I rushed to this last trace, his last published sentence. That last sentence makes the whole book Little Ashes or the Capture, which is 217 pages, but to be as specific as she liked to be, I would say 196 pages. Proust looks pale in the face of such a dive into the inkwell. And to think that it is not a single book, but eleven books written in apnea by a swimmer in murky waters. But there is this last rocket in the night, this glow which still illuminates my child’s face, always ravished by the star. His piece of phrase being: “… and the sun was red on the horizon, like a blaze.” What a grace to put a red dot on an already sparkling work! We all dream of such a final. Should this be seen as the promise of a bright future? It is certain that there is always this mad hope with her, even if she only denounced the excessive exploitation of the most deprived. The blood of all those who are bled dry, and the sweat of the workers who go down to the coal daily. One wonders, today, with a heavy heart, who is going to speak about them, in such a firm, resolute and elegant manner. This blaze that she constantly evokes is revolt against the arrogance of the powerful. Let’s not doubt it, the fire will come if nothing changes. Marie-Claire joins in this last book, in her twirling way, James Baldwin, that of Next time the fire. Beware of these haunted writers’ prophecies. Baldwin’s foreshadowed the race riots of the 1960s and Marie-Claire’s, which includes the poor and lonely, is yet to come. We cannot enter this overwhelming work if we are not ready to walk on razors in the shallows of which we had no idea before it led us there. Dante has never been mentioned, she and I, but I know that her great friend and preface to this last book, René de Ceccaty, is an attentive reader and translator of Dante. We should reread the eleven volumes of Thirsts to feel the vertigo of a descent with no hope of return. She wrote to me on September 21 about Small Ashes who was going to come out: “I really want to offer it to you because it is a very haunted book and preoccupied with racial tensions …” She adds further: “What is happening in Haiti breaks my heart. Gide laughs at a professional tearful when he remarks that he speaks “of the heart as others speak of the nose”. Not Marie-Claire. I imagine him, in Key West, looking out to sea (Haiti is a stone’s throw away), heartbroken. A little girl who has not let herself be distracted from the pain of the world, even by this exceptional talent that inhabits her. We will keep on ourselves for a long time, like a talisman, this first sentence of our favorite book, A season in the life of Emmanuel: “Grand-Mère Antoinette’s feet dominated the room. “
Since yesterday, the sun has been at half mast in the miserable districts of the world where you can meet the Little Ashes and other out of line.
Editor’s note: In Quebec, Marie-Claire Blais had just published the novel a vsœur inhabited by a thousand voices. His novel Little Ashes or the Capture was published in France last October.