui procurent une émotion littéraire et personnelle intense.

Claudie Gallay écrit comme d’autres peignent : les descriptions minutieuses qu’elle fait des paysages de tempête, paysages de silence ou de souffrance que sont ces lieux battus par le vent et la mer autour de La Hague, arpentés par la narratrice, sont somptueuses. Elles témoignent aussi d’une extraordinaire capacité d’observation de la nature : le changement de la lumière, les jeux d’ombres de ciels chargés, les couleurs de la mer, les nombreux et divers oiseaux que la narratrice est chargée de recenser, dessiner, et surtout les effets concurrents d’une nature sauvage et solitaire sur les hommes et les femmes de La Hague, toutes ces descriptions replacent le lecteur dans une tradition littéraire ancienne, celle du terroir, peu ou malhabilement utilisée depuis l’avènement du roman d’introspection pseudo-philosophique dans la littérature française.

L’élément dominant de cette histoire trouble, c’est l’eau : un leitmotiv de « ciel bas et lourd » baudelairien, une pluie omniprésente même quand il ne pleut pas car toujours annoncée par l’un ou l’autre des personnages, et surtout la mer, les vagues, ces fameuses « déferlantes » du titre, qui n’apparaissent réellement que dans la tempête du premier chapitre. D’ailleurs le titre est extrêmement bien choisi : ce qui « déferle » dans la narration, ce ne sont pas tant les vagues que les histoires respectives de La Mère, du Vieux, de Florelle, de Lambert et de Lili, comme si la mer avait marqué tous les personnages du sceau indélébile de la fatalité. Elément féminin donneur de vie, la mer (jeu de mot inconscient ou conscient de l’auteure sur La Mère ?) est aussi porteuse de mort. Dans le roman, elle s’associe à cet autre élément liquide, la pluie permanente, et se fond avec elle et avec l’élément masculin « vent » en un tsunami destructeur. C’est en effet, la rencontre simultanée de ces forces de la nature qui engendre la destruction au fil des pages du roman. Destruction des âmes, car les haines rageuses qui animent les villageois, - au sens latin du terme (anima)- les ont éteintes.

Le tour de force de Claudie Gallay est d’avoir réussi la gageure de maintenir le lecteur en alerte grâce à une histoire palpitante : de l’isolation volontaire de la narratrice qui cherche à guérir, panser les plaies d’un amour « parfait », oublier sans l’oublier vraiment cet amant mort de longue maladie (on pense inévitablement à un cancer) à l’exposition des secrets, des amours et des haines qui hantent les personnages de La Hague, le lecteur passe du roman traditionnel au mystère quasi-policier sans heurt ni changement de champ et de registre lexicaux. Décor, actions, personnages, mythologie de la nature personnifiée (la mer, les oiseaux, le phare même), on est au sein d’une tragédie grecque sur bout de Cotentin, un Hauts de Hurlevent nouveau dans la bruyère normande. Si certains des personnages obtiennent la paix du pardon et, en ce qui concerne Le Vieux, font l’objet d’une rédemption qui n’est pas sans rappeler celle du très beau roman d’Henriette Jelinek, Le destin de Iouri Voronine (Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie Française 2005), d’autres, comme La Mère et sa fille, Lili, femmes délaissées, femmes trahies, demeurent haineuses, sans compassion ; le pardon leur est étranger, rendant toute rédemption impossible. D’ailleurs le lecteur est en droit de se demander si Claudie Gallay ne souffre pas d’un préjudice favorable aux hommes, tant le portrait qu’elle fait des femmes du livre est taillé au couteau vengeur. Même Morgane n’échappe pas à la critique et si ses formes voluptueuses font l’objet du désir et du regard des hommes, son prénom de fée rappelle celui de celle, Morgane La Fay, femme fatale par excellence, qui fit la chute et la perte de Merlin l’Enchanteur.

De même, les sculptures de Raphaël conjuguent au présent de narration non seulement les terres de La Hague au relief tourmenté sur lesquelles viennent s’échouer les bateaux pris dans la tempête, mais aussi les corps burinés et par les secrets et par la nature. Ce faisant, elles exposent au lecteur –en les transcendant- les souffrances des personnages, leurs mensonges, et leurs rêves. La description qu’en fait l’auteur au travers de la narratrice rappelle certaines sculptures de Camille Claudel, notamment Le Temps et La Vague. La présence d’un narrateur « accessoire », Monsieur Anselme, et à travers lui celle de la littérature française par la mention constante qu’il fait de Jacques Prévert, celle de Max, -métaphore christologique des Béatitudes-, de la Cigogne, ou d’Ursula ou même des chats du Vieux sont autant d’adjuvants d’un roman qui devient conte moral, avec une touche de fantastique lorsque, comme le dit Monsieur Anselme «la mort(…) [devient] l’imprévisible conséquence d’un geste d’amour ».

Certes il y a quand même quelques faiblesses dans ce pavé, faiblesses probablement dues tant à l’enthousiasme de l’auteure pour ses personnages qu’au mauvais travail de relecture de l’éditeur : anachronismes et illogismes de lieux gâchent le récit et embrouillent le lecteur ; certaines histoires parallèles comme le départ de Morgane pour Paris ne sont nullement nécessaires à l’histoire. Il est dommage aussi que la relation entre Morgane et son frère sculpteur Raphaël, -au nom d’archange-, à la limite de l’inceste, ne soit pas plus développée ; ou celle que Lili a pu partager avec son mari « absent », histoire conjugale qui semble s’inscrire en schéma psychologique récurrent de celle qu’ont vécue ses parents, Le Vieux et La Mère.

C’est une lecture sur plusieurs niveaux qu’offre ce roman de Claudie Gallay. La richesse et l’étendue de la culture de l’auteure –ou des recherches entreprises pour sa rédaction- ne sont plus communes aujourd’hui. Le lecteur n’est plus simple voyeur du narcissisme ambiant et exhibitionniste qui semble être la condition sine qua non des œuvres publiées par le monde littéraire parisien. Le lecteur d’un livre tel que Les Déferlantes se sent enfin purement lecteur, celui qui découvre, ravi, une histoire ayant un début, une fin et miracle ! un développement présentant fond et forme.

Sarah Diligenti ©2009