Christian Boby, author of “Too Low and the Ruins of Heaven,” has died at the age of 71

“My heart is ready, God, my heart is ready” : Christian Bobi’s work recalls Psalm 107 after five long decades of writing. Known especially for his book dedicated to the most secret writer, essayist and poet of the literary world, St. Francois d’Assise, The lowest, He died Thursday at the age of 71, his publisher Gallimard announced Friday morning. The writer, who was very attached to his native Crouse, achieved the first revolution by publishing in 1991. Little party dress. As noted on the literary scene as on the sidelines of social events, Christian Bobin received the French Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2016.

“I’m looking”: Everything Christian Bobi reflects in this proposal, he never wanted to return: “I’m not looking, I’m finding. » Special thanks to the mentioned Pascal Ruins of Paradise (2009), the writer measured how naïve Picasso was in this statement. With Khawadja Abdullah al-Ansari, the poet of the eleventh^e Born in present-day Afghanistan in the 19th century, he knew the order of the world: “For everything we seek first and then find, whereas if it is a question of God, we find and then seek. »

The author Very low (1992), the book dedicated to Francis of Assisi that introduced him to the general public, did not like to capitalize the word “God” as in the catechism books of the past. But he was still searching for this unpronounceable and unpronounceable father. “I’m looking for a god without a beard, a god without a god, without great music, without leather ties, without effects. The God of Nothing »he wrote to modernist priests imploring the possibility of a transgressive ascent to divinity.

And he continued to search, some days in the sun, with a big smile, some in difficulty and darkness. ” Growing up in the dark »he wrote about his childhood in the mining town of Creuzot, where he lived with fellow poet Lydie Dattas. “I’ve never seen heaven but a counter-melody against hell. Any light – speech, face or substance – is an event for me, an accident that saves me every time. I know nothing but that life is in its deep essence, almost inaccessible, light, air. »

Like Arthur Rimbaud, Christian Bobin knew this “Spiritual warfare is as merciless as human warfare”. But he avoided pain and was afraid of misunderstandings. If he ever awakens the true presence of the hidden God of the nuns and the gentlemen of Port-Royal, it will be with a smile contract. “I really don’t know why, but a smile seems to me the most profound object of meditation possible. In this regard, I rely on the smiles of the few who disappeared, who stubbornly persisted, keeping them away from the black waters. My father’s smile, the smile of a young woman who died untimely… Smiles, as they appear on the corners of the lips of newborn children in cribs. In this treatise on the smile, I will develop something that I am unable to develop, that will lead to confidence. That is all I can honestly tell you about God. It is trust. Don’t trust something, don’t trust without an object, but trust someone, a being. To go beyond this would seem modest and a little risky. If you start shouting what you love loudly, if you say it too openly, you will kill it. »

Written by Christian Bobin Red lily of the valleyA smiling book published to coincide with the massive Quarto collection, which brings together seventeen out-of-print books he wrote between 1980 and 2020, Water of mirrors. In Red lily of the valley, he reminded Kafka, Dora Diamant, Nerval. Pascal as usual. He copied an idea from Novalis at the beginning of a chapter. The writer rarely quoted his colleagues, but he enjoyed an author’s word that hit the target like an arrow. In Rockhe repeated this sentence of André Dhotel: “We must know that everything is eternal, otherwise there would be no life. » Why only the André Dhotel we think we know A country we’ve never been to?“Because it’s kind of a French Lao-tzu. His books are messy, sometimes bordering on boredom, but a boredom necessary to achieve clarity. An adventure where nothing happens, if I’m quoting this sentence lifted from a falsely trite short story, it’s because my nose is exploding. I could hardly explain it, but it seems inexhaustible to me. It refers to the unexpected array of flowers that grow in the ruins, letting us know that we are touched by unseen forces. he said.
as the epigraph of red lily of the valleywe can read this quote: “Mandelstam said that when he first heard the word ‘progress’ at the age of five, he felt something unpleasant and burst into tears. » Christian Bobin wasn’t a hater, he was a yes writer, but we felt a growing distaste for the screens, things and machines that colonized our lives. He wrote:“The wrongly named new technologies, the name of which I looked for from book to book, took the place of our dreams, increasingly the place of reality. What the false angels of Silicon Valley call augmented reality is actually an insulted reality, a wounded reality. I’m just someone who looks at the world and tries to tell as closely as possible what he sees. I do not judge, I do not moralize. I try to look fresh and close. Sometimes what I see makes me think of the Bardo Thödol, a Tibetan sacred text dedicated to studying the days after his death, not for those around him. Possessed by their own shadows, the deceased must either fight with them to gain a new life, if this fails, or the exhaustion of darkness and rest. Bardo Thödol is a possible guide to understanding today. The images that haunt us all have left us, but they return to us like shadows, with great power and a strange autonomy. »

To the pocket mirrors that Satan uses to distract us from ourselves and this other me, deeper than ourselves, within each of us, Christian Bobin reflected the simplicity of a piece of granite or the beauty of a blossoming tree. Inanimate objects may not have souls. He had one very deep.

SEE ALSO – Pascal Joseph, TV personality, dies at 68