Lost Words Read online

  It is easy these days to find out what people have been doing even when they have been distant for years; Maud has not appeared in any play since Cuisines et dépendences and Tant d’espace entre nos baisers, staged over twenty years ago.

  THE SPACE BETWEEN OUR KISSES

  The months after Maud left me, while trying to find words to put on paper, I often looked at the framed poster of Tant d’espace entre nos baisers on the wall of my studio apartment, with her name in the list of actors at the bottom. The name had stopped meaning anything, so had the title of the play. The sequence of letters had become an image, a view, or perhaps little objects I saw every day and no longer noticed. I felt empty and nothing could inspire me to write, or for that matter to do anything else; her name and the title of the play had become meaningless – they projected no pain.

  THE NIETZSCHE SYMPOSIUM

  Amaury and I had come to his family house in Le Touquet to conduct our two-person symposium on Nietzsche. We were to read or re-read Nietzsche’s work in the morning, as well as works by those offering new perspectives on Nietzsche and his work – Deleuze, Onfray, and the like – and in the afternoon discuss our readings. We had aimed during our symposium at writing an original piece on Nietzsche and seeking its publication in a philosophy journal. Not a university journal to which students contributed but an ‘adult’ journal where philosophers and thinkers wrote, for instance Les Temps Modernes.

  My meeting Maud interrupted our symposium. It had barely begun. I think we had only had one or two afternoon discussions when Amaury and I went to the beach to further discuss the idea of ressentiment. There I met Maud.

  I spent the rest of my days in Le Touquet with Maud, not reading or giving any thought to Nietzsche and the cohort of Nietzsche thinkers. Amaury went back to reading fiction in his bedroom while I was out and about with Maud.

  Amaury and I, in the end, in our separate ways, read Nietzsche. Several times. Nietzsche was someone important to us, unhappy, young, questioning men. We saw each other as men who understood and stifled our ressentiment. But in truth we both thought all others were boring, save our philosophical and literary masters; we thought ourselves to be the most bored people we knew; boredom was a constant inner turmoil; we thought others had no inclination to look at their inner turmoil (the scale of their inner turmoil in any case was nowhere near the scale of our inner turmoil); we were not part of the silent majority where most others belonged, and we often complained to each other that the silent majority was not silent enough.

  I did then ask myself why Maud had distracted me from Amaury and Nietzsche. I remember being only mildly interested in her company – the first week. And her physical closeness – her head on my shoulder, her holding my arm, my hand – made me uncomfortable. I did not like her odour either.

  We had gone to the movies to watch a British comedy and she had laughed louder than anyone else, she had laughed when no one else had laughed. Maud’s laughter had frustrated my perception of the film’s humour.

  I did not understand what drew me to Maud. I was unsure as to whether I wanted to continue seeing her in Paris, after the days in Le Touquet. She kept asking if we were going to see each other in Paris and after saying I didn’t know – we would have little time for each other with our studies – I said yes. I said yes because we had swum naked in the sea and I wanted to see her naked again.

  PHÈDRE

  Maud dreamt of playing Phèdre and she wanted us to drive around France in her red Renault 5 to see paintings of Phèdre in provincial museums.

  We started for Orléans to see a sketch of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Phèdre et Hippolyte. On the freeway the Renault broke down and I walked about five kilometres to the nearest garage to get some help. I can’t remember what had gone wrong with the car and how we were helped. I remember walking along the freeway and worrying about having left Maud alone. Then we were on our way again. And I was quiet and quietly angry. Seething in the passenger seat. Afraid, profoundly unhappy.

  I said something like, Let’s get on with this, let’s see that painting and go back home. I wanted to go back to Paris so I could be alone again.

  I refused to get in the Renault to drive down to Montpellier so we took the train. At the Musée Fabre we saw the painting Phèdre by Alexandre Cabanel. She was barely covered by a see-through sheet. She was pale. Even though she had been painted by another artist her face resembled that of the Phèdre of Orléans. I wanted to touch her. Maud seldom let me touch her. Phèdre was naked, barely covered by the see-through sheet, and lying despondent on her bed, as I would soon be.

  The eyes of Guérin’s Phèdre, the Phèdre of Orléans, said, It is too late. They said, What have I done? They said, I am lost! They were the eyes of someone who had stepped onto the road without looking and realised with a fear never experienced before they were now in front of a speeding vehicle.

  WORDS

  I was quiet, I was often lost in my thoughts. Thoughts raced, even though I might be in a group of people discussing this or that. I rarely listened to anyone; I mostly listened to my thoughts and measured their value. Should I continue along that train of thought? Should I write this down? Writing things down made me feel I was spending my time well. Little did I know how discouraged I would get later in my career, how often I would miss the target, how often the words would let me down, or rather I would let the words down. Charles Juliet in many instances talked about this in his diaries: of the relentlessness you need to surmount this daily conviction of failure, of having missed the mark with your words.

  But then sometimes words come out of that empty space inside and they are pure and perfect. And using these words is like discovering them, like discovering impossible beasts on a forgotten island or strange peoples on the moon, discovering their usage. In other words, inventing them.

  Prints and drawings

  Table 2019, lithograph with chine-collé. 545mm x 345mm

  Pile 2019, lithograph with chine-collé. 545mm x 345mm

  Cut 2019, drypoint engraving. 195mm x 300mm

  Fan IV 2019, drypoint engraving. 395mm x 295mm

  Fan II 2018, drypoint engraving with chine-collé. 395mm x 295mm

  Fan I 2018, drypoint engraving. 395mm x 295mm

  Life Before Man (pp. 140 –141) 2018, pencil on paper. 965mm x 650mm

  Ball (No.1) 2017, lithograph. 760mm x 565mm

  Ball (No. 2) 2019, drypoint engraving. 395mm x 295mm

  Timber 2019, drypoint engraving. 185mm x 265mm

  Vegetable 2017, lithograph. 760mm x 565mm

  Umbrella 2017, lithograph. 760mm x 565mm

  Beast 2017, lithograph. 760mm x 565mm

  Hole 2017, lithograph. 760mm x 565mm

  Pistol 2017, lithograph. 760mm x 565mm

  [20 untitled drawings] 2016, Pen on paper. Each 140mm x 77mm

  Gazebo Books

  PO Box 375

  Summer Hill

  New South Wales 2130

  Australia

  gazebobooks.com.au

  First published 2019

  Copyright © Xavier Hennekinne 2019

  Copyright © Phil Day 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Hennekinne, Xavier

  Drawings: Day, Phil

  Lost Words

  First edition

  ISBN 978 0 9876191 6 7

  Cover and interior design by Mountains Brown Press

  All lithographs originally printed by Adrian Kellett, and are reproduced with kind permission of Sunshine Editions

  All engravings originally printed and published by Greg Harrison, and are reproduced with his kind permission

  All images photographed by Matt Stanton

&n
bsp; Jacket image:

  Life Before Man (pp. 140 –141)

  2018, pencil on paper. 965mm x 650mm