L’OEuvre au noir

Unanimously awarded the Prix Femina, the book was an immediate public success upon publication. “The phrase ‘L’Œuvre au noir,’ given as the title to this book, designates in alchemical treatises the phase of separation and dissolution of matter which was said to be the most difficult part of the Great Work. It is still debated whether this expression applied to daring experiments on matter itself or referred symbolically to the trials of the spirit freeing itself from routine and prejudice. No doubt it meant, by turns or at once, both.”

Maurice Nadeau’s review devoted a long account to this remarkable inner voyage upon publication, along with a lengthy interview with C. J. Bjurström (Quinzaine littéraire, no. 57, September 1968), the Swedish translator of Camus, Céline, Michaux, Foucault and Gracq, as well as Le Clézio. In it, Yourcenar consciously positions herself apart from literary fashion, insisting above all on “not speaking of oneself through one’s own characters, nor pouring onto them one’s own self-image, but nourishing them with one’s own substance to lend them the density of life” (Rencontre avec Marguerite Yourcenar, Portrait d’une voix, p. 60).

A good copy.