Un livre sauvage

Anaïs Nin : préface de Tropique du Cancer, d'Henry Miller (extraits fournis par Marc Pilpoul, en rapport avec le spectacle du théâtre du Rond-Point.)

Refering to his Wilhelm Meister Goethe once said: « People seek a central point: that is hard, and not even right. I should think a rich, manifold life, brought close to our eyes, would be enough without any express tendency; which, after all, is only for the intellect ».

The book is sustained on its own axis by the pure flux and rotation of events. Just as there is no central point, so also there is no question of heroism or of struggle since there is no question of will, but only an obedience to flow.

...

The poetic is discovered by stripping away the vestiture of art; by descending to what might be styled « a pre-artistic level » the durable skeleton of form which is hidden in the phenomena of disintegration reappears to be transfigured again in the ever-changing flesh of emotion.

The scars are burned away – the scars left by the obstetricians of culture.

Here is an artist who re-establishes the potency of illusion by gaping at the open wounds, by courting the stern, psychological reality which man seeks to avoid through recourse to the oblique symbolism of art.

Here the symbols are laid bare, presented almost as naively and unblushingly by the over-civilized individual as by the well-rooted savage. »