Text by Sylvie Germain, extract from © ''Eclats de sel'' – Éditions Gallimard, 1996.

Dedicated to soprano Nathalie Pannier

Creation on January 19, 2006 at the Halle Saint-Pierre (Paris 18th)

Duration: approx. 8'30' - Symmetry Editions

We must consider this work as a scene from an opera where the protagonist speaks to himself as if in front of his reflection in a mirror. It may be his own first name that he chants throughout the work because his double challenges him. Otherwise I suggest Ludka for a woman and Ludwig for a man.

This short, very interior work plays on the various levels of reading Sylvie Germain's text, which can be interpreted according to the four meanings of Scripture: literal, allegorical, moral and anagogic. This last meaning is particularly emphasized by the music.

Many expressive resources of the voice are called upon here: melodic, spoken/sung, spoken (declaimed, chanted…), untimbrated, breath…

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A mezzo or alto and even a male voice can sing the work. In this case, transpose the vocal part (and the rattlesnakes) at the convenience of the performer.

The Argument

A woman (or a man) turns towards the window of the compartment of the train in which she (he) makes a journey without hope of return. She (he) crosses the gaze of his own reflection in the glass. This gaze is both hers and that of a woman (or a man) strangely resembling her, seen a few moments earlier during a stop in a small station.

In this gaze, as in that of the stranger, the same somewhat painful seriousness, an equal expression of expectation, of patience. She (he) does not know if it is about her (him) or the other. She (he) does not recognize himself in the flagrance of his own image. She (he) extends her hand towards the window and touches the closed lips of her reflection with her fingertips. Then the mouth opens and begins to speak to him in a muffled and tenuous voice:

“first name of the performer twice (or Ludka or Ludwig)” (…)  “Look at me, listen to me…”  (…) “ From the moment of your birth I have attached myself to your breath, to your heart. I am the cry of your birth, and your memory before this cry. I took part in each of your days, I followed you step by step, gesture by gesture, and I went to bed in each of your nights. Often, on your shoulder, I put my hand, but then you only knew how to raise your back casually and push my hand away, as one dusts off unsightly specks of dust. I carried the weight of your sorrows, of your sorrows, and that, heavier, of your doubts. But the most crushing thing was your indifference, your disillusionment. I pressed for you in my palm a tiny burst of light, a burst of silence, but you were always the prey of so many false movements of the heart and the spirit that I never managed to deposit this grain in you... (first name 1 time), by dint of being absent from yourself and disgusted with everything, you lost sight of yourself, you lost your heart, and you misunderstood me to such an extent, and you so unloved that you ended up detaching me from you, by untying yourself, turning away from others... (first name 1 time), for so long I have been looking for you and I implore you like a dog repudiated by its master , I am looking for you and I grieve like a master who has lost his dog, I am looking for you and I adjure you like a brother in search of his prodigal and forgetful brother… (first name 1 time), it is so cold in your oblivion, it is so dark in your boredom, it is so hungry, and thirsty, in your inattention to the mystery of this world…”.