Un albatros dans la prose : notes sur Confession d’un timide de Philippe Vilain

Abstract

Can a writer be shy? Can a work that drinks from the living source of the self be the work of a shy one? Can we imagine a timid person publishing a confession where he declares himself to the world, timid? To answer yes to these questions is to open the way to the paradox that is the subject of this study: for Philippe Vilain, literature is the discourse by which the shy man returns like a glove the passion that prevents him from speaking; what can not be said, so you’ll have to write it. By undertaking an investigation into shyness (an intimate passion if any), by trying to describe it, to define it, by making an inventory of everything it deprives — Philippe Vilain questions the secret of his art: a classical writing, a restrained style, a sober and tense prose are his way of inscribing shyness at the heart of the work, of radiating the modesty of the language in the shamelessness of the book.