NOTRE-DAME, REINE DE DOULEUR, REINE DE VICTOIRE

Théâtre de poche Montparnasse

© Nathalie Audin - SYLVAIN TESSON, NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS, Ô REINE DE DOULEUR, Ô REINE DE VICTOIRE"

Five years after the fire on 15 April 2019, the Théâtre de Poche Montparnasse is giving voice to the resurrected Paris cathedral. ‘Notre-Dame, Reine de douleur, Reine de victoire’ offers a reading of texts by Sylvain Tesson, in which the writer recounts his intimate, carnal and contemplative bond with the building, forged as a child through clandestine climbing of its heights, then strengthened after his accident when he turned it into a convalescent retreat and finally sublimated after the fire as a timeless symbol of beauty, grandeur and hope.

Four talented actors - Samuel Labarthe, François Marthouret, Claude Aufaure and Christophe Barbier - take turns on stage to bring this vibrant ode to life, giving voice to the poetic power of the words and the strength of the monument, where the word becomes stone.

Here, the moving memory of a moment of eternity, performed by Claude Aufaure.

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Echo of a moment of eternity. Testimony and tribute to an author and actor

Sometimes there are moments of grace that heaven grants to the discord of the brave, like a truce.

On Thursday 30 January 2025, at the dawn of a new quarter century, as the first month of the year prepares to turn the page on wishes for better days, a fairy, entrusted with the future of the world, lays her wand one last time on the cradle of the Théâtre de Poche Montparnasse. In a zephyr-like whisper, she spreads the author's notes like an aroma over the city, which, as everyone knows about the scents of this world, points to the reptilian brain, the sapiens animal, the instinct of humanity.

‘Sublime’, she whispers in the actor's ear in her subliminal voice. ‘It has to be sublime one last time’. This is the last evening that Claude Aufaure, the actor and director who needs no introduction, will be rubbing shoulders with Sylvain Tesson on the rooftops of Notre-Dame.

When a man is lost, when his gaze is blurred, it's up to the subtle world to show him the way by whatever means it finds. Tonight, it is through the voice, the presence and the emotion of this exceptional actor that the poetic message will burn to speak the unspeakable, to read the transcendent, to perform the miracle. When you climb a subject like Notre-Dame de Paris, with the pen of a saint in your mouth (Sylvain Tesson's cryptonym: ST.), you can't help but be inspired by the currents of ascent embracing the flesh of an arrow raised towards immensity.

Then the lights of the ‘Petit Poche’ theatre, nestled in the basement against the earth's beat, sheltered from the noise and bustle of life, go out. On the red-felted benches, woven from the original blood of the theatre where people gather in all simplicity, a religious darkness and silence pervade the place. The discreet chanting of a liturgical choir sets the tone for our senses in suspense.

There, like a guardian of letters haunting these stony places since the dawn of time, the unique actor lights up. Slowly, a few centimetres from the audience, he moves through the candlelit darkness, like a cat sniffing out the perfect spot, the right energy, to give substance to poetic thought. The skilled artist slips the sacred word into his trembling hands to deliver all its quintessence, grave and light, in a voice wavering from the secret emanation of Beauty to the flowery ardour of hope. The writer's work dissolves into a waltz of ethereal drops in the sky above the stage, weaving its way through the hair of a thirsty audience, penetrating their skulls, winding its way through the gargoyles of their brains and slipping into the backstage veins of their hearts.

The humble interpreter positively declaims the being of the leaf that palpitates in her hands. So much soul in his words! So many words in his soul! The spectator, on a drip, absorbs this whey like a nutrient essential to his being, imperceptibly colouring his existence with great literary gulps. This is no longer a dramatic reading, it's a prayer incarnate...!

At last, the father of these words, Sylvain Tesson, with his nimble foil, is seized by a flash of lightning. ‘At the end of the dispatch, he touches the dazed listener with both his joy and his striking humour. On his face, the imprint of his pen, the two faces of the moon: one fiery, eloquent, passionate; the other motionless, capturing the calm of truth; the story of a Yin and a Yang traced on a crossroads linking eyelids to lips by an amazed spirit, in order to make the invisible visible to the eyes of those who need to see in order to believe.

Sometimes, at the turn of a memory, at the onslaught of an idea, in an intoxication of life, the pile embraces the face, bewitching each facial rhizome with its vital force. Then the symphony of a full moon face ignites: two identical piercing eyes, two lips dancing in echo.

So salutes and concludes with his ultimate panache, the ambassador of these dreams, come to exalt the world...

Nathalie AUDIN

7 février 2025