War (Vintage Classics)
J.M.G. Le Clezio
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: B003IQ16GK
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
War - in the mind of the fragile Bea B., in the infinite icy landscape she journeys through, in Vietnam, in 10,000 years of human history. The war of the title is not merely a war of arms but a generalised state of violence permeating every atom of Le Clézio's creation. Bea B. searches for clues for the origin of the evil. Under her searching gaze the most everyday objects - advertisements, cars, light bulbs - reveal extraordinary dimensions, as the earth trembles on the brink of cataclysmic explosion.
She tries to see it, beyond fear, with a look that is neither piercing nor evasive. She follows the swirling lines with her eyes, she studies the flat surfaces, she enumerates all the signs, she wants to conquer doubt. Deep inside her, a word waits to be spoken. She says, gruffly and throatily: ‘Crossroads . . . Crossroads . . .’ It is incomparably more beautiful than the sea, incomparably vaster, with delirious depths, and flashes of light that dazzle the vision. There is so much movement, so
have ceased to absorb all but one of the colours of the spectrum, and the world would have become a single immense rainbow, a single gigantic jelly-fish. The girl called Bea B. was crossing the city just as it was on the point of crumbling into dust. She could feel beneath her feet the kind of dull vibration, the distant rumbling that announced the end. The menace was not yet visible, but already one could hear the gallop of its approach. In what form would it appear? Would it be a cloud of
turned white they would explode. The earth shuddered beneath Bea B.’s feet. Not the solid fertile earth that nurtures plants and weeds, but the flat surface imagined by mankind. The great white walls wrapped around iron skeletons were resting upon this soft sludge. It only needed a ten-year-old-boy, for example, or a twenty-one-year-old girl, eyes flashing with anger, to say aloud: ‘Go on! Fall! Fall!’ and it would all be over right away. That is why the metal towers and the skyscrapers and
are other voices around me, above me. Habbakuk, Micah, Amos, Obadiah. Joel: Proclaim this among the nations: gird your loins for war. Let all the men of war approach and mount! Forge swords out of mattocks, and spears out of bill-hooks. Let the weak say: I AM STRONG. Nahum: Woe to the murderous city! It is filled to the brim with falsehood and violence. Pillage is rampant within its walls. The sound of the whip, the shattering din of wheels; horses galloping, chariots bounding forward. Horsemen
sound. The sky was blue. Then one could close one’s eyes and, by lying on one’s back, enter into the beach. One became as flat, as stretched out as the beach, with millions of round pebbles piled deep. One was like this and then also like this Who opened the flood-gates? Who demolished the dyke that held back the sea? And who switched on these sun-guns everywhere? Now there is no more sea, no more beach. There is mind everywhere. Nothing but mind. The earth is a patch of tar, the water is