The readings of the summer of … Bertrand Belin

“This summer, I will read Watt by Samuel Beckett. Meanwhile, I will resume, should I say, reading Watt. Furthermore, It’s fun to resume reading Watt Because. Furthermore, just as the story itself, which finds in the repetition of a task of ad nauseam the principle of enunciation of a labyrinthine conception of existence, I experience, by rereading the first half of the book, a little of this vertigo of the deja vu, of the eternal beginning. Meanwhile, The feeling of digging into the sand. Therefore, which sometimes gives me the reading of Beckett’s works, the perseverance that must be summoned readings summer … bertrand belin to accomplish this reading, gives the exact taste of what the protagonists who populate the novel are going through. The very form of writing. the architecture of the drama, constitutes a capital sensitive information which allows access to the senses that neither the current action nor the exchanges between the characters.

We will follow Watt. unknown, silhouette seen from a public bench by a certain Mister Hackett, who wonders about the presence of the onlookers. It will be followed until a house planted in the night. Remains where he will exercise the profession of servant. replacing a predecessor taking off, himself arrived he has a certain time, in a similar night, in the service of Mr Knott. Both participating in a long line of servants overwhelmed by carrying out a series of tasks with dark litters. Watt investigation. Logic is its torch. He exhausts all hypotheses, deploys laughable and tragic readings summer … bertrand belin thought systems in order to grasp the meaning of his mission. Little by little. the reader himself becomes a kind of Watt, interrogative, tired, in desperate quest for meaning, ready to deprive himself of sleep, tense towards a thinning.

It is this participation of the body. from the nerves, to the pleasure (until the displeasure) of reading, that I love in the work of Beckett and in Watt especially”.

Written between 1941. 1944, published in English in 1953 and in translation in 1969, this novel which works the absurd is carried, like all the work of Beckett, by a reflection on language. Considered an exercise by its author. it is a text of exhaustion of the narration, featuring a magnificent tramp, which announces other characters of the author ofWhile waiting for Godot.

Wattde Samuel Beckett. Translated from English by Ludovic and Agnes January in collaboration with the author readings summer … bertrand belin (Midnight coll. Double 2007), 272 p., € 9.90.

Bertrand Belin, last published book: The figures (Pol 2025), 176 p., 18 €.

Interview by Sylvie Tanette