A truly mythological, archaic image
Jefferson is félicitait. En pleine élection, en plein virage à 360° de l'Amérique, en pleine secession du nord with le south, en pleine fièvre raciste qui des foules tiraiit le pire, on allait afficher sur le mur du poste de police le visage du tout premier officer black, un esclave affranchi qui avait Marché mille kilometers for setting up in Brooklyn. Pour en faire voir à Trump, disait-il.
Jefferson congratulated himself. In the middle of the elections, in the middle of a 360-degree turn in America, in the middle of the North-South divide, in the middle of a racist hysteria that brought out the worst in the crowds, they would hang the face of the very first Black police officer on the wall of the police station, a freed slave who had walked a thousand miles to settle in Brooklyn. To get one over on Trump, he said.
Justine Bos Eve Melville, Cantique The novel resonates with the ominous socio-political climate in the US since President Trump's second term because it uses powerful language to depict America's history of racist violence as a never-ending, recurring tragedy. The attack on Eve Melville's house—which in the novel is not only a material inheritance but also a refuge forging identity—exemplarizes the current reactivation of old stereotypes: the facade of the neighboring house is painted pitch black in an act of symbolic violence, which the residents of Brooklyn interpret as an attack on their very existence. This image encapsulates the unease of a time in which the enemies of social progress no longer merely originate from the past but actively intervene in urban spaces—anonymously, massively, and menacingly. The exaggerated metaphor alludes to real dynamics such as displacement, gentrification, and racist resentment, which have been fueled by Trump's policies.
At the same time, the book reveals the profound impact of the historical trauma of slavery and the resulting silence surrounding it on the present. In the character of Solomon Melville, a former slave whose life is marked by a mixture of silence, pride, and visceral memory, we encounter a story that defies official narratives. Eve, his great-granddaughter, feels this unbroken violence in her own body; she lives with the knowledge of a past that has never truly faded. In a political climate where the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement are increasingly undermined and where Black history is marginalized or exploited, Bo's novel is a defiant act of poetic representation. The return of history, embodied in a layer of paint on a house wall, becomes a somber allegory for a nation unreconciled with its past—and which, under Trump, seems once again ready to reopen old wounds.
Justine Bo, born in Cherbourg in 1989, has published seven novels to date, including Fils de Sham (2013) Onanism (2019) A (2022) and Eve Melville, Cantique (2024). In addition to her literary work, she has also worked as a filmmaker – for example with the short film The Beirouth Follies, which won an award in 2012. She also spent time in Palestine and Syria – experiences that informed her first novel. Fils de Sham influenced. Their books share clear similarities: a radical, fragmentary writing style, a poetic language that addresses social marginalization, violence, and trauma. Both Onanism (about a young Arab woman in France who becomes aware of her existence through the discovery of a weapon) as well as A (an autobiographically inspired novel about incest, memory and identity) deal with mechanisms of power, trauma, physical and psychological violence, and the search for self-representation.
About the origin of Eve Melville, Cantique Justine Bo tells this in an interview with France CultureThe character of Eve Melville was based on a real woman whom she once visited in Brooklyn and whose presence never left her. The name "Eve Melville" was deliberately chosen: "Eve" as the first woman, "Melville" as literally "bad town," and "Cantique" as a reference to the biblical Song of Songs—a poetic yet rebellious image. 1 This motif led her to a novel that brings together the memory of slavery, gentrification, AIDS, Black history and urban violence in New York – starting from the dramatic metaphor of a house painted black at night as an attack on identity and ownership.
Justine Bos novel Eve Melville, Cantique The play delves deep into the traumas of American history, illuminating how old wounds resurface in the present. The starting point is a seemingly mundane act of vandalism: the facade of Eve Melville's neighbor's house in Brooklyn is painted black overnight. But this external "defacement" becomes a painful trigger for Eve, whose family has been intimately connected to this house and its surroundings for generations. It reopens a wound within her, leading her back to her family's origins, inextricably linked to slavery in the Southern states. The house, once acquired by her great-grandfather Solomon Melville as a bastion of freedom and property, becomes a focal point where America's past and present collide in all their brutality. It embodies not only physical space but also the accumulated memory and ongoing struggle of a family against dispossession and oblivion.
The house is black, a black atroce, repoussant, terrifiant, a black limb, a black maladie, a black aveuglant, a black sourd, a black pendre, a black infinite qui ouvre sur une dimension inconnue du monde, a black dont on ne peut sortir, a black infernal, a noir de délice, fascinant, a noir qui aimante, a noir de mille contrastes, a black qui n'est jamais le même selon the endroit de la rue où l'on se place, noir trompe-l'œil, noir incandescent, a black qui brûle la rétine, qui la réhabilite et la sauve, un noir qui enchante, envoûte, a black vibrant, exquisite, sublime, a dark black.
The house is black, a horrifying, repulsive, terrifying blackness, a blackness of purgatory, a blackness of disease, a blinding blackness, a blackness that deafens, a blackness that makes you want to hang yourself, an infinite blackness that leads to an unknown dimension of the world, a blackness from which there is no escape, a hellish blackness, a blackness of bliss, a fascinating blackness, a blackness that attracts, a blackness full of contrasts, a blackness that is always different depending on your location on the street, a deceptive blackness, a glowing blackness, a blackness that burns the retina, rehabilitates and saves it, a blackness that enchants, beguiles, a vibrant, exquisite, sublime blackness, a blackness of the devil.
Eve's reaction to the black facade quickly evolves from personal outrage into a sweeping fight against the gentrification of her neighborhood and the resulting displacement of its long-time residents. Her anger is directed at the developers who are "disfiguring the face of her childhood," and she becomes an unwavering defender of her home and its collective memory. The novel masterfully interweaves individual fates—from torture on indigo plantations to the turmoil of the AIDS epidemic and the Brooklyn riots—with the "American mythology" that contains recurring conflicts. Through Eve's eyes, the reading experience becomes a journey through time, where the boundaries between reality, memory, and an almost archaic language, described by Bo as "song, polyphony, and dissonance," blur to reveal a deeper literary truth that transcends sociological representations.
In a Interview Regarding her novel, Justine Bo explains that she intends to... Eve Melville, Cantique Her work explores "impossible motives that defy narrative" and seeks "a different language, one inherent to literature." Her central concern is to illuminate "the question of uprooting and the gap it leaves in memory and language" by re-experiencing the experience of a Black woman trapped in the legacy of slavery through her overcoming of this through "narratives of memory."
Eve brought soul. Avide, elle boit, sans filet, sans filtre, aphone, sa voix d'outre-tombe déchiquetée par la substance, la gorge brûlée, sa langue morte, comme coupée par le mal. Eve gave no limit. Elle s'arrime au goulot et se détourne de son reflet. Elle boit pour ne pas door. S'assassiner au lieu de suicider. Elle boit par altruisme. Pour épargner sa presence, diminuer. Réduire son empreinte. Asphyxia l'ombre qui hante les trottoirs du quartier. Taire son rire réfléchi partout depuis l'enfance, sur toutes les façades de toutes les maisons du hood. Elle boit pour parler à dieu. Elle boit sans raison aucune, par instinct. Eve boit pour se perdre. Eve boit pour disparaître.
Eve drinks alone. She drinks greedily, without a net, without a filter, voiceless, her voice from beyond the grave torn by the substance, her throat burned, her tongue numb, as if severed by evil. Eve drinks without limit. She clutches the neck of the bottle and turns away from her reflection. She drinks so as not to kill. To murder herself instead of committing suicide. She drinks out of altruism. To spare her presence, to diminish it. To reduce her footprint. To smother the shadow that haunts the neighborhood's sidewalks. To stifle her laughter, which has echoed everywhere since her childhood, off every facade of every house in the hood. She drinks to talk to God. She drinks for no reason, out of instinct. Eve drinks to lose herself. Eve drinks to disappear.
The novel is an experiment with a foreign language, characterized by song, polyphony, and dissonance, which ultimately "breaks down" the story and offers its characters a new light. The author wants to convey "the full force of this visual shock"—the image she herself experienced in 2016 of a neighboring house in Brooklyn painted black overnight—which she perceived as "a truly mythological, archaic image" and as "a curse that had fallen upon the neighborhood, like an intrusion from a distant past." Her poetics are characterized by the clash and blending of multiple languages, as she pursues "a different geometry" and explores the "dimension of silence" in literature. Bo emphasizes the connection between writing and sculpture, as she is concerned with "the texture, the material of the text itself—something essentially physical."
Bo inverts the tenses: “The memories are in the present tense, but the simple preterite is the present of the narrative, a tense that testifies to something unresolved,” since the past possesses a “penetrating power” and “potential for intrusion.” It is important to her to highlight the “relief of individual life” by pushing the grand narrative down into minute detail, as in the example of the slaves’ seashell. She does not want to name the violence, but rather “reconstruct its violence, that which cannot be reformulated but must find another, analogous form” in order to “restore the intensity of this emptiness.” Bo refuses to define characters through ascribed adjectives or thoughts; instead, she focuses on the “pure description of their gestures and sensations” and works through “accumulation,” adding material almost excessively, leaving it to the reader to “shape it.” She is interested in depicting the “fragmentation of life, the chaotic life” and showing characters who are unable to write their own story, as this poses a danger in a society that demands a life story.
Bo sees family history not as a means of restoring connections, but as a way to preserve "the depth of the cuts" within it, which she describes as "being turned upside down... upside down of what language wants to produce." She criticizes the American tendency toward "discourse production," which can "stifle the intensity of violence," and positions Eve Melville as a character placed in an "untenable situation," without access to her own history, pierced by an "unapproachable and incandescent past."
Reading trails
The following discussion of some passages from the text is guided by theses:
The Black House as a catalyst for historical trauma and gentrification
The painting of the neighboring building facade black is the central trigger for Eve's struggle. Justine Bo explains that this image, which she witnessed firsthand in Brooklyn in 2016, immediately took on a "literary form" and felt like a "curse," an "intrusion of a distant past surfacing in the present." In the novel, the black paint is perceived as "apocalypse" and as a sign of the street's "violation." Eve interprets it as a targeted act of aggression: "The young white people leaving Upper Manhattan to start families in Bed-Stuy can't live in the same buildings as us, the same buildings as the poor people before them. They need a marker of distinction. The black facade signals a different presence. They don't inhabit the same walls. They're painting the buildings black to drive out the Black people." The black facade symbolizes not only displacement but also the "forgetting" and "destruction" that accompany gentrification.
Confrontation with the past through sensory experiences and material traces
The novel avoids a purely intellectual engagement with history, focusing instead on physical and sensory experiences. Eve finds a doll's head in a bathtub filled with earth, a reminder of her childhood and the idyllic companionship of dolls, something denied to her as a Black child and representing an early form of humiliation. The recurring taste of earth in her mouth connects her directly to Moon River, Georgia, and the suffering of her ancestors. Solomon, her great-grandfather, carries the indigo of the plantations on his hands and in his blood. Bo emphasizes that Eve is reminded of the legacy of slavery through "textures and colors, more immediate signs," not through a "psychological pathway." The motif of the shell, which Solomon keeps like a sacred relic, is a "silent and certain testament to history."
The unresolved nature of history and trauma – the “still outstanding” past
In the novel, the past is not a closed chapter, but rather an "unresolved time" that continues to influence the present. Bo quotes Maurice Blanchot to explain this concept: "The moment of my death, still pending." Solomon refuses to recount his experiences as a slave because he knows that "nothing that could be said could be understood." His story remains trapped within him. Eve's "rage" is the embodiment of this unresolved violence. Slavery, her "subjugation," and the "torture" of her ancestors are forces that live on within Eve, triggering her inner "struggles." The novel demonstrates that oppression did not end with the abolition of slavery but continues in new forms.
This is a picture, with tentacles that look like parasites, on Lewis Avenue on Boulevard Malcolm Monstre de colère, Eve Melville, ivre, morte, ressuscitée par la colère, mariée à sa colère, colère faite chair, vengeresse, résolue à hurler jusqu'à ce que de colère en elle, il ne reste plus rien, colérique Eve Melville, dans ses muscles et ses os, colère dans le sang. A colère against Samuel, Eve Melville, a colère contre Moses et contre Solomon, a colère contre le Sud et les children de Savannah en Géorgie, en colère If you don't know what you're talking about, in colère, Eve Melville, against this ville, against Adelstein, against Halsey Street. In the early days of the Renaissance, in the early 1955 print, the limbs of the son of Berceau placed sous the tilleul, aux boues du Moon River et aux rades de Chinatown, Eve Melville n'avait pas décoléré.
Her rage is like an octopus, its tentacles stretching from the precipice to the parasite, from Lewis Avenue to Malcolm X Boulevard, from Canal Street in the Bowery to Crown Heights and over the waves of Rockaway Beach. A monster of rage, Eve Melville, drunk, dead, revived by rage, married to her rage, rage in flesh and blood, vengeful, determined to scream until there's nothing left of the rage in her, the raging Eve Melville, in her muscles and bones, rage in her blood. Angry at Samuel, Eve Melville, angry at Moses and Solomon, angry at Peter Stephenson, at Hannah Horowitz, angry at Jefferson and his sister Jemma, who died quietly in the noise of Bergen Street, angry at the South and the children of Savannah, Georgia, angry at her mother, whom she couldn't remember, angry, Eve Melville, angry at this city, at the Adelsteins, at Halsey Street. From the day of her birth, a spring morning in 1955, from her beginnings in her cradle under the linden tree, to the mud of the Moon River and the streets of Chinatown, Eve Melville had not lost her anger.
The challenge of traditional narrative styles and the use of polyphony and dissonance
Bo rejects a linear, sociological representation of reality, opting instead for a "foreign language, characterized by song, polyphony, and dissonance" to depict the complexity of experience. The narrator, Éden Borde, is not omniscient but possesses a "blurred, distorted, fractured vision," underscoring the subjectivity of perception. The story jumps back and forth between times and perspectives, such as 1845 (Solomon's birth) and 2016 (Eve's struggle). This fragmentation reflects the shattered memory and identity of the characters. Bo intends to restore the "intensity of this emptiness" by inverting the narrative.
The subversion of the "American Dream" and ownership as freedom
For Solomon Melville, acquiring the house in Brooklyn is the pinnacle of his life and a promise of freedom for his descendants: “an autonomous state in the heart of Brooklyn, a space no one can ever take from him.” But this vision is cynically undermined as the novel unfolds. Eve discovers that her family's ownership is not legally secure and that she is threatened with expropriation. The house, once a symbol of freedom, becomes for Eve “a mirror to all that repelled her.” The temptation to sell the house for “a million dollars” exposes the commodification of memory and identity. The “American Dream” of ownership and upward mobility proves fragile and illusory, as systemic oppression persists.
Eve Melville as the embodiment of collective memory and resistance
Eve is not just an individual figure, but a projection screen for the traumas and resistance of her entire lineage. Her body bears the marks of history, from Solomon's indigo hands to the "earth" and the "dirty water" of the Moon River that she tastes in her mouth. She becomes a "priestess" and "goddess" who, with her megaphone, defends "the memory of ours" and condemns the "promoters." Her "rage" is the "matter" that propels her forward. Bo describes Eve as a figure who "stands the test" of history, whose "physical experience" replaces the narrative. Eve embodies the "scars" that refuse to be silenced.
The role of "imperfection" and fertility in Eve's identity
Eve suffers from her perceived "imperfection," particularly her childlessness, which she sees as a "flaw." Moses banishes her from the house when he catches her with Hannah Horowitz, a white woman, which intensifies her shame. This conflict between her sexual identity and societal (and familial) expectations of reproduction and "normality" profoundly shapes her life. She attempts to overcome this "imperfection" by adopting Éden and Saúl as her "children." Her relationship with Maria De la Cruz provides her with "earthly nourishment" and "ecstasy," a form of fulfillment beyond biological motherhood.
Criticism of modernity and gentrification
The novel denounces the "promoters who are disfiguring the landscape of her childhood." The influx of "young white people" and the accompanying transformation of the neighborhood into a "world for sale, a world for purchase" are perceived as an act of aggression and destruction. The new, expensive restaurants like "L'Antagoniste" symbolize cultural displacement. Eve Melville sees in this a plan to "hunt down" and "eliminate" the Black population until "all the houses are empty and they can tear them down and rebuild them without seeing the blue of the sky." The renovations create a "hellish noise."
Language and the Unspeakable – The Limits of Narrative
The author grapples with depicting the unspeakable. Solomon remains silent before the North American officials because he knows his story "could not be rendered in decent English." Eve herself is often speechless, and her rage manifests itself in physical acts such as smashing mailboxes or smashing shop windows. Bo emphasizes that she does not want to "formally restore reality," but rather "restore its violence, that which cannot be reformulated but must find another, analogous form... to restore the intensity of this emptiness." She seeks the "dimension of silence" in literature and the "representation of the self as matter." Eve's megaphone speeches reach only "imaginary crowds," underscoring the difficulty of being heard.
The ambiguity of "madness" and the search for meaning
The question "How Eve Melville went mad" is a recurring motif. Her "madness" is not portrayed as mere mental illness, but as a reaction to an unbearable reality and a form of resistance. Her actions, perceived by society as "wild" or "barbaric" (e.g., setting fire to the abandoned house or destroying the restaurant), are an attempt to regain control and defend memory. She seeks meaning in suffering but finds only "a monument to human loss." Her "madness" is also an expression of her "incurable eccentricity," stemming from the accumulated traumas of her family and her own losses (Peter, Maria).
Song
The novel's conclusion depicts the moving end of Eve Melville's story and her connection to the historically significant house number 629 Halsey Street in Brooklyn. Eve, who has long fought against the decay and changes in her neighborhood, prepares with Maria De la Cruz to leave for the West Coast, where they intend to begin a new life. Before her departure, Eve visits the house one last time, walks through familiar rooms, bids farewell to memories and, symbolically, to her past by cutting her hair and packing her suitcases. This ending is marked by a profound melancholy, but also by a transcendent gesture of acceptance. Eve Melville has physically lost the battle for her house; the "sold" sign hangs on the windowpane, and "Solomon's existence" is reduced to "things scattered between the partitions." The once powerful symbol of ownership and freedom has shattered.
The novel ends with a sense of farewell, but also of hope: as Eve and Maria set off for new shores, the memory of the house and the history it holds is preserved. Eve Melville concludes by expressing the wish that future generations may be blessed, and the narrators close the book with the repeated statement that they have “had a beautiful spring.” In the face of defeat, Eve reveals another form of strength. She comes to Éden and Saúl, who are also about to leave the United States. The scene of parting is deeply intimate: Eve, “afraid” that they are leaving, invites them to gather and form a prayer circle. She asks for a blessing for these “children” she herself did not have, and for all who come after them. In her “cantique,” she asks God not to despise her for being “a little bit black” or “imperfect” and unable to bear a child. Through these words, she elevates her own story of suffering and rejection to a spiritual message. She speaks of the memory of her ancestors and the heritage connected to the house. Despite the loss of ownership rights, the house remains a significant symbol of her family's history and struggle, as well as of the neighborhood's identity.
Dans le sang qui de ma paume à celle de Saúl circule, qui de la paume de Saúl aux doigts d'Eve coule, et depuis ses poignets gagne mes bras, je sens la force de son obstination et la rage de son cœur, je sens la terre d'elle à cet instant surgir, this terre du fond des temps, du fond de sa bouche, terre des entrailles de Solomon, régurgitée par Moses, terre diluée puis reformée en Samuel, asséchée dans la Gorge d'Eve, this terre qui en elle bouillonne et tremble, éructe par ses lèvres, une terre qui contamine tout son corps et durcit, devient solid, deviant sa langue, une terre qui à Savannah, en Géorgie, nourrit les racines des sycamores, this terre en elle parle pour nous absoudre, this terre nous signe et irradie, this terre nous délivre, et sur le radeau d'Eve nous passons sur l'autre rive seigneur, ne me dédaignez If you have a black horse, it's the sole that has a brûlée, you can't wait for it to be imparfaite, but you can't help it, I don't have anything to serve your royaume par l'aumône, I'm on the other side of the mortels and I don't have anything abandonnerai pas, seigneur, ne me voyez pas stérile, faites de moi encore votre vaisseau seigneur, je vous en conjure, à la mémoire de Solomon, au corps endormi de Moses, sur les fronts de tous les tombés du Bowery, dans toutes les veines de mes camarades empportés par le parasite seigneur, benissez ces children, menez-les auprès de vous, ces-les-les-protégez-les, ces enfants d'Amérique et d'Europe, ces enfants que je n'ai pas eus et que personne n'aura, ces enfants que la maison noire n'a pas ternis, qui n'ont pas fui devant le danger, ces Children of the risque and foil in the song sang together between the two main parts, in the supplication of the appointments, in the voice incantatoire d'Eve qui retombe, with the paupières closes for apercevoir, between the cils, on the face of the sun, on the face of the grave, etc Nos yeux à demi ouverts, with Saúl Cicero nous rions, nous rions de nous trouver ici, aux États-Unis à Brooklyn, in the district of Bedford-Stuyvesant, in the center of the rue Halsey, at number 629 qui ne lui appartient plus.
In the blood that flows from my palm to Saul's, that flows from Saul's palm to Eve's fingers, and from her wrists into my arms, I feel the strength of her tenacity and the fury of her heart. I feel the earth rising from her at this moment, this earth from the depths of time, from the depths of her mouth, earth from Solomon's entrails, spat out again by Moses, diluted and then reformed in Samuel, dried in Eve's throat, this earth that seethes and trembles within her, that vomits from her lips, an earth that contaminates and hardens her entire body, solidifies, becomes her tongue, an earth that nourishes the roots of the plane trees in Savannah, Georgia. This earth speaks within her to excuse us, this earth marks us and radiates us, this earth sets us free, and on Eve's raft we reach the other shore. Lord, do not despise me if I am a little I am black, for the sun has burned me; do not oppress me if I am imperfect, for thus you created me; do not hate me because I serve your kingdom with alms; I am with mortals and will not forsake them, Lord; do not regard me as barren; make me your vessel again, Lord. I beg you, in memory of Solomon, of the sleeping body of Moses, of the brows of all the fallen of the Bowery, in every vein of my comrades snatched away by the parasite, Lord, bless these children, lead them to you, protect them, these children of America and Europe, these children I did not have and no one will have, these children the Black House has not defiled, who have not fled from danger, these children of risk and madness in the blood that always flows between our hands, in the plea that ends, in Eve's imploring voice that fades away, I I open my closed eyelids a crack to see her solemn face between my eyelashes, her beautiful, serious face, and through our half-open eyes we laugh with Saúl Cicero, we laugh about being here, in the United States, in Brooklyn, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, right in the middle of Halsey Street, at number 629, which no longer belongs to her.
As they hold hands, Éden feels the “blood” circulating between them, the “earth” pulsing from Solomon’s “gut” to Eve’s “throat,” ultimately becoming their “language.” This is the pivotal moment of transcendence: the possession of the house may be lost, but the memory, the fighting spirit, and the essence of the family history are passed on on a deeper, physical, and spiritual level. Éden and Saúl, agnostic and atheist, “laugh,” a laughter that contains both absurdity and a form of acceptance and connection. It is laughter at the paradox of being blessed in a place that no longer belongs to the protagonist, and at the same time, the realization that something deeper than material possessions has been shared. Spring, a recurring motif of hope and new beginnings, is described here as “beautiful,” but also as fleeting. The ending is not a triumph, but a celebration of resilience in the face of the inevitable, a "crossing to the other shore" on Eve's "raft" that does not heal the story, but preserves it in its wounding.
Justine Bo herself describes in the quoted Interview Her intention with the book: “It’s not about mending the cuts with a restorative narrative that offers resilience. Rather, it’s about recomposing that narrative in such a way that the depth of the cuts is preserved. Turning it upside down… Upside down to what language wants to produce.” This reflects the complexity of the novel’s ending, which offers no easy resolution or catharsis, but celebrates the story’s lingering scars as part of a larger, recomposed narrative.
The title Song This can be justified both in terms of content and formal-poetic considerations. Justine Bo understands her novel as vocal, Hymne, CanticleShe writes in a highly rhythmic, poetic language. She uses repetitions, digressions, and a litany-like structure, giving the text a ritualistic, almost incantatory character. In this way, the language itself becomes a "cantique," a form of remembrance, lament, and resistance against the unspeakable. The publisher's announcement states: "Dans une langue incantatoire, magnifique, puissante, ce song pour Eve Melville remonte aux racines d'un pays qui rejoue sans cesse ses batailles.”
Eve Melville, Cantique This is not a novel that follows a chronological order. It is more like a musical work: it consists of motifs, contrasts, repetitions, dissonances, and a polyphonic chorus of voices, memories, and perspectives. The song, the "cantique," permeates the texture like a theme in a musical oratorio. The novel is permeated by the motif of Lament or requiems about a repressed history: the genealogical wound of slavery, violence, and dispossession. It is not a "realistic" account, but a sonically condensed repetition of the unforgettable. Eve Melville becomes—as in a liturgical act—the embodiment of a collective, often silenced history, made audible again through the act of singing or sung language. The "Cantique" is also an aesthetic response to the inadequacy of language, to the silence in the face of violence. Song replaces the spoken word—it is a formal principle.
The title names the form and at the same time the dedication: A Cantique for Eve MelvilleEve is not the singer of this song—she is the subject of the song, the addressee of a text that attempts to capture in language the unspeakable that she embodies. At the same time, she herself cannot tell the story—a central aspect of the novel and its double narrative structure: “So it is precisely the story that is imposed upon her; it’s a bit like having a film with complete desynchronization between sound and image.” The novel is a Song, because it represents a poetic, sung form of remembrance, lament, and resistance against linguistic norms. Bo writes against linear storytelling, against mere testimony, against narrative convention – and instead creates a polyphonic, sonically structured homage to a figure who cannot find a language for her own story.
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- "Ce title, c'est d'abord l'être qui a donné corps au texte et qui est le personnage principal de ce roman. C'est Eve Melville. Eve Melville, peut-être, je peux expliquer un peu d'où est venu le nom. C'est une figure qui m'a été inspired par une The woman who lived in Brooklyn for a long time, who lived in her home, and who loved Eve Melville, is also called Eve Melville, she is the first woman, and she is also Melville. Ce nom qui pourrait être un nom de lieu, mais qui en réalité veut dire la “mauvaise ville”. Et le cantique, évidemment, c'est une référence au cantique des cantiques. “The text of the Bible is very poetic, it is a reverie, a long fantasy and it is a beautiful guide in literature.” Radio France, 17. February 2024.>>>
