A coffee with… Laurent Gaudé | Words like an outstretched hand

In Terracesas is often the case in his work, Laurent Gaudé explores tragedies, the turning points where life goes from happiness to unhappiness in the blink of an eye. Discussion on writing and empathy.

I met Laurent Gaudé the day before the premiere of Terracespresented two evenings last week at the International Literature Festival (FIL), in a reading by Denis Marleau, with the collaboration of Stéphanie Jasmin. In this text, which is both a story and a play, the writer slips into the shoes of the victims of the attacks of November 13, 2015, in Paris, and imagines the moments just before the tragedy. He also gives voice to the relatives and first responders who discovered the scenes of carnage. A process of empathy that allows Gaudé to imagine thoughts, doubts, promises, fleeting moments of happiness and despair. The result, on stage, is overwhelming, both heartbreaking and of great humanity. A celebration of life, in a way.

“In each of us, this kind of tragedy is a fear, an anguish,” says Laurent Gaudé. Terracesit tells the story of human destiny, fragility, resilience and fraternity, too, which I have always held dear.”

Laurent Gaudé tells me that he was struck by how much the Polytechnique massacre has been kept alive in Quebec, thanks in part to fiction. “Writing and art help keep a tragedy alive,” he observes. “Fiction does its job.”

I wanted to know how the presentation of his play on the stage of the Théâtre de la Colline last May had opened a discussion on the attacks with Parisians.

“People were upset,” he tells me. “Denis and I were prepared for people to react strongly, for some to perhaps leave the room, but they really received it as a tribute to the victims, and that was my intention in writing it.”

Gaudé tells me that on the night of the premiere, there were survivors of the attacks in the room. How did they react to this very emotional text? “I think they were happy that this story was being told,” he says, “because it’s both very recent, but it’s starting to be a while ago. The survivors I’m thinking of, I think they’re starting to worry that we’re not talking about them anymore. They’re still in the trauma, the difficulty of living. But they were happy to know that there are still people to tell their story, that they haven’t been forgotten.”

The author also tells me about this Bataclan survivor, a young woman who, on the night of the opening night, testified to having been so focused on herself in the years following the attacks that she had somewhat forgotten the rest. “She told me she was upset to discover what friends, parents, and more distant circles had felt. She said that this shift in focus had done her good.”

Similarly, while touring bookstores throughout France to promote his book, Laurent Gaudé was able to see how almost all French people had a connection to this story. His text helped people to talk.

Not to mention that it allowed an exchange with French youth, adds the writer.

“When I started writing, I felt like it was a recent event, but in fact, it was almost 10 years ago! So for people who are 18 or 20, it’s a very hazy memory. They remember their parents’ anxiety, that the TV was on that night, that they may have gone to bed later than usual. A young girl told me: it did me good to have it unfolded in front of me. And she was right. To be able to enter into the emotion, you have to unfold it.”

When emotion arises

Laurent Gaudé makes no secret of it, Terraces was painful to write. “It’s hard to carry that for nine months, a year… To be immersed in these documents, in the journalists’ reports, in the testimonies. When I finished, I couldn’t imagine spending more time on this text. Its brevity echoes the brevity of the misfortune that quickly arose.”

The writer has been caught out by emotion a few times while writing. “Usually, my central challenge is to try to be fair in what I imagine these moments to be. I shouldn’t say it, but this is the first time I’ve been invaded once or twice by emotional moments. Usually, even when I’m trying to write a monologue that’s supposed to be emotional, I try to focus on how to do it. Here, I got caught up in reality.”

Empathy is one of the tools of writers. In the case of Terracesit is also an open door to dialogue, to exchange. The ability to put oneself in the other’s shoes in order to then be able to share, despite our differences.

For this reason, Laurent Gaudé wanted his text, even if it talks about the Paris attacks, to remain open. “I didn’t want to put things in the text that specifically recall Paris that night,” he explains. “The name Bataclan, the names of restaurants like Le Petit Cambodge, you don’t find them in my text. There are a certain number of undefined things so that people who come from further away can enter the story without being blocked by referents that are not theirs.”

Whether you are Israeli, Palestinian, Italian, French or Quebecois, you can find yourself in Terraces.

The writer’s challenge: to ensure that humans, regardless of their origin or history, can find themselves in the interstices of History. “I think there are things that are never told,” argues Laurent Gaudé. Journalists will meet survivors, we try to tell the central testimonies of the horror, and that’s normal, that’s the journalist’s job. It’s harder to tell all the little things that didn’t change the course of History. Who’s going to tell the story of how, for an hour, I held someone’s hand, but in the end, the person died? It’s not a heroic or powerful act, but I find it magnificent. I think literature can tell it.”

Laurent Gaudé imagines that in the suspended moment of a tragedy, there are hundreds of small gestures of appeasement, anger and non-anger, small things that are of the order of the unspeakable, but which create a space where writing can unfold. And in which we can all find ourselves.

WHO IS LAURENT GAUDÉ?

• Born in Paris in 1972
• Writer and playwright
• Winner of numerous prizes including the Goncourt des lycéens in 2002 for The death of King Tsongor, and the Goncourt, in 2004, for The sun of the Scorta
• Author of numerous novels, poems, plays and opera librettos