Dust to Dust

Am reading a French novel - its great to be able to read in French - André Langevin’s Poussière sur la Ville which is quite introspective. I can identify with both the narrator and lead character, who is constantly worried about what the others might say, and his wife, who doesn’t care a whit what others say and is constantly described by her husband as ‘puerile’. Its funny how one word seems to capture and repeat itself in the novel, not the thematic ‘poussiere’ (dust) but ‘las’ meaning ‘weary’, and a certain ‘lassitude’ does seem to come over the narrator who seems too weary of life. Here is a passage from a part where the narrator is stranded and overwhelmed:

« Mais la boule dans l’estomac ne se dénoue pas, elle se resserre sur elle même. Rien à craindre, elle ne perfora rien. Il en émane de grande ondes chaudes quie me remuent en entrailles, comme lorsqu’on pense à la mort, la nôtre ».



Roughly translated,

But the ball in the stomach does not unwind, its rolls upon itself. Nothing to worry about, it will not perforate anything. It rises in large, warm, waves that stir one’s entrails, like when one thinks of death, one’s own.



The last line about death really got to me. Death is that frightening abysmal thought. I remember in philosophy, we came across the Nietzsche quote about ‘staring into the abyss so long that the abyss stares back at you’. Myriam explained it further. Its like staring into the void of our existence till one is overcome by it. This nausea that Langevin talks about, or perhaps vertigo seem likely reactions. In the same book, Langevin calls it the most selfish act (“le plus égoïste de nos actions. Il ne saurait être question d’épargner les survivants”). No thought is given to sparing the survivors.