TESTIMONY
"I am convinced that he will come out of this period of confinement of literature," enthuses Caroline. Former manager of a theater, author of two novels and several collections of poetry, she called 3921 to testify, on Europe 1, the way she lived her confinement, following the spread of the coronavirus epidemic. Caroline looked back at the beginning of a book that she had started a few years ago. A text she had then called Inside, outside , as she explains at the microphone of Christophe Hondelatte. And which especially resonates particularly with the current situation.
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"I am not someone inside. I am not someone inside. I have to go out, I have to be outside, I have to be outside. I don't know I live in the house . I have to hang out. I’m not like the grown-ups who stay in the houses, I’m like the kids playing outside, I’m like the hero of Duras, whole days spent in the trees, "wrote Caroline years ago. Or :
"I feel good in the streets, the roads. Maybe it comes from childhood, in these houses where there was no separation between inside and outside. We went in, we went out as we wanted We entered again without warning anyone, without a memorandum of understanding, reception or departure. We children were always outside. We often changed houses, which meant that we didn't live in them. none. The world was ours. So a house ... "
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"And poof, containment"!
But over the years, Caroline had forgotten this literary project. "I was skating a bit," she admits, "I had written quite a few things but I was going around a bit." "And poof," she exclaims, "confinement! I said to myself 'there's something there, it's still weird!'". Inspiration has returned, she says. The literary impulse that she sometimes senses in others has again taken hold of her. Rather judge:
"It's a farce! It's a fable! Well, no need to ask questions. Inside? Outside? Great! We choose for you, it's inside. It deserves a little explanation. I don't know how talk about what is happening to us. We lived happily without asking too many questions, well our usual little questions that we thought were existential. Inside? Outside? And then it fell on us. Nobody expected it, nobody doesn't understand how it happened or why the pandemic has happened now. "
Caroline will now be able to devote more time to her work. And maybe we will meet Inside-Outside on the shelves of bookstores, once we can once again feel "good in the streets".