beaN Sprouts

Almost exactly one year ago, I started reading M-E Nabe's book L'Homme qui arrêta d'écrire, if you remember.  

When we went to England and had the 2nd volcano incident which kept us there longer than we'd anticipated, I forgot to bring the book back, after only reading 155 of the 686 pages.

I got it back a few months ago, but by then I'd started and finished many other books.  I thought this would have a negative effect on my reading of the beginning of Nabe.  

When I started to read it two days ago, from page 155, I was surprised to find out I was still with the story, I still remembered what was going on when I'd last read that page, and the flavour or ambiance of the last scene I'd read was still present, fresh in my mind's heart.

Then I reached page 157, and a paragraph caught my attention so much that even now, ten pages later, I can't forget it and keep going back to it every now and then.

This doesn't happen all the time with me, so rillly, I must share.

Since it's in French...   I translated it.   It does not do justice to the original, but thankfully the ideas are more important here than the style -- even if that is an absurd thing to say about Nabe's work.  I hope he doesn't read this blog.  -smile-

Without further D.O.A.--

*****

"On a table, serving as a pedestal for the oeuvre, several dishes overflowing with food are exhibited.  The hiccup is that everything is rotten.  The strength of contemporary artists’ swindle is they adapt their vision of the world to their personal insufficiencies.  They replace the act they cannot accomplish with the position of no longer having to accomplish said act.  There are bits of cheese, of meat, and vegetables in bulk.  The artist waited for the lot to be in a state of advanced decay to present it to a public avid for novelty.  An event is always deemed superior to the thing itself.  Comments about an oeuvre’s standing allow one to avoid having to ask questions concerning its quality.  There is purée dripping from the table.  The act of exhibiting a piece exempts one from actually making an oeuvre.  They all find good reasons for not knowing how to create real eternal beauty.  The smell is pungent, especially the mushrooms climbing on the lump of terribly mature maroilles cheese.  It’s the metaphor about the guy who points at the moon with his finger.  In the old days, the imbecile was he who looked at the finger instead of at the moon, today, it is the one who looks at the moon.  The moon’s corny, modern is looking at the finger. Modern is exhibiting the finger.  Modern is giving the moon the finger."