The kintsugi is a technique which consists in restoring porcelain or ceramic objects with a lacquer sprinkled with gold. Beyond its aesthetic function, this Japanese art of the XVand century’s philosophy is to value the past and the faults of the object: “We are happy to bring back to life what was doomed to annihilation. We mark the imprint of the break. We show it. It’s the new life that begins. »
In The patience of traces, where Jeanne Benameur (Those who leave) delicately sketches the portrait of a psychoanalyst, the kintsugi serves as a metaphor for resilience and reconciliation with oneself. “You can gamble a lifetime on something broken. He knows something about it. »
After dropping a bowl of earthenware, Simon Lhuman (“Being called Lhuman when you’re a psychoanalyst is a shame.”) remembers his lost friendships. “He kept all these years a watercolor and a bowl. Watercolor was Louise. The bowl, Matthew. All of that is ancient history. It’s been years since it harpooned him like that. All it takes is a bowl that slips out of your hands. »
While he wanted to clean up the diaries, where he kept notes on his patients (“Take everything. Destroy everything. That would be a nice way to sort, hey.”), Simon realizes that he needs empty and think about him. “The voices of others in his office have protected him all these years. He will be silent. And he is afraid. »
From the outset, we notice that the novelist has chosen an omniscient narration, as if she wanted to fulfill the character’s wish to no longer be in speech, but in observation, contemplation. She will take the game to the point of revealing to the reader the fate of certain characters, including Lucie F., a patient whose memory haunts Simon, thus depriving him of having all the keys to understanding his own story, the impact that he had on others.
Having befriended a colleague, who introduced him to poetry and ancient Japanese clothing, he had the idea of heading for Japan. Following the advice of a friend, it will not be the Japan popular with tourists, but the almost wild one of the Yaeyama Islands. Waiting there are Madame Itô Akiko, a collector of old clothes who speak delicious French, and her husband Daisuke, a ceramist who only speaks Japanese. “He doesn’t ask for anything. Nothing is asked of him. It is a peace like he has never experienced. Gradually his head goes blank. »
With her impressionist, even Mallarméan prose, Jeanne Benameur traces with finesse the contours of this friendly triangle where silences, the unspoken and symbols replace restorative words: “Sewn fabrics. Sewn ceramics. The sewn mouth. Where the golden thread. »
Preferring short sentences with great evocative power rather than long lyrical flights, the author, who has several psychoanalyst friends, works brilliantly to marry the meanders of an analytical psyche. A psyche that searches for the right word, that formulates and reformulates each thought in order to approach a truth that has been repressed for too long. And so make peace with yourself.