La cour des Adieux.
Meyer, E. Nicole
Tiphaine Samoyault. La cour des Adieux. Paris. Nadeau. 1999. 164
pages. 90 F. ISBN 2-86231-153-7.
AN INTERESTING PROJECT, an original approach, and an often poetical
style contrast the stagnant stability of a chateau with the vacillating
instability of childhood and especially that of remembering the past. If
this were not complicated enough, the chateau is enormous (featuring
3,200 windows which open onto the courtyard of the title) and the art of
recounting the past is doubled through the use of cameras to film the
narrator's efforts. Her stated goal is the desire to "ecrire
trois vies de mensonges et de pluies, elles reveillent ma nuit en sept
hemispheres incomplets, elles eveillent des fantomes consistants."
The third "life," that of the demise of a love affair, infuses
the narrative. The "autobiographical pact" implicit in the act
of "writing three lives" is faulty from the start. The
narrator assures us that she will tell us her own story, but then
violates the basic premise of authenticity by openly telling lies and
inventing characters rather haphazardly.
La cour des Adieux is Tiphaine Samoyault's first novel
(following a critical work, Exces du roman, and preceding the
soon-to-appear Meteorologie du reve). Its originality (both in the way
it attempts to say adieu to childhood and the past and in its refusal to
provide concrete characters) startles the reader. In addition, the
perpetual movement of the narrative ("tout tourne") combined
with the rampant mixture of fact and fiction mirrors the act of filming
a story ("le tournage"). When everything is subject to editing
and reformulation by others, one starts to realize the tenuous nature of
all narrative and of love.
The themes of the passing of both time and of love along with the
infiltration of lies (what is truth, after all?) into all narration are
enticing. In addition, the solidity and the excessive size of the
chateau reveal how this narrator (and indeed all narrators) are in fact
prisoners of the past and of life in general: "A force de tourner
autour de mon histoire comme les fenetres autour de la cour des Adieux,
voila, je m'apercois que je ne peux plus m'echapper.
Prisionniere de mes mots, je roule encore dedans ils me font mal."
The desire to write -- along with all the pain and difficulties it
entails -- somehow breaks down some of these walls, however. Yet, when
"tout tourne" and truth is ever doubtful, we are left
vacillating as well. In the end, while this reader found herself really
wanting to like the novel because of all it offers, its lack of warmth
cooled her ardor.
E. Nicole Meyer University of Wisconsin, Green Bay
