Ennemonde by Jean Giono

Author:Jean Giono [Giono, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

II

WHEN MYSTERIES are very crafty, they hide in the light; shadows are merely a decoy. The Camargue is a delta, the dumping ground of a large river, a recess. Up till this point it’s been flowing, swiftly, without having the time to indulge in abstractions; it has lived. In this delta it’s at its end, it’s about to disappear into the sea, so it grows languid, it dawdles, it divides, it coils back on itself, it ruminates, hesitates, recapitulates; it examines everything that it’s carried along up till now, mixes it together, makes it rot, glories in it.

It takes everything it’s torn from its banks and makes silt and humus and sand out of it. Everything it’s killed, it strives to resuscitate; all that is dead in it, it brings back to life. The seeds it has transported so furiously: here it pets them, coddles them, makes them burst forth.

If it had done this sooner, it would have been covered with greenery; but so soon before its disappearance into the sea, the climate can no longer be of help except to willows and marsh samphire; it’s nothing but soda and salt by now.

Phantoms are the inhabitants of this broad daylight. A Camargue Hamlet would meet the ghost of his father at midday. After Christ, the religion of Christ is extolled by the sun. The sign of the cross is no longer enough to protect this vacillating region where the four elements mingle. What’s needed here is a vacillation of signs, a multiplying of grounds for hope. Alongside the sacrificing of the just, there’s a need of material for pleasure and adventure, and these are not so much the cardinal virtues that are associated with the cross, as they are sensualists and sailors. Here the cross is proud of what it has carried. The blood it has drunk does not make it feel ashamed; it lays claim to other blood; it has numerous feast days it can fill with its scent. The heart that is set up everywhere as a symbol very precisely represents the muscle and not the soul. Each clump of gorse exudes the odor of the charnel house; death wears the colors of the peacock. There are no longer any barriers between heaven and hell. The immortality of the soul is a clown making a face to entertain children; what bursts out and spreads in the light of day is the immortality of the flesh, the string of transformations, the wheel of life, the infinitude of adventures and avatars, the innumerable radiating paths of escape and of glory. The smell of decay that rises from roots and reeds is the smell of conquering warriors. In the place of faith and its tranquility, the shrines and plinths bear the sign of intelligence and of its battles.

In the sky of these gray lands whose colors have been worn threadbare by sun and salt, Lucifer-Athena twitters like a lark.

It goes without saying that a decent face is presented to the world.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.