Le chant du coq, l'aube, les chiens qui aboient, la clarté qui se répand, l'homme qui se lève, la nature, le temps, le rêve, la lucidité, tout est féroce.
If you touch the color couverture of certain books without removing it, you will have a sensation of joy.
Pascal Quignard, Les ombres errantes, chap. I
The rooster's crow, the dawn, the dogs that bark, the light that spreads, the man who gets up, nature, time, the dream, the clarity, everything is merciless.
I cannot touch the colorful cover of some books without a feeling of pain rising within me.
The Book of Hours, Latin "horarium," evolved from ecclesiastical forms of the canonical hours into private devotional books of the nobility. Pascal Quignard explores this in the new, twelfth volume of his cycle. Last Kingdom The Duke of Berry's Book of Hours serves as the starting point for the title; the patron did not live to see the posthumous completion of the richly illustrated book in the 15th century. The Latinist and learned poet Pascal Quignard began his cycle in 2002. Les ombres errantes It received the Prix Goncourt at the time, an exceptional award for this collection of 55 notes of varying lengths, including aphorisms, historical fragments, quotations, observations, and so on. The text was only translated into German by Diaphanes in 2015, and since then the author's profile in Germany has not risen significantly, not even with the title, which might have caught the attention of German ears. L'Enfant d'Ingolstadt, with reference to, among others, the fairy tale "The Willful Child" by the Brothers Grimm 1Already in Les ombres errantes Quignard ponders the project title of the kingdom:
Rancé a écrit à Retz en 1673: Tout fuit avec une vitesse effroyable.
L'autre mot de Rancé: Le temps est perdu.
Le temps human comme Royaume or le Perdu règne. These traces are very effective, with a speed that is extremely effective, even though they are emporte. En s'effaçant this vitesse fait tout tomber.
Pascal Quignard, Les ombres errantes, chap. v.
Rancé wrote to Retz in 1673: Everything is fleeing with a terrible speed.
Another quote from Rancé: Time is lost.
Human time as a kingdom ruled by the lost. Its traces vanish with a terrifying speed that sweeps us all away. By obliterating itself, speed brings everything crashing down.
His writing project has now progressed 20 years and reached the apostolic number 12, with a quiet change of publisher together with his partner from Grasset to Albin Michel. We encounter old acquaintances from his earlier books, such as Emmanuèle Bernheim or the moralist La Rochefoucauld. Quignard continues to express himself rather poetically about his writing project, yet it becomes clear that he is seeking a unique, dreamlike connection to the past, a constantly dissecting and recreating relationship between art and time.
Qu'est-ce que je cherche, tome après tome, dans Last Kingdom ? A different type of pen to the limit of the river. A form of attachment au plus pres de la letter, à la fragmentation de la langue écrite, and d'avancer en décomposant les images des rêves, en désordonnant les forms verbales, en exhumant les texts sources. Source étrange falsification a lieu dans le rêve ? Dans le dessin qui naît sous les doigts? Dans the language qui gemit ? Dans la pensée qui hallucine? Dans la musique même? What is this mysterious fantasy or appeal?
[…] The art of its origin is actively active in the past: it acts again as generations and remanies until it returns.
Pascal Quignard, L'enfant d'Ingolstadt.
What am I looking for, band by band, in Last KingdomAnother way of thinking on the border of dreams. A way of staying very close to the letters, to the fragmentation of written language, and progressing by dissecting dream images, scrambling word forms, and unearthing source texts. What strange forgery takes place in the dream? In the drawing that emerges beneath the fingers? In the language that moans? In the thoughts that hallucinate? In the music itself? What is this mysterious spirit or caller?
[…] Since its origin, art has actively testified to a present past: to an active dream that outlasts generations and reshapes what it brings back.
Even in the Happy Hours section of the new volume, Quignard continues his reflection on literature, death, and time; for him, history is not a state in itself.
Saint Jean de la Croix is not in my heart. Car il n'y a pas de moi dans la mort. Il n'y a pas d'identité dans la mort. There is no language, no part of the world that survives in respiration that is the result of a coup. Même, à l'intérieur de la langue vivante qu'on apprend si lentement sur les lèvres des mères et des aïeules dans l'enfance, tout ce que ne peuvent atteindre les mots est perdu puisque seul ce qui est souvenu peut être hélé. Et seul ce qui n'est pas sous les yeux a besoin du nom qui l'évoque. Le passé n'est que cet appel, ce n'est pas un état. Même l'Histoire n'est que cet appel, famine d'un fauve, tuterie qui ensanglante, espoir d'un répit ou d'une renaissance, désir d'un vengeur.
Même la pensée attend ; constamment attend. Elle, elle est attente de sa source. Elle n'est que le reflux des rêves qu'elle réavale et cherche à déglutir.
Puis le souffle s'évapore de chaque lettre au fur et à mesure que les characters s'écrivent.
The letter is the same as a revenant silhouette, which creates a brightly colored background in silence.
Pascal Quignard, Happy hours.
John of the Cross does not say "meum" as he dies. For there is no "me" in death. There is no identity in death. Neither a language, nor even a world, survives the breath that is exhaled there in an instant. Even within the living language that one learns so slowly as a child from the lips of mothers and grandmothers, everything is lost that words cannot reach, since only that which is remembered can be honored. And only that which is not before our eyes needs the name that conjures it up. The past is only this cry, it is not a state of being. Even history is only this cry, the hunger of a predator, bloodthirsty killing, hope for a respite or a rebirth, the longing for an avenger.
Even thought waits; it waits constantly. It is itself waiting for its source. It is merely the backflow of dreams, which it swallows again and wants to devour.
Then the breath escapes from each letter as the characters are written.
The letter is what isolates recurring outlines, which it illuminates in the depths of the soul that has returned to silence.
The 50 chapters suggest that Quignard's reflections on time do not follow a historical line, but rather that volumes, like chapters, follow a "non-linear, a-chronological conception of time that does not begin with a start, does not head towards an end, but instead spreads and traverses infinitely like a landscape, an 'open,' unprogrammed or unclosed time," as Marie Etienne puts it in her review. 2.
Chapter I
II. Mourir à l'heure
III. Les dates et les heures
IV. Les livres d'heures
V. La plage d'Ischia
VI. There are three soles in the soleil
VII. Speculum historiale
VIII. Moving
IX. Hôrai
X. L'Yonne
XI. Mogador
XII. The Belém Tour
XIII. The Water
XIV. Pavie
XV. L'anarythmétique
XVI. Saint Thérèse
XVII. Le Maître du Return aux Origines
XVIII. The ruins of Jumieges
XIX. La maison perdue
XX. La rue du presbytère
XXI. La chasse à courre
XXII. Tempe du temps
XXIII. Le recoin des souvenirs du monde
XXIV. Histoire générale
XXV. Les raies
XXVI. Les civelles
XXVII. 1955-2017
28th Anger
XXIX. La tour de Hérô
XXX. Bern
November 31
32nd Dates of Thalassa
XXXIII. The resurges
34. The Renaissances
XXXV. Les livres d'heures de l'amour
XXXVI. La Fille des cendres
37 Poems
XXXVIII. The Château de Versailles was built in 1991
39. The years 1640
XL. Les heures arrachées
XLI. Jean Bruneau
42. Lucrèce
XLIII. The literature of cryptography
XLIV. Charles de Saint-Evremond
XLV. Giordano Bruno
46th Madeleine Sablé
XLVII. Un potage aux carottes
XLVIII. La Galigaï
XLIX. Spinoza
L. Plutarch
Chapter I
II. To die at the right time
III. Days and Hours
IV. The Books of Hours
V. The beach of Ischia
VI. There are three suns in the sun
VII. Speculum historiale
VIII. Move
IX. Hôrai
X. The Yonne
XI. Mogador
XII. The Tower of Belém
XIII. The Water
XIV. Pavia
XV. The Anarhythmic
XVI. Saint Teresa
XVII. The Master of the Return to the Origins
XVIII. The ruins of Jumièges
XIX. The Lost House
XX. The street of the rectory
21st century. The driven hunt
22nd temple of time
23rd Niche of World Memories
24th Universal History
XXV. The Rays
XXVI. The Glass Eels
XXVII. 1955-2017
28th Wrath
XXIX. The Tower of Hero
XXX. Bern
31 November
XXXII. Data from Thalassa
XXXIII. The Revivals
34. The Renaissances
XXXV. The Books of Hours of Love
XXXVI. The Girl from the Ashes
37 Poems
XXXVIII. The Palace of Versailles in the snow, 1991
XXXIX. The 1640s
XL. The hours wrested from the camp
XLI. Jean Bruneau
Lucretius 42
XLIII. Literature as cryptography
XLIV. Charles de Saint-Evremond
XLV. Giordano Bruno
46th Madeleine Sablé
XLVII. A Carrot Soup
XLVIII. The Galigai
XLIX. Spinoza
L. Plutarch
In the Ombres errantes Quignard once wrote that art knows only rebirths; it is never greater than the briefest spring. Thus, the happy hours of the Duke of Berry are also woven into Quignard's notes on transience, impermanence, and renewal, here employing Pauline rhetoric:
In the room of a magnifique castle, the fire that flares up in the interior of the fireplace is immense, and a grand écran de fer natte protects the flammèches and the éclats de braises.
Deux petits chiens courent sur la table au milieu des plats qu'ils goûtent en tirant la langue soudain.
Jean de France, duc de Berry, is assis devant la table, vêtu d'une robe bleue brodée d'or, coiffé d'un bonnet de fourrure.
C'est l'hiver.
Jean de France, duc de Berry, collectionnait les Heures.
Dans son cabinet de travail, dans son palais de Bourges, il possédait quinze livres d'heures.
Heures heureuses. Heures de la rotation féconde ou fertile du temps. Calendars destinés aux prières privées de chaque jour. Des paysages, des saynètes qui étaient associées à des vœux étaient eux-mêmes associés aux instants, plus or moins brumeux, humides, profus, irradiés, que le soleil distribuait dans les different châteaux que le prince possédait. Silhouettes appear in a jacket that appeals to the season. Car chaque jour a sa couleur particulière, a son rayon de fête pour chaque aube, a son ombre de pénitence et de honte pour chaque soir, a ses larmes brusques de mort et de passion divine, de fête d'anniversaire, de résurgence, de rejaillissement.
*
Saint Paul a écrit: Vetera transierunt sed omnia nova. Les vieux ont beau vieillir, all choses sont neuves.
Le passé passe mais, comme il ne fait que partir, c'est ainsi que toutes choses surgissent neuves dans leur départ. Le passé tourne sur lui-même ; There is no room in the space; pourtant il ne pousse de racines nulle part ; Un vertige, une rotation l'animent par lesquels ce qui tombe se redresse mystérieusement. This image is beautiful. Tout rêve est abe. The image is beautiful. Toute chose neuve est nue.
Pascal Quignard, Les heures heureuses, 2023
In the hall of a magnificent castle, in front of the fire blazing inside the huge fireplace, a large, iron, woven screen protects against the flames and the splinters of the embers.
Two small dogs run around on the table among the food, tasting it with their tongues suddenly sticking out.
Jean de France, Duke of Berry, sits in front of the table, wearing a blue, gold-embroidered robe and a fur cap on his head.
It is winter.
Jean de France, Duke of Berry, collected horary texts.
In his study in his palace in Bourges, he owned fifteen Books of Hours.
Happy hours. Hours of productive or fruitful time. Calendars dedicated to the private prayers of each day. Landscapes, scenes imbued with desires, were in turn linked to the more or less misty, humid, abundant, radiant moments that the sun bestowed upon the various castles owned by the prince. Outlines that obeyed every call the season demanded. For each day has its particular color, its festive ray for every dawn, its shadow of repentance and shame for every evening, its sudden tears of death and divine passion, of birthday celebration, of revival, of reappearance.
*
Saint Paul wrote: Vetera transierunt sed omnia nova. 3 What is old passes away, but everything becomes new.
The past passes, but since it only begins to stir, all things appear new in their stirring. The past revolves around itself; it does not know how to linger in space; it puts down roots nowhere; a vertigo, a spinning, animates it, through which what falls mysteriously rises again. Every childhood is dawn. Every dream is a dawn. Every image is dawn. What is new is naked.
The philosopher Quignard theatrically explores the relationship between a philosophy of time and a narrative of time: In Chapter XL, "Les heures arrachées" (The Torn Hours), Henri Bergson embraces Marcel Proust. Proust had been his best man in 1892 when Bergson married Proust's cousin, Louise Neuburger. Then, in 1905, Bergson attended the funeral of the fifty-six-year-old Jeanne Proust at Père Lachaise Cemetery. He gently took the weeping Marcel in his arms and kissed him silently. Quignard recounts this and then explains: “Space is time that has passed into time and pours itself into it. Space is time that has taken root before it dissolves, crumbles, multiplies. […] Bergson did not embrace the lost time he could not imagine, but the sweet extension of the past—his best man—who had grown up and whose beard grew over his cheeks like a rabbi’s.” 4
As clear as the programmatic message is here, I am even more convinced by the more personal passages that Quignard weaves in, such as an allusion to his successful book. Tous les Matins du monde (The seventh string, filmed by Alain Corneau), in a magnificent winter scene at the palace of Versailles in 1991, aestheticized and ultimately out of time like the work itself:
The car's function stops in a broken position on the pavements of the long marches of the castle. C'était l'hiver. Je pénétrai prudemment dans le nuage de neige. Come all the time – come along with all the obsessions – come along in advance. Celui que j'attendais – comme tous les puissants – était en retard. The fasait très froid. All the pavés have couverts d'une couche de neige qui avait gelé. The chauffeur m'aida à gravir les degrés qui menaient à la loge de la conciergerie du château. Grace to François Mitterrand enjoyed a festival of opera, religious music, dance and baroque theater at the Château de Versailles. This allows you to have access to the elements in the couloirs without the fin. Je traversais les salles vides, accompagné seulement du porte-clés. Seul, in the immense galerie des Glaces alors totalement déserte, silencieuse, je regardais au-dehors, dans la nuit qui venait, les bassins gelés, les arbres dépourvus de feuilles sur lesquels la neige s'était curieusement accumulée et dont les branches les plus frêles menaçaient de se rompre. Comme c'était beau, Versailles sous la neige! Je preferais, à all retard, à all effect de puissance, le rêve dans l'attente. Je pensai tout à coup que les sangliers allaient sortir de la forest qui entourait le Parc Royal tant le froid était vif, tant ils devaient avoir faim. Ou les cerfs. Les cerfs inquiets, dans l'aphonie qui est propre à la neige, lorsque le froid a pétrifié entièrement le site. Où étions-nous ? Quand étions-nous? There is an impression of Japanese narration, with a minuscule in the disproportioned gallery, as well as being a grand nuage of low tourbillonnante. Étais-je à Kyoto? Étais-je à Katsura ? The nuit tomba brusquement sur toute this blancheur. Je m'assis sur un tabouret de gardien devant la nuit qui était venue envelopper le parc immense. Avec Philippe Beaussant, avec Françoise Sampermans, des années plus tôt, nous avions fait revivre the chantrerie de la Chapelle. A deux pas de la Chapelle se trouvait l'Opéra de Gabriel. C'était le dernier Opéra à machines qui restât en France du monde baroque. Tout était demeuré en l'état depuis the marriage of the pure Marie-Antoinette with the roi Louis XVI. The main du chevalier Gluck qui avait écrit le chant d'Eurydice touchait toujours ma main. Sade ignores encore les murs d'une prison.
Pascal Quignard, Les heures heureuses, “XXXVIII. Le château de Versailles sous la neige en 1991”.
The official car stopped and glided smoothly over the cobblestones along the steps in the left wing of the palace. It was winter. Cautiously, I stepped into the cloud of snow. As always—like all compulsive souls—I was too early. The one I was waiting for—like all powerful people—was too late. It was very cold. All the cobblestones were covered with a layer of frozen snow. The chauffeur helped me up the steps to the palace porter's lodge. Thanks to François Mitterrand, I had established a festival of Baroque opera, religious music, dance, and theater at the Palace of Versailles. I had the freedom to wander as I pleased in the endless corridors. I crossed empty halls, accompanied only by my key ring. Alone in the vast Hall of Mirrors, which was then completely deserted and silent, I gazed out into the coming night, at the frozen ponds, the leafless trees where the snow had accumulated in a strange way, their weakest branches threatening to break. How beautiful Versailles was in the snow! I preferred the dream of anticipation to any delay, any display of power. Suddenly I thought that the wild boars would emerge from the woods surrounding the royal park, because it was so cold and they must be so hungry. Or the deer. The anxious deer in the aphony that comes with snow when the cold has completely petrified the place. Where were we? When were we? I had the feeling of a Japanese narrative, so tiny in the disproportionate gallery, amidst the great, swirling cloud of snow. Had I been in Kyoto? Had I been in Katsura? Night suddenly descended upon all that white. I sat down on a sentry stool before the night that had come to envelop the vast park. Years ago, Philippe Beaussant, Françoise Sampermans, and I had revived the canons' chapter in the chapel. Just a few steps from the chapel was Gabriel's opera house. It was the last machine opera to remain in France from the Baroque era. Everything had remained unchanged since the marriage of Queen Marie Antoinette to King Louis XVI. The hand of the knight Gluck, who had written the song of Eurydice, still touched my hand. Sade had not yet known the walls of a prison.
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- See Mathieu Messager, “L'œuvre entêtée”, Waiting for Nadeau, September 11, 2018.>>>
- “Une conception du temps non linéaire, a-chronologique, qui ne commencerait pas par un début, qui ne se dirigerait pas vers une fin, mais qui au contraire se déploierait et se parcourrait comme un paysage, infiniment, un temps « ouvert », non programmé, bouché”, Marie Etienne, “Les grands espaces d'un solitaire", Waiting for Nadeau, August 23, 2023.>>>
- Actually: “Si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt: ecce facta sunt omnia nova.” 2 Corinthians 5:17. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come!”>>>
- "L'espace est le temps qui a passé dans le temps et s'y épanche. L'espace est le temps qui a niché avant qu'il se dissolve, s'émiette, se démultiplie. […] Bergson embrassait, non pas le temps perdu, qu'il ne pouvait imaginer, mais le doux volume du passé – son enfant d'honneur – qui avait grandi et dont la barbe était poussée sur les joues comme celle d'un rabbin." Pascal Quignard, Happy hours.>>>
