Lausanne, parc du Denantou
Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre. Pour des raisons tout à fait personnelles, je peux en cette fin janvier songer à la Russie sans amertume: finalement.
Moment parfait pour évoquer ce livre, « If You Have A Secret », de Irina Popova.
Acheté pour pas grand chose au détour d’un salon d’art contemporain, j’avais vu comme un présage de me retrouver avec l’exemplaire 7/100 entre les mains (une vieille histoire de maillot de basket). C’est un livre de photographies, que viennent enrichir des « secrets », souvenirs de jeunesse confessés par l’auteure. J’ai retrouvé cette troublante oscillation entre beauté et laideur qui fait le charme de ce pays.
Une belle vidéo de présentation, pour tous ceux que le prix rebutera…
J’aime tout particulièrement ce texte qui clôt le livre:
Afterword Only after you leave do your miss your land as if someone died, who you didn't love or understand enough. In that moment you become a bird, whose legs were curt off and it can't land, and has to fly eternally without a pause until it falls dead and until it starts to believe that Native land exists only in its imagination. When childhood is done I chose to live in a different place, but there was never day I did not think of it horrified by the things happening there. To return to Russia is even sadder than living there. It's strange to see places where something happened, to see that streets where you lived and loved are still on the map. It's strange to see this country hasn't cured his wounds, that it's still failing with even greater acceleration, that curved routes are more pronounced. I believe that a country consists not of imaginary ideologies not of rules, programs or laws, not even of its wars and disasters, but of the sum of the separate, disparate human beings, their destinies and ways. And until everyone's personal curved route won't become straight, this country won't cure itself. Yet still, there is hidden magic in it, a deep beauty which some sentimental people call "Soul". I felt it when I saw a woman in Paris reading Dostoevsky on the metro.