Ce brouillard, the couper au couteau. Il veut décidément savoir ce qu'il ya dedans.
Éric Chevillard, Authorized comment on the squelette situation (Fata Morgana, 2007).
He will cut through this fog with his knife. He desperately wants to know what's inside.
A. The brouillard is the same as when you dérobe la vue des arbres voisins.
Dennis Diderot, Bougainville voyage supplement.
B. Il est vrai ; If there is a brouillard, what is left in the lower part of the atmosphere that the part is sufficiently charged with humidity, retombe sur la terre?
A. Is it against the traverse of the ponge, s'élève and gagne la région supérieure or the air is still dense, and peut, comme disent les chimistes, n'être pas saturé ?
B. One must wait.
A. En attendant, que faites-vous ?
B. Je lis.
A. The fog is so thick that it prevents us from seeing the neighboring trees.
B. That's true; but what happens when this fog, which only remains in the lower part of the atmosphere because there is enough moisture there, falls back to Earth?
A. But what if, instead, it penetrates the moist layer, rises, and reaches the upper region where the air is less dense and – as chemists say – not saturated?
B. Then you have to wait.
A. What are you doing in the meantime?
B. I read.
Only the depths are misty, not the mountain.
Jean Paul, Political Lenten sermons during Germany's week of mourning.
Fabrice Gabriel once called him the mischievous offspring of Sterne, Diderot, Nabokov and Michaux 1Eric Chevillard began expanding his work book by book during the heyday of academic research on postmodern narratives, starting around 2003 with a version of the Brothers Grimm's "The Brave Little Tailor," which indulges in lengthy digressions reminiscent of the humorist Jean Paul. Both author and fictional reader engage reflectively with this text, transforming the tailor's heroic deed—which wasn't really one—into a playful text with a serious undertone, as the digression also reflects on themes of "fear, courage, and torture." 2 Any attempts to fix it here, as in Chevillard's other books, are thwarted by the mist:
If you find a parfaite definition of Brouillard, you will endure.
Eric Chevillard Le vaillant petit tailleur (2003)
I had found a perfect definition of fog, I lost it.
At the same time, and this is where the ambiguity of Chevillard's image lies, the blurriness, the unformed, makes visible traces of the subject in an unfixable search for itself, also for its own past:
Mon auréole était en papier découpé. My name is still grise and vague. On ne voit qu'elle dans le brouillard. Distinguez-vous à travers celui-ci ma silhouette confused, inquiétante, toujours en quete d'un enfant joufflu?
Eric Chevillard Le vaillant petit tailleur (2003)
My halo was cut from paper. My soul remained gray and vague. It's all visible in the fog. Can you discern through the fog my confused, uncanny silhouette, always searching for a chubby-cheeked child?
Literary play and deadly seriousness lie close together in such writing styles: The name of Prosper "Brouillon" – the common roots The word "brouillard" means "draft" for a reason, and Prosper à l'oeuvre It is designed as a novelistic puzzle that once again addresses the avant-garde metaphor, that does not want to begin with the framing of the front line, but at the same time historicizes the fog as poison gas.
Ces phrases qui montent en lui, ces mots déjà solidment encordés – car c'est encore lui qui parle le mieux de son art –, s'avancent en éclaireurs ; le roman va se cristalliser autour d'eux. The elements of intrigue are in place. Prosper Brouillon isn't a part of the game that begins on the two sides of the puzzle. Il s'attaque d'abord au ciel nébuleux, au fond de brouillard et de broussailles de son roman, ce qu'il appelle plus volontiers l'atmosphère et que les poilus de la Grande Guerre connaissaient sous le nom de gaz moutarde.
Eric Chevillard Prosper à l'oeuvre (2019)
These sentences rising within him, these words already firmly in place—for he still speaks best about his art—go ahead as scouts; the novel will crystallize around them. The plot elements take their course. Prosper Brouillon is not one of those who begin with the straight edges of the puzzle. He begins with the misty sky, the backdrop of fog and undergrowth for his novel, which he prefers to call atmosphere, and which the soldiers of the First World War knew as mustard gas.
A more recent example: In the first three weeks of the French Covid lockdown in 2020, Eric Chevillard wrote at the request of Le Monde a daily newspaper column as a chronicle of this form of social distancing, later published as Sine dieIn it, the author recounts, among other things, the stories of numerous people found dead, having died of sheer boredom; due to a lack of contact, transmission was impossible, but researchers are already developing a weapon against this pandemic: the miracle hug. Fog here represents a loss of reality and meaning, which simultaneously brings about a linguistic crisis of the dissolved present and a form of death.
Toutes ces personnes, donc, seraient mortes d'ennui. Tout à coup, all your esprit and all your corps dissociés n'avaient plus trouvé de prize, plus d'appui. The réel dans un brouillard fuyant is dérobait à toute appréhension. The form of the choice is perdait in my time when it is signified. Le langage ne nommait plus rien que des événements du passé, des évidences révolues. Alors avait commencé pour ces malheureux une chute immobile dans le néant des Heures. Ou, plutôt qu'une chute, sans doute, une sorte d'ascension ou d'essor catastrophique, un arrachement de soi à soi, et bientôt, comme s'ils quittaient notre atmosphere, the air leur manqua et, sans un spasme, sans un râle, imperceptiblement mais inexorablement, ils étaient morts.
Eric Chevillard Sine die: chronique du confinement (19 mars – 12 may 2020), May 4.
All these people would therefore die of boredom. Suddenly, their dissociated minds and bodies had found no foothold, no support. Reality, shrouded in a fleeting mist, eluded perception. The form of things was lost along with their meaning. Language named nothing but past events, long-gone certainties. For these unfortunate people, an immobile fall into the nothingness of hours began. Or, perhaps more accurately than a fall, a kind of catastrophic ascent or surge, a tearing away from themselves, and soon, as if leaving our atmosphere, they ran out of air, and without convulsion or gasp, imperceptibly but inexorably, they were soon dead.
Also as a critic for Le Monde Chevillard reflects on the fog that overwhelms a novel without the author intervening to create meaning in its condensation:
Le lecturer fait lui-même l'experience pénible de this vacuité. The appeal of these vœux l'intervention rapide d'un écrivain qui thunderait un peu de sens et de densité à ce livre. Il l'attendra vainement jusqu'au bout. A colère affleure pourtant dans ces pages, mais jamais elle ne s'incarne. Ce couteau sans lame auquel manque le Manche n'était sans doute pas l'outil idéal pour couper le Brouillard qui gagne peu à peu et recouvre finalement le roman de part en part.
Eric Chevillard, "Le feuilleton. A roman extralittéraire", Le Monde, December 29, 2015.
The reader experiences this emptiness firsthand, a painful sense of loss. They yearn for the swift intervention of a writer who will imbue this book with some meaning and substance. They wait in vain for him until the very end. A rage resonates within these pages, yet it never manifests. This knife without a blade, lacking a handle, was likely not the ideal tool to cut through the fog that gradually spreads and ultimately engulfs the entire novel.
When the renowned publishing house Minuit was swallowed up by Gallimard in 2021, the author Eric Chevillard refused to cooperate. Nouvel Observateur Gérald Froidevaux was similarly surprised by Chevillard's inclusion in a group of Minuit authors and, as early as the 90s, pointed out: "Surprisingly, Chevillard is counted among the 'minimalists' of the new French novelists, although his aim of replacing reality with a linguistic construct is more of a maximalist undertaking." 3 Chevillard's answer chooses the ice fog as an image for such minimalist writing:
Je m'inscris en faux contre l'idée selon laquelle nous formerions un groupe cohérent d'écrivains partageant les mêmes principes d'écriture. Je me sens parfois même un peu seul dans mon genre. Et je cherche en vain parmi les authors des Editions de Minuit ces adeptes de la phrase blanche, froide et sans matière que nous serions tous, à en croire quelques critiques. Est-ce que ce brouillard glacé n'émanerait pas plutôt des yeux morts de ceux qui s'y égarent ?
Eric Chevillard 4
I resist the notion that we form a cohesive group of writers who share the same writing principles. Sometimes I even feel a little lonely in my genre. And I search in vain among the authors of Editions de Minuit for the adherents of the white, cold, and immaterial sentence that some critics claim we all are. Doesn't this icy fog, rather, originate from the dead eyes of those who lose themselves in it?
Fog permeates Chevillard's books not only in his most recent book with the eponymous fog chamber, La chambre à brouillard (Minuit, 2023), for example already in the title of La nébuleuse du Crab named.
Comment devient-on fou? Car ce n'est pas si simple. The spirit that applies to the method, or to the method it proposes finalization of the regulation of the circulation of the branches. Crab devra-t-il faire la dépense d'un trépan? d'autres tools encore? des tenailles? a rape? Do you want to take advantage of the power of concentration - just like the grill has lights for extreme tension? Conscience dure et trop lucide, étoile fine, pointue, piquante, perçante, pénétrante, qui coud la nuit sur le jour – désintégrée tout à coup, explosée, répandue, apaisée: naissance d'une nébuleuse.
Eric Chevillard La nébuleuse du Crab (1993)
How does one go mad? It's not that simple. The mind that contemplates it thinks only of methods, and every method ultimately aims to regulate the course of the celestial bodies. Must Crab buy a drill or other tools, pliers or a grater? Or can he rely entirely on his power of concentration—until he passes out from exerting himself too much? A hard and all-too-clear consciousness, a thin, pointed, sharp, penetrating star that sews night to day—suddenly disintegrating, exploding, expanding, calming: the birth of a nebula.
Later in the book, the title character is described as not alive, but also probably not dead; Crab would need a scalpel to determine his own condition. Here, too, this diffuse feeling is called "nebulous." Jean-Baptiste Harang wrote in his review of Chevillard's fifth novel at the time... Libération"In astronomy, a nebula is a celestial body whose contours are not sharp, and the contours of Krabs' body become increasingly blurred, his limbs unstable, and his senses random." 5 Crab leaves behind sentences, a faint trace, as the book says, but he's tired of leaving footprints.
In contrast, the cloud chamber is an instrument for revealing the invisible, for giving traces a fleeting form that dissipates again. Developed by Wilson in 1911/12, this detector makes atomic particles visible as condensation trails as they pass through it, and indeed, components of cosmic radiation, the positron and muon, were discovered with the help of the cloud chamber at that time. Today, the device is only of historical interest, but what can a cloud chamber contribute poetologically to understanding Chevillard's work? First, it should be noted that the cloud chamber appears only once in the title and in the text. Disappointing, when one reads a novel like The principle what one would expect from Jérôme Ferrari, who brought particle physics into novel form and literaryized Werner Heisenberg's work, "as in a particle accelerator the scientific, political, philosophical, existential traces of light flash" 6 Isabelle Bernard's analysis of the novel also clarified the role of the cloud chamber within it: "The novel's four-part composition incorporates these essential data points in the description of subatomic particles. Thus, 'Positions,' 'Velocity,' 'Energy,' and 'Time' form the headings of the text excerpts that trace the key moments of Heisenberg's fate from 1922 to 1945; the section 'Positions' (LP: 9-56) is divided into four sequences: 'Position 1: Heligoland' (11-19); 'Position 2: Outside the house, on a field of rubble' (21-32); 'Position 3: In the cloud chamber' (33-41); and 'Position 4: Between the possible and the actual' (43-56). The scientist's existence is viewed through the same prism as a particle in a cloud chamber, where the trajectory of electrons is to be observed." Throughout the entire biographical narrative, the reader finds only positions, i.e., high points and moods, but not a predictable or logical fate amidst the chaos of the century. In this way, knowledge metabolizes the biofictional novel. 7 Matthias Hennig's rather critical review concedes that the novel's title The principle "that uncertainty which, with Heisenberg's quantum mechanical discovery, radically called into question familiar categories such as objectivity and subjectivity from a physical perspective. The principle of uncertainty was what defined the inner structure of matter as something not exactly measurable and therefore genuinely indeterminate." 8
May the faut bien s'éloigner de son père pour se retrouver seul et désemparé, devant la chambre à brouillard de Wilson, avec des yeux d'orphelin fixés sur la trajectoire qui ne devrait pas exister.
Jérôme Ferrari, The principle (2015)
C'est là que vous reveniez sans cesse, il était impossible de fuir, le goût indigeste de la réalité you donnait la nausée et même la pensée que, de ce point de vue, Schrödinger, avec ses ondes stupides, n'était pas plus capable que vous ne l'étiez d'expliquer a phénomène aussi simple ne vous apportait aucune consolation.
Mais Dieu qui, en l'absence de Bohr, se souvenait de sa miséricorde, vous a laissé a new fois regarder par-dessus son épaule. Et vous avez compris.
In the room in Brouillard, on n'observait pas, and on n'avait en vérité jamais observé, the trajectory of an électron. On y voyait seulement les traces ponctuelles des gouttes de condensation, rien de plus, et c'est l'esprit humain qui, victime d'une routine plusieurs fois millénaire, reliait ces traces entre elles en an illusion de trajectoire continue, comme les children relient soigneusement les points numérotés in the design cahiers pour y faire apparatus des sorcières, des dragons et des chimères.
Il you fallait encore apprendre à voir au-delà des évidences, you dépouiller de toutes les habitudes qui vous retenaient prisonnier: quelque part, perdu dans l'immensité cosmique de la gouttelette, se trouvait l'électron. It is impossible to direct the situation exactly. A little plus loin, the signal is now in a position approximative mais il n'était au fond même pas permis de penser que c'était le même object qui laissait dans le brouillard les traces de son passage. Il n'y avait qu'une suite d'événements singuliers, l'éclair d'existences furtives illuminant la nuit avant de s'éteindre. Et c'était all. Vous aviez vu. Il ne restait plus rien à voir. Pas de permanence. Pas de continuité. A cune trajectory – mais une armée de specters exsangues qui traversaient the room of Wilson à une vitesse indéterminée, en s'incarnant vaguement pour imprimer dans la brume the empreinte de leurs contours flous.
Et tel est le principe.
But one must distance oneself from one's father to find oneself alone and helpless before Wilson's cloud chamber, with the eyes of an orphan fixed on the path that should not exist.
You always returned there, there was no escape, the indigestible taste of reality made you nauseous, and even the thought that Schrödinger with his stupid waves was just as unable to explain such a simple phenomenon as you were offered you no comfort.
But God, who remembered his mercy in Bohr's absence, allowed you to look over his shoulder once more. And you understood.
In the cloud chamber, the trajectory of an electron was not observed and, in truth, never was. Only the point-like traces of condensation droplets were seen, nothing more, and it was the human mind, as a victim of a thousand-year-old routine, that connected these traces to create the illusion of a continuous trajectory, just as children carefully connect the numbered dots in their drawing books to make witches, dragons, and chimeras appear.
They still had to learn to see beyond the obvious, to shed all the habits that held them captive: Somewhere, lost in the cosmic infinity of the droplet, lay the electron. It was impossible to say exactly where. A little further away, it again reported its approximate location, but it wasn't even possible to believe that it was the same object leaving traces of its passage in the nebula. There had only been a series of isolated events, the flashes of fleeting existences illuminating the night before they vanished. And that was all. They had seen. There was nothing more to see. No permanence. No continuity. No path—but an army of bloodless specters, running at indeterminate speed through Wilson's room, vaguely embodying themselves to press their blurred outlines into the nebula.
And that's the principle.
While Ferrari writes a kind of biographical science fiction that aestheticizes the function of the cloud chamber, Chevillard simultaneously delivers less and more; he doesn't need a distanced "vous"/"Sie" (you) towards the scientist, but narrates precisely from within the blur as "je" (each). The cloud chamber is only of interest to the first-person narrator, enabling him to perceive better in the semi-darkness; he is searching for a self-made set of instruments suitable for his narrative. In the preceding novel MonotobioIn a story whose title sounds like "mon autobio," the narrator wonders how he himself came to be, lying under the covers in his parents' or grandparents' Catholic marital bed. And at this point, The cloud chamber Already announced, then withdrawn. The questions raised about existence, the causes and consequences of one's own actions, and contingent events are linked to the sequence of writing and publishing:
Était-ce plutôt, après une relecture consternée, pour que je renonce à publier La Chambre à brouillard ? I'm available to fall back to the forefront. Dès lors, n'était-il pas absurde d'imaginer que j'avais été appelé à naître afin que ce manuscrit ne voie jamais le jour ? It is not possible for me to change the homes of the two armchairs of the office, which can be greatly contributed by my work and lectures that are interesting to the user of the tram. Serait-ce à dire que nous ne naissons que pour réparer les torts que nous infligeons au monde en naissant ? Et pour guérir aussi bien alors des rhumes que nous contractons ? Je frottai sous mes narines encombrées un coton impregné d'huile essentiale de menthe poivrée. Puis j'éternuai, car certains de nos acts demeurent sans effet. Certains other reasons-ils without cause? Des faits isolés peuvent-ils malgré tout se produire ? Peut-être, mais ce sont des instants où l'on meurt, puisque nul ne va s'installer et prospérer sur la météorite qu'il reçoit sur le crâne, n'est-ce pas ?
Eric Chevillard Monotobio (2020)
Was it more that, after a dismayed reading, I refrained from doing so? The cloud chamber to publish? I should have written it beforehand. Wasn't it absurd, then, to assume that I had been born so that this manuscript would never see the light of day? It's true that no one but me replaced the worn covers of the two armchairs in the study, but I had contributed much to the fabric's wear and tear through my work and insatiable reading. Is it that we are only born to right the wrongs we do to the world at our birth? And to cure the colds we catch? I rubbed a cotton ball soaked in peppermint oil into my blocked nostrils. Then I sneezed, because some of our actions have no effect. Are some others without cause? Can individual events still happen? Perhaps, but those are moments when you die, because no one is going to settle down and thrive on the meteorite that falls on their head, are they?
La chambre à brouillard The novel is divided into three parts. The beginning might initially surprise readers familiar with Chevillard's work. Like a traditional thief's tale, in a flashback 30 years later, the pickpocket Oleg hands over the loot to the narrator, pursued by police, until the novel plays out its disintegration, as Pierre Maury's review emphasizes: "For all of this is very mysterious – the fog in the title was not accidental, it was hinted at. A strange creature, whose species is all the less precisely defined as it seems to change over time, appears. It has been entrusted to the narrator, who has made it his 'subject'. An object of study, a subject over which he, in principle, has the power of a master. But has it been forgotten that the relationship between master and servant, even when this being is not working, is often more complex than one might expect? The more the narrator believes he knows it, the more it eludes understanding." It disappears, reveals nothing about its true needs, defies any definitive definition, swells and shrinks again, has a suspicious relationship with Nine, who initially disliked it; in short, it disrupts everything far beyond the cellar in which it is actually kept.” 9
Chevillard is aware that his writing style can also deny readers access. For them, his work forms a slippery, uneven surface and an impenetrable fog.
Certain people don't know what they're saying, but they're different. Elles m'en font parfois la confidence – parmi elles, des embarrassées, bien honteuses même et qui en conçoivent une sorte de mésestime d'elles-mêmes qui bien évidemment me navre ; Mais aussi, parmi elles, des offusquées, vaguement moqueuses ou méprisantes qui me prennt pour un prétentieux vain et fumeux, ce qui bien évidemment me navre. Pour all, the phrase is: ×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×, it is not carrément ×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2. Elles dérapent sur mes pages comme sur de la glace ou s'y égarent comme dans un brouillard. The intelligence is very agile, for all players, and there are two of them (two) with sombres brutes, but this can also be seen at fair level: at the entrance, at the price. If you want to have something like the cerveau, you need to keep it in mind: there is no change in the height of the dépités and the bosses that result when they are cognent. Or les calculs et demonstrations mathématiques me laissent tout aussi sot et décontenancé que ces lecteurs face à mes propres speculations. A mouche bourdonne derrière mon front, mon regard s'opacifie, il se peut qu'un fillet de bave s'écoule de ma bouche entrouverte.
Eric Chevillard Le Désordre azerty (2014)
There are people who understand absolutely nothing I write. Sometimes they confide in me about it—among them are some who are ashamed, who even have reason to be ashamed, and who feel a kind of self-loathing, which of course I regret very much; but among them are also some who are offended, who make fun of me or hold me in contempt and consider me a vain, conceited pompous fool, which of course I also regret. For all of them, my sentence is: ×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×+×, if not even ×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2+×2. They slip on my pages as if on ice or get lost on them as if in a fog. Their intelligence can be swift, and they aren't (all) sinister thugs, but this time there's nothing to be done: no access, no recourse. One wonders if we have the same brains, considering our heads can't exchange anything except a disgruntled nod and the resulting bumps when they collide. Mathematical calculations and demonstrations leave me just as dumb and perplexed as these readers are by my own speculations. A fly buzzes behind my forehead, my vision blurs, and perhaps a trickle of phlegm dribbles from my half-open mouth.
Despite these difficulties in accessing his work, Eric Chevillard is a much-discussed contemporary author in France; Editions Minuit alone lists 24 of his works. 10, 12 titles at Fata Morgana 11, not counting the 14 volumes L'Autofictif between 2009 and 2022, and other publishers. Two important French anthologies on Chevillard, for example, should be mentioned here. 12 The Bibliography of French Literary Studies Klapp's database shows 304 entries for the author, but hardly any of them are in German. Niklas Bender already wondered in 2013 why Chevillard was a "large unknown" and "hidden gem". 13 that has remained. There are also only four translations available, as far as I can see. Palafox and Le Caoutchouc décidément in the 1990s at Residenz, La Nébuleuse du crabe and Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur at Diaphanes from the 2010s.
The first part of La chambre à brouillard It begins in medias in res: Oleg, the crook, had thus foisted his loot on the narrator, who happened to be present – a case of receiving stolen goods or plagiarism, as Afeissa writes in his review. 14He considers the book a marvel, as original as it is chevillar-esque in its context: "One does not have to read very far to understand that the subject of the book, in a final reflective loop, is ultimately nothing other than himself, i.e., the impressive work that the author has slowly and surely built up and which now comprises around 40 books." 15 In the three parts of La chambre à brouillard With the second part, a second novel unfolds within the first. Similar to Queneau's variation on the same small episode in his exercises in style, the narrator repeatedly approaches the story from the short first part. He intends to attempt a literarily elaborate travesty of the banal material. "While Oleg himself completely disappears in the second part of the story (the longest of the three parts), the crime story, in which he is the central figure in the first part, remains, in sublimated form, one of the most important diegetic driving forces: As we shall see, the objective is no longer to apprehend Oleg on the run, but to find the trail of the person who has fled after unfortunately escaping the narrator's vigilance. As expected, it is Oleg himself who, in the third part of the book, hands the fugitive over to the narrator for the second time, thus finally settling his debt." 16
Radiation and detector: In a poétique du flouWith its narrative principle of ambiguity, the apparatus of literature constructed by the humorist and autofictional writer resembles the relationship between formless fog and traces of particles. As in Jean Paul's Life of the cheerful schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal Just as the writer simply writes the books from the Leipzig Book Fair catalog that he cannot afford, Chevillard also works by incorporating literary studies: "Chevillard's texts like to present the literary institution in its foundations and side issues and amuse themselves with its tics, poses and peculiarities." 17 This also applies to the relationship between life and text: For the magazine Fixxion In rhythmic prose, the author has placed the subject and object of writing in a complex temporal relationship. The blog format that Chevillard has chosen for years is connected to this image of the wriggling, freshly caught fish; here is an approximate translation of this free-flowing writing style:
Mes livres écrits j'accumule pour plus tard quand je serai grand vieux mes livres écrits il n'y aura qu'eux alors les lirai et saurai qui j'étais quand vivais ce que j'ai vécu quand étais comment la vie ai traversé dans quel corps et quel péril je fus ce que je fis et quand quel jour je fis cela pourquoi dans mes livres accumulés tout sera n'aurais fait que cela et c'est pourquoi je prends garde aujourd'hui à ce que j'écris puis de ne rien faire d'autre qui m'échapperait et ne serait conséquemment Pas retenu par mes lignes de traîne dont chaque lettre est un hameçon courbe choisi pour se crocheter dans la lèvre de mes sourires rictus grimaces et me ferrer comme a poisson à chaque instant de ma vie tout frétillant dans le soleil mon dos argent mon ventre blanc mon œil Extraordinairement gros si bien que ma tête est dedans with la bille de mon cerveau et voilà ainsi continue d'accumuler cumuler mes livres écrits pour bien plus tard quand serai grand vieux vieillard et bien curieux de me connaître les lirai with mon gros œil chassieux et mon cerveau dedans noyé et n'y comprenant rien alors comprendrai tout.
Eric Chevillard, “Dix-huit tentatives de poésie précédées d'une note d'intention en bon français,” Fixxion 18
I collect my written books for later, when I am grown and old, my written books, there will only be them, then I will read them and know who I was, when I lived, what I lived, when I was like what, the life in which body, and what danger I survived, I was what I did and when on which day I did it, why everything will be in my collected books, I would have done only that, and that is why today I pay attention to what I write and that I do nothing else that slips from my grasp and is consequently not held back by my trailing lines, each letter of which is a curved hook chosen to snag on the lip of my smile, my grinning grimace, and catch me like a fish in every moment of my life, wriggling in the sun, my silver back, my white belly, my exceptionally large eye, so that my head is in it with the sphere of my brain, and so it goes on with the accumulation of my books that I have written, to read later, when I am grown, old, an old man And being curious about myself, with my big, hunting eye, I will read and drown my brain in it, and then, understanding none of it, I will understand everything.
La chambre à brouillard On the one hand, it fits into an indefinite and ambiguous image of fog, but on the other hand, it does not follow any scientifically inspired method of observing reality or proving processes that are not immediately obvious. The cloud chamber is a metaphor for the literary approach that the narrator struggles with in the book.
And I don't have anything to go by before I buy anything.
Eric Chevillard La chambre à brouillard (2023).
I've got my equipment for betraying or affronting all the characters! It's not meant to be on my oscilloscope or on my trebuchet.
This is a particulate detector that makes me faudrait.
Une chambre à brouillard.
Wilson's cell or Langsdorf cell can be seen by the observer as much as possible.
At the moment the room in the glass bullion is indistinguishable from the occurrence.
I hesitate.
And I don't know which retailer I should buy from.
And I thought I was prepared for all eventualities. I don't need my oscilloscope or my precision scale.
I need a particle detector.
A cloud chamber.
The Wilson or perhaps the Langsdorf nebula chamber would allow me to observe the muon in peace and quiet.
Unless Glaser's bubble chamber would be better suited for this purpose.
I hesitate.
For the misty image does not signify a worldlessness of art for art's sake, not mere play, but a twofold poetics that leads into the world and out of it. In Chevillard's L'Auteur et moi (2012) one novel intersects with another as the author attempts to maintain control over his work, while parts of the text take on a life of their own. Here, the transformation of form is rendered into a nebulous image that merges both directions of writing:
Mais pour acheter ce rideau, il faudrait sortir encore, s'aventurer dans les rues, entrer en relations avec un commercial (pour rompre tout commerce), s'inquiéter aussi auprès de celui-ci de la tringle, car tout se tient en ces matières, le rideau, la tringle, l'un without the other hand: the ride without the tringle is a fire on a champagne devasté, a paysage of ruins and brouillard people of fantômes vagues, tandis que la tringle without the rideau you embroche comme a poulet derrière la vitre de la rôtissoire. The ensemble does not have the first condition to retire from the world so that it exposes itself to the extremes of travel and grotesqueness, a tringle with a ride so far from the bras, and there is no point of retreat in the isolation possible without this humiliation publique préalable.
Eric Chevillard L'Auteur et moi (2012)
But to buy this curtain, you would have to go even further, venture out onto the street, make contact with a merchant (to cancel the deal), and also take care of the curtain rod from him, because everything is connected in these things: the curtain, the rod, one without the other is inconceivable. The curtain without the rod is a collapsed sky over a devastated field, a landscape of ruins and mist populated by vague spirits, while the rod without the curtain impales you like a chicken behind the glass of a rotisserie. It seems, then, that the first prerequisite for withdrawing from the world is to first expose oneself to it in an extremely conspicuous and grotesque manner, with a curtain rod under one's arm.
In the cloud chamber, the atoms and their radiation become, in a sense, "narratable," vividly tangible for a brief moment. Dino Egger Albert Moindre, as biographer, will invent Dino Egger and, like Jean Paul's schoolmaster, temporarily bring him to life through writing. At one point, the question of ontology is even parodied: "Why was there Dino Egger and not nothing?" 19
On the other hand, when the quills were there, they had to write down the figure in the same venue and pour, so that they had the sabots of the horse, the gerbes d'eau que soulèvent l'étrave de sa goélette retombent dans une disposition nouvelle, harmonieuse, formment des plis moins chiffonnés, quelque chose sourit qui grimaçait dans l'ordonnancement des infimes particules solids ou liquides qui constituent la surface de ce globe terraqué, the assemblage obéit enfin à un plan d'ensemble comme si chacun de ces atomes était a grain de blé semé d'une main sûre, à la volée avec all other mais considéré cependant pour lui-même, comme un détail de première importance.
Eric Chevillard Dino Egger (2011)
One wouldn't believe that the keels fare better upon impact with the bottom, yet everything flying beneath his horse's hooves, the sheaves of water kicked up by the bow of his schooner, fall back in a new, harmonious arrangement, forming less rippled waves; something smiles that has grinned in the arrangement of the tiny solid and liquid particles that make up the surface of this globe; it is as if each of these atoms were a grain of wheat, sown with a sure hand alongside all the others, yet still considered on its own, as a detail of the utmost importance.
We are all inhabitants of this inhospitable island. Choir In the novel of the same name, they want to leave but are held captive by sand and mud, stuck up to their necks like a Beckett character—a scene full of gloom and humor. The fog is in Choir The basis of a dark anthropology: in the fog, man is without social control and not guided by morality.
Nous vaquons in the raz-de-marée à nos petites affairs. Mais quand le brouillard recouvre Choir, alors nous nous livrons sans retenue aux activités honteuses que le grand jour condamne. Et s'il se lève d'un coup, nous nous surprenons les us les other le pantalon aux chevilles.
Eric Chevillard Choir (2010)
We go about our small business in the tidal wave. But when the fog lies over Choir, we shamelessly indulge in the shameful activities condemned by the great day. And when it suddenly lifts, we catch each other with our trousers around our ankles.
Like in Dante's circle of hell, on this island the fog will obscure reality, rob it of its form, and plunge the inhabitants into doubt and despair:
Nous vivons entourés d'énigmes. Come a brouillard corrosif, the mystère ronge toute chose à Choir. Point d'angles ici, ni de contours ni d'arêtes, les réalités les plus massives même sont mangées par l'ombre et le doute. Et pourtant, Gilooly seul se pose la question importante, question qui le taraude et que chacun de ses gestes formule obscurément: aire ou piste?
Eric Chevillard Choir (2010)
We live amidst riddles. Like a corrosive fog, the enigmatic permeates everything on Choir. Here there are no corners, no contours or edges; even the most solid realities are consumed by shadows and doubts. And yet, only Gilooly poses the crucial question, a question that torments him and that darkly shapes every gesture he makes: Surface or trace?
The longing to escape is unfulfillable, except in the mythical story of Ilinuk, who was once able to leave the island. The atoms float in the vacuum, and Amaury da Cunha compared this gesture to Thomas Bernhard, in whose work language also repeatedly clashes with the subject matter, causing new words to spring forth: "Words are powerless against the gravity of the world, but they have the power to take its place through an act called poetry." 20 In fact, the construction of cloud chambers is based on a temperature difference that is related to images of height and depth:
Nuage pulvérulent sur lequel nous cherchons sans grand success à assurer notre équilibre, poignée de sable jetée au vent, si Choir n'est en effet rien d'autre que this nappe de poussière – des atomes de boue – flottant dans le vide, alors les corps qui le traversent rejoignent sûrement le ciel au-dessous et nous nous fourvoyons en tâchant de ne plus peser, de nous alléger au maximum, en rêvant d'ascension, d'assomption, en visant les hauteurs.
Eric Chevillard Choir (2010)
A dust cloud on which we try with little success to keep our balance, a handful of sand thrown into the wind, if Choir is really nothing more than this layer of dust – atoms of mud – floating in the vacuum, then the bodies passing through the void will surely reach the sky below them, and we go astray if we try to weigh nothing anymore, to make ourselves as light as possible, if we dream of ascending, of being admitted to heaven, if we strive for the heights.
The narrator states that the prehistory of humankind ends with the invention of writing. Prehistory The narrative ends precisely at the moment the story begins. Here, a former archaeologist is appointed guide to the prehistoric Palus Cave and its wall paintings, and he doesn't fit the uniform of the previous guardian, Boborikin.
Je n'ai encore rien fait depuis que je suis là, selon eux, Boborikine mort est plus actif que moi, plus efficace, the demeure au moins fidèle à sa vocation. Il se soucie de l'avenir de la paleontologie. The change in molecules. It is mineralized. These rests contain déjà moins de carbone 14 and this diminution progressive nous permettra de faire régulièrement le point. Ainsi nous nous laisserons pas abuser par les accélérations ou les lenteurs de l'Histoire: the suffira de procéder à l'examen scientifique des ossements de Boborikine pour connaître l'heure et nous situer précisément dans le temps. Car, you pourrait que je vous l'apprenne, the dead redoutée survives quarante mille ans au moins après la constatation du décès, lorsque nos derniers atoms de carbone 14 sont éliminés. Alors seulement nous cessons d'émettre des radiations et nous sommes fixés sur le sort de notre âme. Que Dieu, ce jour-là, accueille Boborikine en sa sainte garde.
Eric Chevillard Prehistory (1994)
I haven't done anything since I've been here. They say that dead Boborikin is more active and efficient than I am, and that at least he remains true to his calling. He cares about the future of paleontology. He exchanges molecules. He mineralizes himself. His remains already contain less carbon-14, and this gradual decline will allow us to take regular inventory. Thus, we will not be deceived by the acceleration or the slowness of history: it will be enough to scientifically examine Boborikin's bones to know the time and to place ourselves precisely in time. For, I could tell you, the dreaded death occurs at least 40.000 years after the official determination of death, when our last carbon-14 atoms are extinguished. Only then do we cease to emit radiation, and the fate of our soul is sealed. May God take Boborikin into his sacred care on that day.
Chevillard's can certainly be read as ecofiction. Sans l'orang-outan, Malay for "the forest person," and a caretaker looks after the last pair, Bagus and Mina, and with their disappearance, humanity will be abandoned, the earth depopulated. The dust and the vapor here form an ethos of human existence between grounding and dispersion:
Nous puisons autant de sable que d'eau dans nos puits. Nous le filtrons à travers ce meme écru fabric, très rêche, dans lequel nous taillons nos clothes, pantalons larges, courtes tuniques sans col, taille et modèle uniques, sur quoi nous enfilons un manteau de laine de yack, avec ou sans Manches, quand vient l'hiver.
Eric Chevillard Sans l'orang-outan (2007)
Nous disons sable, mais c'est poussière, poussière grise, impalpable, qui pénètre toutes les épaisseurs de linge et notre peau même en est couverte, imprégnée. On pourrait se croire modelés dedans, constitués de ces atomes liés par le hasard des Rafales et des tourbillons qui se pareront de même à la first occasion, à la faveur d'un autre hasard, d'une autre tempête dispersant notre être comme une fumée. Le vent peut-être alors nous emportera-t-il ailleurs, loin d'ici ?
Mais lorsque nous consentons à cet éparpillement, il n'en est soudain plus question, au contraire, le sable s'insinue sous nos clothes, dans nos cheveux, dans nos poches, notre corps s'alourdit encore, comme pris dans une gangue de boue, de nouveaux atomes s'y agrègent qui tennent au sol par tous leurs crochets. Tels sont les liens puissants qui nous attachent à ce pays.
We extract as much sand as water from our wells. We filter it through the same rough, raw material from which we tailor our clothes: wide trousers, short, collarless tunics, unique in size and pattern, over which we wear a yak wool coat in winter, with or without sleeves.
We call it sand, but it's dust, gray, intangible dust that permeates every layer of our clothes, and even our skin is covered and saturated with it. We might think that we are formed within it, made of atoms bound together by the randomness of gusts and eddies, only to separate again at the first opportunity, by another random event, another storm, scattering our being like smoke. Perhaps the wind will then carry us to another place, far away from here?
But if we allow this dispersal, suddenly it's no longer an issue; on the contrary, the sand creeps under our clothes, into our hair, into our pockets, our bodies become even heavier, as if trapped in a layer of mud, new atoms bond with it, clinging to the ground with all their hooks. These are the powerful bonds that bind us to this land.
This arc of tension is tragic and comic, like Crab, who cannot penetrate the fog and is always unlucky anyway:
– C'est toujours sur moi que ça tombe, dit Crab, réellement affligé, parlant de la pluie. Corn crab n'a jamais eu de chance. The aim is to define the personality of Crab, which tends to confuse, according to the main character, on the other hand there is a danger of instability, a laid-back effect, a nostalgia that runs, a bêtise impénétrable, sa lucidité tranchante, son intégrité morale et physique, la beauté régulière de ses traits, pour insister sur sa malchance, durable, acharnée, quotidienne et dominicale, car c'est toujours lui que le froid engourdit, que le feu brûle, et s'il est en ce monde quelqu'un à qui le brouillard dissimule toutes choses, qui va souffrir de la soif just in the desert, here you go, you'll have a chance to see the Crab, you'll have the face of the Crab that rides when the weather passes, you'll have the facultés that you're looking for, and the man you'll have to drink a day, you'll be back again, encore Crab, desservi par le sort jusqu'au bout, victime une dernière fois de sa malchance.
Eric Chevillard A ghost (1995)
“It always falls on me,” said Crab, truly distressed, referring to the rain. But Crab had never been lucky. If one insists on defining Crab’s character, whatever one’s perspective, by his main trait, one will forget his dangerous instability, his terrifying ugliness, his resentful nostalgia, his impenetrable stupidity, his razor-sharp clarity, his moral and physical integrity, the even beauty of his features, to emphasize his bad luck—persistent, dogged, day in and day out, for he is always the one whom the cold numbs, whom the fire burns, and if there is anyone in this world to whom the fog hides all things, who will suffer thirst even in the desert, it is this person, and the man who will one day die will be Crab again, battered by fate to the very end, falling victim to his bad luck one last time.
Fog is both a torment and a blessing; it also enables invention and identity change, as in Demolish Nisard:
Mes lacets se dénouent sans cesse, dirait-on — ce sont les brins d'herbe deux par deux que je rattache: j'aime le brouillard où toutes les confusions se trouvent justifiées. L'invisible vache qui remue la queue dans un pré, c'est bien moi qui époussette meubles et mes étagères avec a plumeau, and voilà accomplie la corvée que je repoussais depuis des semaines. Mais surtout, j'aime le Brouillard parce qu'il fait disparaître le monde de Nisard: miracle qui vaut les apparitions divines. Dès lors, nous sommes obligés d'inventer. You will benefit from having a jacket to change your identity. Je suis l'araignée de this toile immense. This is where my apartment comes from.
Eric Chevillard Demolish Nisard (2006)
Parfois, bien sur, je meurte à quelque chose de major, ou de pointu, qui solid ensemble, qui résiste — ainsi l'amputé sent encore son membre fantôme: mes nerfs ont la mémoire du monde anéanti. Déplaisantes sensations qui passeraient si le brouillard voulait tenir… RÔARRR… You avez entendu comme moi ce rugissement. Où sommes-nous? The geography is a notion dépassée. Nous quittons aussi l'époque. Nous nous perdons dans le temps… TUDIEU !… Do you have anything entendu?
My shoelaces keep coming undone, it seems—it's the blades of grass I tie together in pairs: I love the fog, in which all confusion is justified. The invisible cow wagging its tail in the pasture is just as much me, dusting my furniture and shelves with a feather duster, and suddenly the work I've been putting off for weeks is done. But most of all, I love the fog because it makes Nisard's world disappear—a miracle that surpasses all divine appearances. From then on, we are forced to invent something new. I take every opportunity to change my identity. I am the spider in this vast web. Everything caught in it belongs to me.
Sometimes, of course, I encounter something hard or sharp that seems solid, that resists—that's how the amputee still feels his ghost limb: My nerves carry the memory of the destroyed world. Unpleasant sensations that would pass if the fog would hold… ROARRR… You heard the roar just as I did. Where are we? Geography is an obsolete concept. We are also leaving time. We are losing ourselves in time… TUDIEU! Goddammit!… Did you hear that?
In many respects, La chambre à brouillard Both easily and difficult to access, a work for insiders familiar with his previous writings, but perhaps also for a first reading without any prior knowledge. This also applies to the author, who remains in search of his subject. This short (Chevillardian) review has explored the imagery of fog and the fog chamber as a poetics principle in Chevillard's work. It is also intended to express the astonishment that this author has remained a well-kept secret in the German (and French) literary world. Read Chevillard; it's not too late.
Bourgeonner.
Eric Chevillard La chambre à brouillard (2023)
Croître in the directions inconsistencies.
Expérimenter des états nouveaux, liquide, gazeux.
Powdered!
The voice réduit à lui-même, suffocant dans son œuf de Pierre, ramené à ses médiocres desseins originalels.
Or nous savons à quels fourvoiements ces desseins l'ont conduit.
The prize is also not paid and consequent.
Avec my, the all-faire mieux, the all-ait revoir his ambitions à la bull market, the avait l'étendue du ciel au-dessus où se déployer, de bord à bord. It's all ready to eat and get the thunder to measure.
Le voici tout rétracté dans un coin sombre, attaqué par le doute.
Il s'est caché sous une pierre. Il attend the death in the tomb.
Son goitre faseye à tous les souffles.
Sa tige ploie.
Son genou flanche.
Il a le groin en tire-bouchon.
A barbe de mousse le mange all entier.
Les regards glissent sur lui sans le comprendre, sans le voir peut-être.
Il se perd dans les ombres.
Il se cherche dans les brumes.
Le vent lui vole sa plainte.
Est-il trop tard déjà ?
To bud.
Growing in unknown directions.
Experimenting with new states, liquid, gaseous.
Pulverized!
Here he is reduced to himself, suffocated in his stone egg, and thrown back on his original, mediocre goals.
We know what misguided paths these plans have led him down.
Whatever price we paid for it.
With me, he would do better; he would raise his ambitions; he had the vastness of the sky, over which he could spread from edge to edge. He would expand and finally reach his full potential.
Here he is, completely withdrawn in a dark corner, attacked by doubts.
He hid under a stone. He is waiting in the grave for death.
His crop gasps with every breath.
His torso bends.
His knee is flabby.
It has a corkscrew-shaped snout.
A mossy beard completely engulfs him.
Their eyes glide over him, without understanding him, without truly seeing him.
He disappears into the shadows.
He searches for himself in the mists.
The wind steals his lament.
Is it already too late?
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- Les Inrockuptibles, October 15, 2003.>>>
- See, on the occasion of Anne Weber's translation of the book: Jürgen Ritte, “Grimm and Grimm reloaded”, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25. February 2016.>>>
- Gérald Froidevaux, “Picnic of the Reformers”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 7, 1996, p. 40.>>>
- Éditions de Minuit: « This is not a book editor. C'est an éditeur d'auteurs », Nouvel Observateur, June 25, 2021. For the discussion, see Wolfgang Asholt, The French novel of the eighties (Darmstadt, 1994).>>>
- “En astronome, une nebuleuse est un corps céleste dont les contours ne sont pas nets, et les contours du corps de Crab sont de plus en plus flous, ses membres inconstants, et ses sens aléatoires.” Jean-Baptiste Harang, “Chevillard dans sa coquille”, Libération, 18. February 1993.>>>
- Joseph Hanimann, “Looking Over God’s Shoulder”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 26, 2015.>>>
- "The quadripartite composition of the novel represents the essentials in the description of the subatomic parts. Ainsi, « positions », « vitesse », « énergie » et « temps » constituent-ils les titres des découpes du texte qui retracent les points phares de la destinée d'Heisenberg de 1922 à 1945 ; la game « positions » (LP : 9-56) se structure en quatre séquences: « Position 1: Heligoland » (11-19) ; « Position 2: hors de la demeure, sur un champ de ruines » (21-32) ; « Position 3: in the room in the brouillard » (33-41) and « Position 4: between the possible and the real » (43-56). The existence of the savant is also envisaged in such a way that it is a part of the room in Brouillard14, ce dispositif destiné à observer la trajectoire des électrons. Dans l'ensemble du récit biographique, le lecteur ne découvrira que des positions, c'est-à-dire des moments forts et des états d'âme, nullement une destinée prévisible ou logique dans le chaos du siècle. “C’est ainsi les savoirs métabolisent le romanesque biofictionnel.” Isabelle Bernard, « Éthique et mystique scientifique dans The principle (2015) by Jérôme Ferrari », Itineraries 2017-1/2018, released on February 15, 2018.>>>
- Matthias Hennig, “When a bomb exploded at Farm Hall”, Neue Zürcher ZeitungNovember 17, 2015.>>>
- "Car tout cela est bien mystérieux - le brouillard du titre n'était pas là par hasard, on l'avait laissé entendre. A étrange créature, dont l'espèce sera d'autant moins précisée qu'elle semble se modifier au fur et à mesure que le temps passe, Apparaît. Elle a été confiée au narrateur qui en a fait son "subjet d'étude", sujet sur lequel il a en principe les pouvoirs d'un maître, mais at-on oublié que la relation entre maître et esclave, encore que cet être-ci ne travaille pas, était souvent plus complexe qu'on l'avait anticipé ? Plus the narrateur croit le connaître, plus the échappe à l'entendement. Il disparaît, ne révèle rien de ses véritables besoins, échappe à toute définition définitive, gonfle et rétrécit, entretient a relation suspecte with Nine qui pourtant ne l'appréciait guère au début, bref, met la pagaille bien au-delà de la cave où il est, en principe, retenu.” Pierre Maury, “L'étrange créature d'Eric Chevillard”, Le Soir, 2. March 2023.>>>
- On the ceiling (1997) Choir (2010) Dino Egger (2011) Du hérisson (2002) Demolish Nisard (2006) Just heaven (2015) L'Auteur et moi (2012) L'Explosion de la tortue (2019) The posthumous oeuvre of Thomas Pilaster (1999) La Chambre à brouillard (2023) La Nébuleuse du crabe (1993) Le Caoutchouc, décidément (1992) Le Démarcheur (1989) Le Désordre azerty (2014) Le Vaillant petit tailleur (2003) The absences of captain Cook (2001) Monotobio (2020) Mourir m'enrhume (1987) Red ear (2005) Palafox (1990) Prehistory (1994) Ronce-Rose (2017) Sans l'orang-outan (2007) A ghost (1995)>>>
- Wings (2005) Authorized comment on the squelette situation (2007) Dans la zone d'activité (2014) Départs (2011) Detartre et désinfecte (2017) In war (2018) En territoire cheyenne (2009) Iguanes et moines (2011) Portrait craché du romancier en administrator des affaires courantes (2004) Peloponnese (2013) Scalps (2004) Zoologiques (2020)>>>
- Pour Éric Chevillard, ed. by Dominique Viart, Pierre Bayard, Bruno Blanckeman and Tiphaine Samoyault (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2014). Éric Chevillard in all his états, ed. by Olivier Bessard-Banquy and Pierre Jourde (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015).>>>
- Niklas Bender, “Hairy Secret: Éric Chevillard’s Portrait of an Eccentric”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 14, 2013, 32.>>>
- Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa, “Eric Chevillard: six subjects en quête d'auteur”, nonfiction.fr, 2. March 2023.>>>
- “Il n'est pas nécessaire d'avancer très loin dans la lecture pour comprendre que le sujet⁶ du livre, en une ultime boucle réflexive, n'est, au final, rien d'autre que lui-même, c'est-à-dire que l'œuvre impressionnante que l'auteur a édifiée lentement et sûrement, forte aujourd'hui d'une quarantaine de livres.” Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa, “Eric Chevillard: six subjects en quête d'auteur”, nonfiction.fr, 2. March 2023.>>>
- “If the personnage d'Oleg lui-même disparaîtra en effet complètement de la deuxième partie du récit (la plus longue des trois), l'intrigue police dont il occupe le center en première partie ne cessera pas de constituer, sous une forme sublimée, l'un des principaux ressorts diégétiques: comme nous le verrons, il s'agira alors, non plus de mettre la main sur Oleg en cavale, mais de retrouver la trace du sujet³ qui s'est enfui après avoir malencontreusement échappé à la vigilance du narrateur Ainsi qu'il était prévisible, c'est Oleg in person qui, dans la troisième partie du livre, viendra remettre au narrateur pour la seconde fois le fugitif, en s'acquittant par là même définitivement de sa dette.” Hicham-Stéphane Afeissa, “Eric Chevillard: six subjects en quête d'auteur”, nonfiction.fr, 2. March 2023.>>>
- “[…] les texts de Chevillard mettent volontiers l'institution littéraire en scène, dans ses fondements et ses à-côtés, et s'amusent de ses tics, de ses poses et de ses travers.” Denis Saint-Amand and Léa Tilkens, “Ce qu'Éric Chevillard fait à la critique académique”, CONtEXT, October 9, 2017.>>>
- Eric Chevillard, “Dix-huit tentatives de poésie précédées d'une note d'intention en bon français”. Fixxion: revue critique de fixxion française contemporaine, no. 1 (mars 2012): p. 106-113.>>>
- "Pourquoi y eut-il rien plutôt que Dino Egger? Voilà la question et, pour y répondre, il faudrait pouvoir qualifier le rien, avancer que peut-être le rien est le fruit de la réticence et que s'il n'en allait pas ainsi - si le rien n'était Pas seulement la perspective ouverte en vain devant l'âne rétif –, il serait inconcevable et donc sans réalité pour notre intelligence comme pour nos sens. Il n'y aurait pas de rien, s'il n'était défendu par cette résistance qui le constitue exclusivement, s'il ne tenait ainsi à rien, serait aussitôt conquis, comblé, occupé. The serait occulté, rempli, encombré. Voyez ce qu'il advient d'un placard ou d'un tiroir vide. Le rien défini comme pure absence de choses porte un other nom, l'effroi ou le vertige. Le rien est donc plutôt le refus des choses après examen. An examen succinct, dégoûté, a examen malgré tout, an estimation. Non, non, non et non, this means the rien, without passion, without color, but with a ferment that is not attentive to the notion of nothing. No, c’est non.” Eric Chevillard, Dino Egger.>>>
- “Eric Chevillard takes the tour of force that he also encounters in the books of Thomas Bernhard: he finds himself in a mechanical position that reposes the development of his own subject against the language but without any problem, which provokes the perpetual imprisonment of the mots. Choir is bien This motif is inépuisable qui défie le langage, mais dont il n'arrive jamais à bout: les mots sont impuissants face à la pesanteur du monde, mais ils ont le pouvoir de se substituer à lui par une action qui s'appelle poésie.” Amaury da Cunha, “Une île à contre-courant”, Le Monde, 26. February 2010.>>>
