We have written a damn for once in his life a page similar to the one below - perhaps one of the most perfect introduction to the literature of the twentieth century. And yet, Gregor von Rezzori remains the last unknown in the literature of Eastern Europe. He had resolved to laugh: Do you think it is easy to be the greatest writer in a country that nobody has ever heard - Bucovina (on the border of Transylvania)? He forgot it by the actor in shit Franco-Italian (he had a mouth) and signing scenarios for Louis Malle (Viva Maria). In the columns of the New Yorker he finally made known to the late sixties by publishing in serial Memoirs of an anti-Semite . An ermine Tchernopol , written in 1958, is part of the cycle of his own memoirs (those of a non- Semitic). But it still remains a text completely rigged. Pure literature - pure shimmer.
"Staggering, a man climbs out of the debauchery of a tavern where the Brays are silent to slip into the uncertain dawn. A
insurance dangerously compromised in its movements, clownish imitation of a deadly seriousness, we recognize that this is a heavy drinker.
His face is a crater that would have left a stray satellite. His senses are heightened
took a bubbling mingling bellowing tavern quarrel philological, pride, humiliation, love, quotes, ribaldry, hatred, loneliness, credulity, purity,
despair ... It can not find the way back home.
So he walks with a sleepwalker until the crossroads nearest cross two snakes that come with hints of masts, the tram rails.
Once there, head up like a blind man, he fumbles with his stick he pushes one of the grooves in the track to be guided as to the end of a pole.
Such waves of stem, the tip of his cane raised moldy leaves and dirt, grit, the mud and manure; his shoes wade in puddles, her ankles twisted on crooked cobblestones, stumble on rails, sink into the gravel, dragging in the dust. The mist moistens his face like a wet cotton ball, the wind pulled the hair protruding from his hat and his fall on the forehead, the dew settles on his lips that gives it a salty taste, is concentrated in small droplets that tickle the palm of both wrinkles hemming his mouth in the towel on his cheeks, too fat, can no longer absorb them. He mumbles, speaks sometimes alone, out loud, sing a song, pauses, laughs, is silent, goes back to mumbling. His eyes wide open lay ahead like the blind, without batting an eyelash, like those of gods.
Thus it crosses the city from one end to another.
The city, located somewhere in a corner lost in Southeastern Europe, called Tchernopol.
He knows nothing of its reality.
He does not notice that it is silvering wake up, do not perceive that the harsh light that falls from the arc lights suspended in the pale sky in a shower of pearls, goes beyond him and that around the houses lining the streets to the right and left open the space to enable them to avoid the darkness to lift them until morning. (...)
No one ever does anything other than going to meet his death.
Also heard it not, far away, throwing their languid complaint, the appeal of trains leaving the city for Tchernopol hurry, lonely, to the desolate countryside and head towards another reality solitary and stubborn nostalgically lost.
Because each comes to his solitude, people like cities. "
Gregor von Rezzori, An ermine Tchernopol ( Ein Hermelin in Tschernopol ) translated from German by Catherine and Jacques Mazellier-Lajarrige Lajarrige, Editions de l'Olivier, 2011
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