And the Son of God died, it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again, the fact is certain because it is impossible.

Tertullian (150-225), De Carne Christi

L’année dernièr à Marienbad

Last Year in Marienbad

Public domain. Copy freely

Abstract

The timeless and recurrent theme of Last Year in Marienbad. This is a textual simulation of Last Year in Marienbad.

It Was Cold That Year…

In an opulent hotel with vast gardens, guests gossip languidly about a scandal. Last year in Marienbad the weather was impossibly cold, icy. They had an affair. Was it then? She cannot remember. He wants to convince her that last year, perhaps in Marienbad, they had met, become lovers, and even planned to leave together. They guests drifted like somnabulists from the court where the stage was, and mingled with the histrionic statues that lined the room. I imagine them as if they were captured on a still photograph, people, statues, palmate trees, silent, still. They stand statuesque, motionless with a vacant gaze among the emptily chatting guests and the theatrical decorations. They moved as if from tableaux to tableaux.

Walking, waiting! Alone, I was waiting for you, very far away from this dark place where I feel you, beside me, still waiting for the man who will no longer come, who no longer threatens to come to separate us again, to take you back. Are you coming? The curtain falls to polite applause. Now, I seem to remember—a play, a production put on for the guests, it was so cold. Walls, corridors, doors. Always walls, always corridors, always doors. And, past them, still more doors. I was walking desolate corridors between these walls covered with silk drapes, lithographs of the gardens, bas reliefs. On the walls were framed prints of the immense formal park outside with its exceedingly regular late seventeenth century French formal layout. All the paintings in the hotel were of the resort itself and its gardens. Behind us, the silhouette of the castle grew menacingly larger against the dark night sky as we fled. The surrounds of this institution were a kind of park a la francaise without any trees or flowers, without any foliage. A conceptually simple design with no organic shapes, geometric, angular. Gravel, stone, marble and straight lines marked out rigid spaces, surfaces with little mystery by day. It seemed, at first glance, impossible to get lost here. Straight paths extend into the distance, between lines of fantastic statues with frozen gestures casting grotesque shadows from their granite slabs… on, along, across, down, intersection after intersection… you are lost. There had to be a way, a strategy to solve the endless losses… Already lost yet the shadow of the house still envelopes you, lost forever, in a silent icily cold night, alone with me… until nest year… in Marienbad.

I have a recurring memory of moving slowly through the hallways, galleries, and salons of the hotel’s endless passages. I am walking on, again, down these corridors, through these halls, these galleries, in this sun-king splendour of a a long dead age, this enormous, ornamented, pompous, empyrean hotel, where passages succeed endless pasages, dead, empty passages overloaded with a darkened, overelaborated workmanship of woodwork, stucco, mouldings, marble, black mirrors, dark paintings, columns, heavy fabrics, ornamented architravings, series of entrances, landings, transverse hallways, that open in turn on unused salons, dusty, turgescent chambers of an extinct style, empty passageways. I play a game but always lose. He always beats me at it. It is a simple game in appearance. The cards are placed in rows of one, three, five seven and have to be removed in turn. Any number may be removed but all from one row only. I lose. He wins. Can you ever lose? I ask. I can lose, but I always win, he answers. He is the master of this game. The guests admire him immensely. He has kudos in their confined society. Each time I play, I am challenged to play, and have the first move. I lose. Now I am beginning to remember. They were all dressed in formal attire, and engaged in polite murmured conversations while standing about decorously, in the unobtrusive manner of well bred people.

At first you denied remembering me. You said you could not properly remember any affair. Over the course of the days, months, (it seemed forever) I divided my time between talking to you and playing the game with him. I could not win, but I drew you out of your passiveness. I made you remember, even when I was not sure. All of your thoughts are in your head together. Sometimes it is hard to keep them in the right sequence. Is there a right sequence? I think it was her. We had met before. I am sure it was her. Myth is like thoughts, it stands for what is continuous. Good and evil are always in conflict. Michael did not fight the dragon, he is always fighting it. Unceasingly. This year you promised to elope with me, to leave him. Slowly I convinced you. The past is a stifling, lifeless place. It all seemed to me strange, even indeterminate. Did things happen quite like that? It sometimes seemed not to make sense. It seemed ambiguous and uncertain. … and next year! …