The Opoponax
Monique Wittig
Language: English
Pages: 258
ISBN: 0913780154
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From the back flap:
Monique Wittig’s first novel. The Opoponax, is about woman as girl. Told completely from inside the mind of a Catholic schoolgirl, it lays bare the violence of the girl underworld.Wittig relentlessly details the structures which kill girls’ spirit: the short skirts that leave their thighs naked to attacks from boys with switches; the flimsy underpants that tear during play, exposing their vulvas; and the Catholic Church that sternly teaches them to be passive. The Church is almost mocked by the games the girls play during its solemn rituals.
Catherine Legrand, a budding guérillère, refuses to give up her violence. She beats up attackers and carries a knife in an open palm. She makes alliances with girls like herself; the symbols of these alliances are snakes and poems and guns. She writes in her copybook:
I am the Opoponax.The Opoponax, dark shadow which has no definition in the material world, is rebellion.
"It is a remarkable and very important book because it is governed by a single iron rule: that is, to use nothing but pure description conveyed by purely objective language. A masterpiece." —Marguerite Duras
"I shall probably not be there to witness it, but in ten or twenty years you will see what a writer we have honored here." Natalie Sarraute at the awarding of the Prix Medici.
My scan. OCR'd
tree. Catherine Legrand sits up. Down below the ground is all black and covered with petals that have fallen off the cherry tree. The flowers broke last night, mama. The tall little girl whose name is Ines calls for Catherine Legrand to take her to school. She has some other children with her. Mother calls her the little girl from town. You walk along the national highway, you cross it when you come to the supermarket. Ines says, That is where my mother does her shopping. You are on a road. There
Perhaps it wasn’t funny and this is why something starts to whirl inside of what seems to be Catherine Legrand and by the time Cath erine Legrand has finished lacing her shoe it’s very heavy inside her, it hovers in back of her eyes, it looks out through the sockets, it’s caught, it can never be anything else but Catherine Legrand. It is good to walk in the meadows in summer. Mademoiselle points to each tree with her finger and says that you are going to learn about nature. You must be able to
behind her. They are about to catch Catherine Legrand. Catherine Legrand goes into a thicket of brambles and raspberry bushes which is higher than she is. The thorns of the bram108 bles are the sharpest kind. It hurts, her legs immedi ately start to bleed. There is no retreat. The two boys hesitate before the thicket. Catherine Legrand takes the opportunity to get a head start. Vincent Parme dashes forward to try to corner Catherine Legrand right in the thicket, Louis Second walks around the
she is pressing them onto the notebook as hard as she can. If you pulled the notebook away from her you would 156 tear it. Then Mother of the Infant Jesus speaks very gently to Valerie Borge and asks her to bring her her notebook. You can’t tell whether Valerie Borge hears what Mother of the Infant Jesus is saying to her. Anyway she turns her face toward the wall so that she can’t see anyone. Her hair falls over her shoulders and partly covers her arms. If someone pulled it back she would have
Sylvester’s bed with Mother of Saint Sylvester’s slipper before she has gone to bed. Denise Causse says that the ghost does it ev ery evening that it was Valerie Borge who first told her about it, Denise Causse says that ever since Valerie Borge told her about it she always listens and that she hears it quite clearly now and that the proof that it’s true is that it isn’t a regular sound, Denise Causse says that you ought to try to catch him but that Valerie Borge doesn’t agree. Catherine Legrand