C'est impossible [...] mais on peut quand même essayer

Abstract

Whether it be biographies, autobiographies, history or fiction, numerous contemporary pieces of writing meet difficulties in relating a historical event (or a war) that has not been personally experienced. How can one relate another's experience without resorting to fiction? In two of his latest books, Sarinagora and Le siecle des nuages, Philippe Forest attempts to relate in the present an individual and collective past and to enable the reader to feel the mark left by the historical event on one who cannot provide a first-hand account, who has only indistinct traces at his disposal and who uses the detour of lives other than his own. How can one write for and instead of the witness?

Keywords

• autobiography
• biograph
• history
• fiction
• pseudo-witness
• relating relation