Quelle voix/voie pour raconter des expériences-limite? Quelques réflexions autour de Jorge Semprún, Elie Wiesel, Michel del Castillo et Agota Kristof

Abstract

This article relates to four contemporary authors writing mostly or only in French, even if this language is not their mother-tongue: Jorge Semprun, Elie Wiesel, Michel del Castillo, Agota Kristof.
The essay points out the problem of choosing another language for writing: this choice seems referred, in these authors, to the difficulty in telling a limit-experience: Semprun, Wiesel and del Castillo were interned in a concentration camp, and Agota Kristof escaped the Soviet repression in Hungary, leaving for a permanent and painful exile.
For these authors writing is itself a limit-experience, on the edge between salvation and desperation of facing again the awful ghosts of the past. If writing is not a therapy nor a damnation, but it presents both these aspects, it becomes a necessary condition, something concerning life and death at the same time.
These authors couldn't avoid writing about their limit-experiences, but after a period of silence they decided to choose another language to tell, trying to control the burning thread of their memories.

"I swallowed a secret burning thread, it cuts me inside, and often I've bled" (Suzanne Vega)