Twilight, by Philippe Claudel | A crystallization of the decade

After nine years of gestation, Dusk saw the dawn. Its author, Philippe Claudel, was in Montreal to dissect this dense story where a macabre and unhealthy dance takes place in a lost village, as soon as a priest is murdered. Between political fable, social novel and thriller, the work metaphorically crystallizes the failings of our time, in particular the disturbing process of “manufacturing the truth”.

A small anonymous town without history, in a numb empire reminiscent of central Europe a century ago, T. will inexorably sink into a sticky intrigue and an electrification of community tensions, the murder of the cleric acting as a spark. The Policeman and his Deputy (the characters are, for the most part, named by their function), a highly contrasting duo, seek to clarify the events. But on their way, they will only find shadows – on which the notables feed – which will pretend to be lights, because no one seems to attach importance to the basic truth, except to the artificial one, which suits everyone.

Even if Dusk aims to be rather universal in scope, with the erasing of spatio-temporal indices, it has been nourished by the great political and social upheavals of the last decade, during which Philippe Claudel composed it intermittently (he leads several projects simultaneously) . “When you embark on this kind of big novelistic machine, written over a long period during which rich events occur, the novel becomes a boiler that feeds on these elements”, indicates the author, passing through The Press.

His net was well-stocked: #MeToo movement, demagogues with “alternative truths” brought to power, fueling inter-religious tensions, morality unzipped by the powerful (DSK and Weinstein cases, among others)…

Central cog in the story, the mechanism for manufacturing a disguised truth much more convenient than the authentic engages to crush the scapegoat. “We have certainly already seen totalitarian regimes that have revised history, but for the past ten years, we have witnessed the shaking of this binary truth/lie pair. We replace expertise with opinion, perhaps without having yet taken the measure of the mental earthquake that this causes”, points out the novelist, deploring a backwash of obscurantism, “of which conspiracy is the new face” . It’s hard not to think about social networks either, even if Philippe Claudel practices total abstinence in the matter, which in his eyes catalyze these outbursts of untruths, favoring reactive thinking rather than one having time to forge.

Crossroads and chess

Dusk also seduced by its status as a crossroads of various literary genres, at the center of which the author likes to place himself. “I try to forge the most appropriate form for my time and my purpose”, says the man who created, as a receptacle for these fictitious events, a “fantasized Central Europe, with its folklore”, collecting clues and false roads from that the reader tries to model it on the real world.

Among the latter, we find two outstanding figures, the policeman Nourio and his deputy Baraj, modeled on the classic contrasting cinematographic couples. Armed with his little power, the first lets himself be eaten away by an unbridled sexuality, sometimes bordering on pedophilia – he thus embodies the many figures of power committing slippages in this area, in the greatest disregard of their moral obligations. Opposite pole, his deputy, stigmatized as a village idiot, counterbalances with his candor, his love of nature and simple pleasures. Some will not hesitate to martyrize him, the writer confessing that part of his past can be read implicitly there: he himself suffered acts of intimidation in his school days.

These two chess pieces and their counterparts (the Administration Reporter, the Mayor, etc.) evolve in a symbolic microcosm of a macrocosm, a small town where winter does not let go. An atmosphere of numbness can be interpreted as a warning, a slope on which one lets oneself slip. “The unconsciousness of certain ’empires’ worries me. Old Europe thinks it is still a strong continent in every way, and that will last for a long time. Without speaking of decline, there is a form of blindness, of numb feeling of empire in our Western civilizations which does not take the measure of change, does not realize that its neighbors are waking up. »

That said, Philippe Claudel says he appreciates the cold season, putting him in excellent artistic dispositions. “’My country is not a country, it’s winter’: I regret not having found this phrase myself! he concludes with a laugh.

Dusk

Philippe Claudel

Stock

511 pages