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Staff Reviews
Written in a sanatorium on the French coast during the final months of Sauvageot's life, this book is filled with the kind of truth (immediate, lucid) that comes only when we have reduced ourselves to the smallest parts.
— Carly
Sauvageot answers the question of what she would say if she literally had nothing to lose. If time was literally running out. In other words: "We recall here that in Latin, vulgare, meaning 'of the people' but also 'to publish,' was used as a slur against women who were thought to have made their bodies 'public.' Thus a vulgar woman is a woman who 'publishes' that which men believe should stay private."
— Sarah G.
Description
Fiction. Translated from the French by Christine Schwartz Hartley and Anna Moschovakis. COMMENTARY is a narrative hovering between the genres of memoir, theory, and fiction about a female artist whose abandonment by a lover precipitates a refiguration of her ideas on life, love and art. Sauvageot died, after many stints in sanatoriums, at the age of 34. Commentaire was highly prasied in its time by Paul Claudel, Paul Valery, Andre Gide, Charles Du Bos, Rene Crevel ou Clara Malraux. This edition is co-translated by Christine Schwartz Hartley (African Psycho) and Anna Moschovakis (The Jokers, The Possession).
When, in the morning, daybreak awakens us f rom a dream, we close our eyes and remain still, trying to recreate and continue the scene. But the day's light has destroyed everything: words are without sound, gestures without meaning. It is like a vanishing rainbow: some hues survive for an instant, disappear, seem to return: there is nothing left.
