Michel Houellebecq declaims poems

(Bourges) Hallucinated visions and hypnotic rhythm: the writer Michel Houellebecq declaims his poems against a background of electro in a medieval palace, a UFO-spectacle of which the Printemps de Bourges has the secret.

Two atmospheres at the beginning of the afternoon of the second day of the current music festival. In the lower town, Juliette Armanet repeats one of her successes, The last day of discoin view of the evening show under the big top.

A 15-minute walk into the old town, the author of the Elementary particles waits, seated, in profile, on a small platform, for his audience to settle down.

Some 120 people responded to the banquet hall of the Palais Jacques Cœur, a 15th century building.^and century. The writer, probably the most influential of his generation, surrounded by three fellow-narrators, waits a good quarter of an hour, while the DJ and producer Traumer’s electro intensifies.

Then his accomplices take turns reciting the poems. The spectators, in the half-light, wait religiously for the moment when Houellebecq finally brings the microphone to his lips, still seated.

He launches out, in his muffled and monotonous voice: “My existence is in your hands/I am not really human/I would like a troubled existence/An existence like a pond” (excerpt from Show yourself, my friend, my double).

“Read by the master”

The staging is minimalist. During the one-hour show, the novelist will get up, in front of the monumental fireplace, to approach a microphone on foot and deliver his texts when his turn comes.

His deliciously awkward postures are there, like when he tucks his head a little into his askew shoulders or puts his index finger on his lower lip.

For the texts, we are at his place, between morbid wandering, decrepitude of the couple or brackish tertiary sector.

The music changes from hovering electro to more martial rhythms to represent the movement of a train (poem “the TGV Atlantique glided through the night with terrifying efficiency”).

The sound architect Traumer, at the back of the room, unrolls his soundtrack, punctuating the stanzas with melancholy strings or disturbing brass.

The show has its fans. “I am very moved, very touched, his poetry, these are my bedside books, and there, read by the master himself, it’s quite extraordinary”, confides to AFP Anne-Laure, 51, resident of the region.

Others are more dubious. “It was interesting, good overall, but the musical effects are quite repetitive,” comments Xavier, 25, who came with friends from Paris.

The author of the possibility of an island had already performed in 2000 in Bourges with Bertrand Burgalat (renowned artist/producer) and his musicians, following on from a necessarily offbeat beach tour.

“Quite liturgical”

This time, it all started with a young admirer, Victorien Bornéat, who became the show’s creator and co-director. In 2019, the latter created a podcast, asking his “friends to choose a poem by Houellebecq” before recording them.

“It was a little thing in my room which was not intended to have echo outside my circle of friends”, he explains to AFP. Then came the idea of ​​”doing public readings in a nightclub, a place that echoes the work of Houellebecq, like Extension of the field of struggle “.

When he talks about it to the writer for questions of rights, “the discussion begins and there, he says that he wants to go back on stage”.

A first version of the show was therefore presented last winter at the Rex Club in Paris. “A lot of people told us at the Rex Club that it was quite liturgical, we tried to further support this dimension for the banquet hall of the Palais Jacques Cœur and its architecture from the 15th century.^and “, adds the creator.

“What’s interesting about working with Houellebecq is his way of inviting people to read his poems: he doesn’t like it to be said with a lot of emphasis,” he says.