Marie-Pascale Huglo

Introduction: The Art of War According to Lydie Salvayre

To present Lydie Salvayre’s work in progress is not an easy task. Her novels and short fictions impose a verbal intensity that resists description or assimilation. It is no coincidence that all the papers gathered in this issue deal with voice. Salvayre’s polyphonic pieces of writing have to be “read with the ears”: the rhythm, the funniness and the fabulous inventiveness of her prose may be highly stimulating for the reader, but they are almost impossible to describe. One has to experience Salvayre’s style in order to have an idea of that “little special thing” that makes her signature. But verbal intensity is not all there is to say about this contemporary writer. As one reads through the books she has published so far, one is struck by the recurrence of one main theme: war. Indeed, war is everywhere. The titles of her first and last published books have to do with it: the first, La Déclaration, could well mean both a declaration of war and of love; the latest one, Passage à l’ennemie, implies that if indeed there is an enemy, what is at stake is going over to her (the enemy here is female). In these books as well as in her others, a clear line divides the good guys from the bad guys, but an oblique approach undermines this apparent clarity. Does this mean that war is not that bad after all? Certainly not. In Salvayre’s novels, war is a permanent feature: nations, social groups, families, couples, artists (especially writers), tourists, speakers, neighbors are at war. To believe otherwise is to deny the facts, or the fight. Thus, Salvayre’s stories confront us with that simple acknowledgement: war is neither an accident nor a crisis nor an epiphenomenon; it is at the core of human relationships. Of course, Salvayre is not the first to deliver this message. What is striking, however, is that not only does she show war at work in our everyday lives as well as in history, she also takes part in it and makes it contagious, even hilarious. The message is not, therefore, a solemn one: The novelist has better things to do than to deliver solemn messages. Salvayre is well aware that solemnity is one of the means to win an audience. Rhetorical tricks and turns have no secrets for her, but what she enjoys most is to unsettle them, to