The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Hermitage by Marie Bronsard. Trans. Sonia Alland
Allen Hubbard

Marie Bronsard. The Hermitage. Trans. Sonia Alland with the author. Northwestern Univ. Press, 2001. 69 pp. Paper: $14.95.

She writes this letter to him through the night. She has been writing to him ever since he left, ten years before. Those letters she has burned. This, she says, will be the final letter. They could have loved each other, but neither then had the capacity. Something came between them. Another man captured his attentions: "He had become necessary to you, like another self, spontaneous, immediate." She relives the memories of that experience through the night, memories of the other man’s intensity, hostility, anger. Why did he leave? We wonder. Where is he now? Dead, we presume. He will always be with her. Dawn breaks, reminding her of the morning of his departure. Yet with the dawn also comes a calm, a possibility for regeneration. The form of the letter creates a hermetically sealed space determined by the intimacy between writer and addressee. Voyeurs, we read a letter addressed to someone else and peer into the innermost chambers of the relationship. Since so much is shared between the two, there is little need for specificity or elaboration. The narrative is elliptical. There are holes and gaps we, as readers, will never be able to fill in. Somewhat ironically, this most intimate means of expression opens up into a universal space. The prose is sparse and lyrical; the tone is that of mourning. The weight of the past, the profound sense of loss, is felt in the present, the time of writing: "Why write you this, you who cannot read what I write? Why do I still make use of you?" To get it all out. To give experience shape and meaning. To purge the pain. To break through. This letter is a scab created to cover the wound and allow it to heal. It is a crypt. It is also a beautiful gift. [Allen Hibbard]