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Fiction

The Sex Life of the Writer

By Nadine Bismuth
Translated from French by Alison Strayer

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
—Ernest Hemingway  

A friend recently lent us a book called The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant.1  Its author,  one Jean-Baptiste Botul, examines the philosopher’s lifestyle, which besides the usual mingling and chitchat boiled down to study, study, and more study. And thus Kant not only preserved himself from marriage but from ever making room in his life for a woman, not the smallest corner.

For a man to be chaste his whole life is unusual; it is  all the more surprising in the case of Kant, for chastity would seem to contradict his supreme principle of morality, “Act as if the maxim of  thy action  were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.” However, Botul concedes, as humanity must be perpetuated, chastity cannot become a universal law. Now, philosophers comprise an atypical category of human, their method of reproduction highly unusual. To ensure the survival of their species, so that humanity may be more than “a vile herd with no memory other than genetic,” they copulate in reverse, that is, “they do not penetrate but withdraw.” This withdrawal goes by the name of melancholy. But what is melancholy? “A disease of loneliness,” says Botul. “Those of atrabilious temperament voluntarily retreat and that is when the miracle of contemplative life occurs.” Thus, Kant’s chastity, far from violating his first principle of morality, was actually essential to his philosophical approach and has ultimately served all humanity.

In closing Mr. Botul’s pamphlet, we could not help  wondering if writers, like philosophers, in order to perpetuate their species, are not also predisposed to coitus in reverse. Don’t writers, also melancholic, keep their distance from others to practice their art, pulling away from rather than plunging into life? 

***

To explore the delicate question of withdrawal and penetration, first we must ask how present the writer really is in relation to others. The question is essential and brings to light the writer’s deep inner conflict. In Enchantment and Sorrow, Gabrielle Roy describes this rift, confiding: “My books took a great deal of time stolen from friendship, love, and human duty. But likewise friendship, love, and duty took a lot of time I might have given to my books. With the result that neither my life nor my books are very pleased with me today.”  Here, we must read between the lines. Is the true cause of the inner rift merely the time that both love and writing require? Certainly, time is an easy excuse and the one that most readily springs to everyone’s mind, including the writer’s (e.g.:  “Are you coming to the country with me this weekend? ”  “Oh, no, I have a chapter to finish.”). But aside from the tired old question of schedule, we have to ask if writers are truly capable of giving themselves  to another. Is it even close to being a priority for them? Elsewhere in her autobiography,  Roy provides an answer. She admits to having felt from a young age that she had to save first place “for something other than love that was perhaps even more demanding.” Is it possible that the gift of self that is indispensable to writing demands exclusivity? “The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates,” wrote Baudelaire, which already gives us a very big clue.

“You put your art into your work. I put it into my life,” Larry says to his friend Harry, the neurotic writer played by Woody Allen in Deconstructing Harry. This would suggest that the writers’ problem is giving their all to writing instead of focusing on life. “All my juice goes into the damned book,” Hemingway wrote to a correspondent in 1945. But how could it be otherwise?  Isn’t it possible that the energy (the “juice,” art, diligence, application, effort) that people invest  in life and love is qualitatively and quantitatively the same energy that writers puts into writing?  “I realized that what I gave to my wife I took away in equal measure from my work,” declares Silvio, the writer narrator of Conjugal Love by Alberto Moravia. Virginia Woolf, writing in her journal during the compositon of To the Lighthouse in 1926, evokes a similar situation. “I am often unable to think what to say when we [she and Leonard Woolf] walk around the Square, which is bad, I know…. Perhaps it may be a good sign for the book though.” So then it’s the total inability of writers to distribute energy in two places at once that causes their deep inner divide and explains why, as a general rule, they are unable to be “all there.” It even affects their health: “I think the effort to live in two spheres: the novel, and life, is a strain,” Virginia Woolf writes in August, 1933. These two spheres are like planets on separate trajectories, orbiting two different sites, and by dint of yearning to have a foot in each, a person becomes dizzy or, worse, is torn to pieces.   

But why, we ask, must writers give so much of themselves to their writing? Why does it so thoroughly absorb them? “I am embarrassed by my own fertility,” says Bernard, the novelist  in The Waves. And indeed, there is cause for concern because, like a pregnant woman  to her unborn child, writers must remain constantly alert to contractions within their imaginations. “A story,” wrote Gabrielle Roy, “does not wait for us to be done: with whatever seems more urgent, such as answering that letter, [etc.]. . . A story has its hour and if we’re not free for it then, it very rarely returns. In any case, by waiting it will have forever lost most of its mysterious and elusive life. ” This total availability of writers to writing will result – we’ve guessed it by now — in complete emotional unavailability. “The great poets,” Denis Diderot observes in The Paradox of Acting […] “are the least sensitive of all creatures  […] They are too busy looking, recognizing, and imitating to be acutely affected within themselves.”  And while we’re on the subject, let us recall Silvio’s admission in Conjugal Love: “Apart from my work nothing had any importance in life, not even my love for my wife. […] It was all the same to me.” The writer’s special relationship with his or her work is obviously frustrating for the person looking on who wants the writer all to himself. That, moreover, is why the other person, in the face of the writer-book dyad, feels something akin to the Laius Complex that afflicts fathers before the spectacle of the exclusive mother-child bond. Feeling rejected, the other cannot help  wanting to squeeze into the special relationship between writer and book, but unfortunately the other will just as soon realize it’s quite impossible, over time ceasing to express anything but bitterness toward this relationship. (Unless the other is the writer’s publisher, s/he will start out gently asking, “Don’t you think you’re working too hard?” and later do nothing but gripe, “You work all the time!”)
        At this juncture, we must issue a warning to interested parties: sharing the life of a writer is a major source of dissatisfaction. As Francesco Alberoni explains in his fine essay Falling in Love, “an intimate view of [the profession of writer in] daily life reveals all the discipline, rehearsing or practicing, and determination to achieve a high level of perfection which the audience or fans never see, and which doesn’t register  with the person who falls in love at first either. He or she is bowled over by the other’s talent and performance and doesn’t consider all the humble, behind-the-scenes work that he or she will soon be asked to submit to without being truly involved in. In the end, it is very human to feel let down – and left out.” Here we might also quote Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, who says in her memoirs: “Being the wife of a pilot is a whole career, but being the wife of a writer is a religious vocation!” This religious vocation, it seems, lacks even the advantage of being restful, if we are to consider Hemingway’s avowal, “[when I am working on a novel], I am just about as pleasant to have around as a bear with sore toenails.” It is clearly a case of “look before you leap!” 

That said, it would be a pity to confuse writers’ availability to writing, and the resulting insensitivity to external things, with selfishness. This kind of judgment is erroneous, for the true creative process is anything but narcissistic. Writers are not only insensitive to others but wholly indifferent to their own selves as well. “One must get out of life,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary in 1926, “one must become externalized; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one’s character, living in the brain.”

Writers forget their own personalities: they forget themselves; they work toward disappearing into a universal Self. This being the case, how can somebody love a writer (and these things do happen) without the writer feeling deeply annoyed? “Promise you won’t fall in love with me,” says Harry, the alter ego of Woody Allen, to the young Fay when they first meet. We admire Harry’s consistency; the writer who works almost ceaselessly to destroy his personal ego would be foolish to seek another’s love because naturally this love would latch onto the very ego the writer is trying to shake. This is why, like the Prodigal Son (“It will be difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of one who did not want to be loved,” wrote Rilke in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), writers flee, or know they will end up fleeing, the people who love them. Katherine Mansfield writes in her diary in 1919: “I’d always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much.” Writers are not only incapable of normal loving but more importantly, they do not want to be loved too much. Of course they want us to love their books but not necessarily themselves. And that is why the writer is often unbearable and why one key feature of his personality is to feel stifled or even threatened by the love of others. Gabrielle Roy admits, recalling her European idyll with a certain Stephen, the only love she would ever know in her life – at a time, it must be said, when she was not yet a writer but in the process of becoming one – that even had she been luckier and the relationship had lasted longer, “sooner or later, [she] would have turned against such a complete invasion of [her] life.”

The writer’s refusal to be invaded by the other is the crux of his problem in love. And so, we ask, unable to apply him or herself equally to two things at once, incapable of being completely present, or to love and be loved like anyone else, shouldn’t the writer just remain alone? The question must be answered with care, for no one has said that despite withdrawing from life, the writer never feels the need to penetrate it.

***  

Far from being a loner, the “hero” of Deconstructing Harry,  collects wives and mistresses. His friends, his family,  and his exes (that is, everyone but his analyst) criticize his dissolute life. Harry will come to recognize that he’s not cut out for marriage, but cannot quite accept it because, he says, ” […] then I get lonely.” Though incapable of being fully present to others, the writer cannot endure total isolation. Virginia Woolf refers to the writer’s need for a room of her own,  not an entire house. If, beyond the walls of the writing room, there were only large empty chambers, the writer would be in a very bad way. Imagine the boredom of a life that consisted of nothing but writing! Hemingway would agree. “Been writing every day and going good,” he says in a letter of 1945. “Makes a hell of a dull life too.” This dull life is what the writer would be condemned to if he chose the house instead of the room. Thus, Hemingway’s romantic notion that “writing, at its best, is a lonely life” comes down to “writing, at its best, is a dull life.”
       The other’s presence is so essential to the writer because it is the writer’s only escape from this deeply boring life and the existential emptiness (Hemingway alludes to a vacuum) that overwhelms him or her when not writing. Leaving the room of his or her own, the writer needs to be swept up by reality, salvaged, revived and entertained by the other. Gabrielle Roy muses, “I believe  […] I was comforted by the feeling that though my road in life was solitary, it wasn’t impossible there would be someone to walk a little way with, once in a while.” However it might be noted that “a little way, once in a while” does not require a big commitment from anyone. For if the writer is to be salvaged, revived, and entertained by the presence of the other, it must be effortless. “I only want walking and perfectly spontaneous childish life with L. and the accustomed when I’m writing at full tilt,” observed  Woolf  in 1933. “Perfectly spontaneous childish life,” that is, light and entertaining (on leaving her room, the writer cries: “I finished my chapter! Take me to the beach! Take me to a restaurant! Take me to the movies! ” or any number of variations on the theme).

Ifhe other’s presence on the opposite side of the wall is an absolute necessity, it’s because that is all that can save writers from the monotonous, unreal life that would be theirs if all they ever did was write. They need to know the other is there for them, while knowing they will never be entirely present in return, for fear of neglecting their books. This is amply illustrated by the strange dedication recalled by the narrator of Conjugal Love, probably because it sums up his own approach to writing: “To my wife without the absence of whom this book would never have been written.” Due to this inimitable logic, the writer’s sex life will never exactly correspond to that of the philosopher as evoked by Botul (“they do not penetrate, they withdraw”). Writers have to penetrate life, but because they never penetrate all the way, their method of ensuing their perpetuity remains as paradoxical as the chastity advocated by the philosopher. Indeed, if only the writer was able to climax before withdrawing from the other, his continued existence would not be such a problem. That is why, when all is said and done, coitus interruptus is a more accurate characterization of the sex life of writers, for whom this practice is less a method of contraception than it is their own special technique of reproduction.

With this in mind, we must now imagine an ideal partner for the writer. Coitus interruptus, it would seem, is not very pleasant for anyone who has to endure it without understanding why. Thus, the writer’s ideal partner is a person whose habits are compatible with this practice. And so that withdrawal proceeds smoothly, the writer’s partner must also demonstrate a predisposition to withdrawal. The world traveler or workaholic would appear to be prime candidates. But that still does not suffice, for as far as penetration is concerned, the writer’s partner will also have to be patient by nature, the kind of person who doesn’t become excited too quickly. And because he or she will have to keep  busy while waiting by a closed door for the writer’s next appearance, the partner would be well-advised to like crossword puzzles, or solitary card games, or something along those lines.

So there we have the ideal type. But given that this ideal does not exist,  any more than any other ideal, what is the writer going to do? What will he or she do, supposing that neither frequent flyers fond of crosswords nor workaholic solitaire fans are people one meets every day? Is the writer doomed to “walk a little way, once in a while” with someone different each time the need for penetration recurs? “No, wait!” cries the reader, who would really like this story to be a little more cheerful. “Why can’t the writer’s ideal partner be another writer?”

Let’s think about it a moment. Don’t we have all the elements for a perfect match? Two professional withdrawers who nonentheless crave some form of controlled penetration? Such a union has definite advantages for both, such as never having to hear, “You’re so weird, I don’t  understand you!” The writer can hardly blame her partner for being just like her, one day out and about in life, three days in her room, two days for love and then three of wanting to be alone, and so on, with no fixed schedule. Clearly, this couple will understand each other without having to exchange a word, which is everyone’s ideal but especially that of the writer, for whom it is always more difficult to speak than to write. But what happens if one partner is overwhelmed by a burning desire for penetration during the other’s phase of withdrawal? The former party cannot blame the latter, but nor does the urgent need to dive into reality subside. “Take me to the beach!” she says, “I finished my chapter!” “Good for you!” says the other. “But I have to finish mine.” And what about competition, very likely to sour the relationship? Imagine that the weaker writer of the two, after many years of persevering, becomes demoralized by the failure of his books. Won’t this writer become jealous of the other and wish to cause harm in the most insidious way possible: to prolong penetration, no longer withdraw ever? Isn’t that something to be truly afraid of? Can two bears with sore toenails (as Hemingway would have it) really live together without killing each other?  
          About the writer as ideal partner for the writer: we do not really have faith in this solution. Based on the strength of our research, we maintain that it is naive to continue to believe in any arrangement capable of making the writer’s sex life, with all its underlying conditions and complications, less paradoxical and problematic. Needless to say, it is a depressing observation, and readers who wanted a happy ending are probably very sad; but not as sad as we are, for reasons we do not wish to expand upon here.

1. This essay is, of course, a hoax, but the issues it raises are no less relevant for that.

“La vie sexuelle de l’écrivain” © Nadine Bismuth. First published in L’Inconvénient, No. 5 ( May 2001), p. 61–72. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Alison Strayer. All rights reserved.

English French (Original)

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
—Ernest Hemingway  

A friend recently lent us a book called The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant.1  Its author,  one Jean-Baptiste Botul, examines the philosopher’s lifestyle, which besides the usual mingling and chitchat boiled down to study, study, and more study. And thus Kant not only preserved himself from marriage but from ever making room in his life for a woman, not the smallest corner.

For a man to be chaste his whole life is unusual; it is  all the more surprising in the case of Kant, for chastity would seem to contradict his supreme principle of morality, “Act as if the maxim of  thy action  were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.” However, Botul concedes, as humanity must be perpetuated, chastity cannot become a universal law. Now, philosophers comprise an atypical category of human, their method of reproduction highly unusual. To ensure the survival of their species, so that humanity may be more than “a vile herd with no memory other than genetic,” they copulate in reverse, that is, “they do not penetrate but withdraw.” This withdrawal goes by the name of melancholy. But what is melancholy? “A disease of loneliness,” says Botul. “Those of atrabilious temperament voluntarily retreat and that is when the miracle of contemplative life occurs.” Thus, Kant’s chastity, far from violating his first principle of morality, was actually essential to his philosophical approach and has ultimately served all humanity.

In closing Mr. Botul’s pamphlet, we could not help  wondering if writers, like philosophers, in order to perpetuate their species, are not also predisposed to coitus in reverse. Don’t writers, also melancholic, keep their distance from others to practice their art, pulling away from rather than plunging into life? 

***

To explore the delicate question of withdrawal and penetration, first we must ask how present the writer really is in relation to others. The question is essential and brings to light the writer’s deep inner conflict. In Enchantment and Sorrow, Gabrielle Roy describes this rift, confiding: “My books took a great deal of time stolen from friendship, love, and human duty. But likewise friendship, love, and duty took a lot of time I might have given to my books. With the result that neither my life nor my books are very pleased with me today.”  Here, we must read between the lines. Is the true cause of the inner rift merely the time that both love and writing require? Certainly, time is an easy excuse and the one that most readily springs to everyone’s mind, including the writer’s (e.g.:  “Are you coming to the country with me this weekend? ”  “Oh, no, I have a chapter to finish.”). But aside from the tired old question of schedule, we have to ask if writers are truly capable of giving themselves  to another. Is it even close to being a priority for them? Elsewhere in her autobiography,  Roy provides an answer. She admits to having felt from a young age that she had to save first place “for something other than love that was perhaps even more demanding.” Is it possible that the gift of self that is indispensable to writing demands exclusivity? “The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates,” wrote Baudelaire, which already gives us a very big clue.

“You put your art into your work. I put it into my life,” Larry says to his friend Harry, the neurotic writer played by Woody Allen in Deconstructing Harry. This would suggest that the writers’ problem is giving their all to writing instead of focusing on life. “All my juice goes into the damned book,” Hemingway wrote to a correspondent in 1945. But how could it be otherwise?  Isn’t it possible that the energy (the “juice,” art, diligence, application, effort) that people invest  in life and love is qualitatively and quantitatively the same energy that writers puts into writing?  “I realized that what I gave to my wife I took away in equal measure from my work,” declares Silvio, the writer narrator of Conjugal Love by Alberto Moravia. Virginia Woolf, writing in her journal during the compositon of To the Lighthouse in 1926, evokes a similar situation. “I am often unable to think what to say when we [she and Leonard Woolf] walk around the Square, which is bad, I know…. Perhaps it may be a good sign for the book though.” So then it’s the total inability of writers to distribute energy in two places at once that causes their deep inner divide and explains why, as a general rule, they are unable to be “all there.” It even affects their health: “I think the effort to live in two spheres: the novel, and life, is a strain,” Virginia Woolf writes in August, 1933. These two spheres are like planets on separate trajectories, orbiting two different sites, and by dint of yearning to have a foot in each, a person becomes dizzy or, worse, is torn to pieces.   

But why, we ask, must writers give so much of themselves to their writing? Why does it so thoroughly absorb them? “I am embarrassed by my own fertility,” says Bernard, the novelist  in The Waves. And indeed, there is cause for concern because, like a pregnant woman  to her unborn child, writers must remain constantly alert to contractions within their imaginations. “A story,” wrote Gabrielle Roy, “does not wait for us to be done: with whatever seems more urgent, such as answering that letter, [etc.]. . . A story has its hour and if we’re not free for it then, it very rarely returns. In any case, by waiting it will have forever lost most of its mysterious and elusive life. ” This total availability of writers to writing will result – we’ve guessed it by now — in complete emotional unavailability. “The great poets,” Denis Diderot observes in The Paradox of Acting […] “are the least sensitive of all creatures  […] They are too busy looking, recognizing, and imitating to be acutely affected within themselves.”  And while we’re on the subject, let us recall Silvio’s admission in Conjugal Love: “Apart from my work nothing had any importance in life, not even my love for my wife. […] It was all the same to me.” The writer’s special relationship with his or her work is obviously frustrating for the person looking on who wants the writer all to himself. That, moreover, is why the other person, in the face of the writer-book dyad, feels something akin to the Laius Complex that afflicts fathers before the spectacle of the exclusive mother-child bond. Feeling rejected, the other cannot help  wanting to squeeze into the special relationship between writer and book, but unfortunately the other will just as soon realize it’s quite impossible, over time ceasing to express anything but bitterness toward this relationship. (Unless the other is the writer’s publisher, s/he will start out gently asking, “Don’t you think you’re working too hard?” and later do nothing but gripe, “You work all the time!”)
        At this juncture, we must issue a warning to interested parties: sharing the life of a writer is a major source of dissatisfaction. As Francesco Alberoni explains in his fine essay Falling in Love, “an intimate view of [the profession of writer in] daily life reveals all the discipline, rehearsing or practicing, and determination to achieve a high level of perfection which the audience or fans never see, and which doesn’t register  with the person who falls in love at first either. He or she is bowled over by the other’s talent and performance and doesn’t consider all the humble, behind-the-scenes work that he or she will soon be asked to submit to without being truly involved in. In the end, it is very human to feel let down – and left out.” Here we might also quote Consuelo de Saint-Exupery, who says in her memoirs: “Being the wife of a pilot is a whole career, but being the wife of a writer is a religious vocation!” This religious vocation, it seems, lacks even the advantage of being restful, if we are to consider Hemingway’s avowal, “[when I am working on a novel], I am just about as pleasant to have around as a bear with sore toenails.” It is clearly a case of “look before you leap!” 

That said, it would be a pity to confuse writers’ availability to writing, and the resulting insensitivity to external things, with selfishness. This kind of judgment is erroneous, for the true creative process is anything but narcissistic. Writers are not only insensitive to others but wholly indifferent to their own selves as well. “One must get out of life,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary in 1926, “one must become externalized; very, very concentrated, all at one point, not having to draw upon the scattered parts of one’s character, living in the brain.”

Writers forget their own personalities: they forget themselves; they work toward disappearing into a universal Self. This being the case, how can somebody love a writer (and these things do happen) without the writer feeling deeply annoyed? “Promise you won’t fall in love with me,” says Harry, the alter ego of Woody Allen, to the young Fay when they first meet. We admire Harry’s consistency; the writer who works almost ceaselessly to destroy his personal ego would be foolish to seek another’s love because naturally this love would latch onto the very ego the writer is trying to shake. This is why, like the Prodigal Son (“It will be difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of one who did not want to be loved,” wrote Rilke in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), writers flee, or know they will end up fleeing, the people who love them. Katherine Mansfield writes in her diary in 1919: “I’d always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much.” Writers are not only incapable of normal loving but more importantly, they do not want to be loved too much. Of course they want us to love their books but not necessarily themselves. And that is why the writer is often unbearable and why one key feature of his personality is to feel stifled or even threatened by the love of others. Gabrielle Roy admits, recalling her European idyll with a certain Stephen, the only love she would ever know in her life – at a time, it must be said, when she was not yet a writer but in the process of becoming one – that even had she been luckier and the relationship had lasted longer, “sooner or later, [she] would have turned against such a complete invasion of [her] life.”

The writer’s refusal to be invaded by the other is the crux of his problem in love. And so, we ask, unable to apply him or herself equally to two things at once, incapable of being completely present, or to love and be loved like anyone else, shouldn’t the writer just remain alone? The question must be answered with care, for no one has said that despite withdrawing from life, the writer never feels the need to penetrate it.

***  

Far from being a loner, the “hero” of Deconstructing Harry,  collects wives and mistresses. His friends, his family,  and his exes (that is, everyone but his analyst) criticize his dissolute life. Harry will come to recognize that he’s not cut out for marriage, but cannot quite accept it because, he says, ” […] then I get lonely.” Though incapable of being fully present to others, the writer cannot endure total isolation. Virginia Woolf refers to the writer’s need for a room of her own,  not an entire house. If, beyond the walls of the writing room, there were only large empty chambers, the writer would be in a very bad way. Imagine the boredom of a life that consisted of nothing but writing! Hemingway would agree. “Been writing every day and going good,” he says in a letter of 1945. “Makes a hell of a dull life too.” This dull life is what the writer would be condemned to if he chose the house instead of the room. Thus, Hemingway’s romantic notion that “writing, at its best, is a lonely life” comes down to “writing, at its best, is a dull life.”
       The other’s presence is so essential to the writer because it is the writer’s only escape from this deeply boring life and the existential emptiness (Hemingway alludes to a vacuum) that overwhelms him or her when not writing. Leaving the room of his or her own, the writer needs to be swept up by reality, salvaged, revived and entertained by the other. Gabrielle Roy muses, “I believe  […] I was comforted by the feeling that though my road in life was solitary, it wasn’t impossible there would be someone to walk a little way with, once in a while.” However it might be noted that “a little way, once in a while” does not require a big commitment from anyone. For if the writer is to be salvaged, revived, and entertained by the presence of the other, it must be effortless. “I only want walking and perfectly spontaneous childish life with L. and the accustomed when I’m writing at full tilt,” observed  Woolf  in 1933. “Perfectly spontaneous childish life,” that is, light and entertaining (on leaving her room, the writer cries: “I finished my chapter! Take me to the beach! Take me to a restaurant! Take me to the movies! ” or any number of variations on the theme).

Ifhe other’s presence on the opposite side of the wall is an absolute necessity, it’s because that is all that can save writers from the monotonous, unreal life that would be theirs if all they ever did was write. They need to know the other is there for them, while knowing they will never be entirely present in return, for fear of neglecting their books. This is amply illustrated by the strange dedication recalled by the narrator of Conjugal Love, probably because it sums up his own approach to writing: “To my wife without the absence of whom this book would never have been written.” Due to this inimitable logic, the writer’s sex life will never exactly correspond to that of the philosopher as evoked by Botul (“they do not penetrate, they withdraw”). Writers have to penetrate life, but because they never penetrate all the way, their method of ensuing their perpetuity remains as paradoxical as the chastity advocated by the philosopher. Indeed, if only the writer was able to climax before withdrawing from the other, his continued existence would not be such a problem. That is why, when all is said and done, coitus interruptus is a more accurate characterization of the sex life of writers, for whom this practice is less a method of contraception than it is their own special technique of reproduction.

With this in mind, we must now imagine an ideal partner for the writer. Coitus interruptus, it would seem, is not very pleasant for anyone who has to endure it without understanding why. Thus, the writer’s ideal partner is a person whose habits are compatible with this practice. And so that withdrawal proceeds smoothly, the writer’s partner must also demonstrate a predisposition to withdrawal. The world traveler or workaholic would appear to be prime candidates. But that still does not suffice, for as far as penetration is concerned, the writer’s partner will also have to be patient by nature, the kind of person who doesn’t become excited too quickly. And because he or she will have to keep  busy while waiting by a closed door for the writer’s next appearance, the partner would be well-advised to like crossword puzzles, or solitary card games, or something along those lines.

So there we have the ideal type. But given that this ideal does not exist,  any more than any other ideal, what is the writer going to do? What will he or she do, supposing that neither frequent flyers fond of crosswords nor workaholic solitaire fans are people one meets every day? Is the writer doomed to “walk a little way, once in a while” with someone different each time the need for penetration recurs? “No, wait!” cries the reader, who would really like this story to be a little more cheerful. “Why can’t the writer’s ideal partner be another writer?”

Let’s think about it a moment. Don’t we have all the elements for a perfect match? Two professional withdrawers who nonentheless crave some form of controlled penetration? Such a union has definite advantages for both, such as never having to hear, “You’re so weird, I don’t  understand you!” The writer can hardly blame her partner for being just like her, one day out and about in life, three days in her room, two days for love and then three of wanting to be alone, and so on, with no fixed schedule. Clearly, this couple will understand each other without having to exchange a word, which is everyone’s ideal but especially that of the writer, for whom it is always more difficult to speak than to write. But what happens if one partner is overwhelmed by a burning desire for penetration during the other’s phase of withdrawal? The former party cannot blame the latter, but nor does the urgent need to dive into reality subside. “Take me to the beach!” she says, “I finished my chapter!” “Good for you!” says the other. “But I have to finish mine.” And what about competition, very likely to sour the relationship? Imagine that the weaker writer of the two, after many years of persevering, becomes demoralized by the failure of his books. Won’t this writer become jealous of the other and wish to cause harm in the most insidious way possible: to prolong penetration, no longer withdraw ever? Isn’t that something to be truly afraid of? Can two bears with sore toenails (as Hemingway would have it) really live together without killing each other?  
          About the writer as ideal partner for the writer: we do not really have faith in this solution. Based on the strength of our research, we maintain that it is naive to continue to believe in any arrangement capable of making the writer’s sex life, with all its underlying conditions and complications, less paradoxical and problematic. Needless to say, it is a depressing observation, and readers who wanted a happy ending are probably very sad; but not as sad as we are, for reasons we do not wish to expand upon here.

1. This essay is, of course, a hoax, but the issues it raises are no less relevant for that.

“La vie sexuelle de l’écrivain” © Nadine Bismuth. First published in L’Inconvénient, No. 5 ( May 2001), p. 61–72. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Alison Strayer. All rights reserved.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.
Ernest Hemingway

            Un ami nous a prêté récemment une plaquette intitulée La Vie sexuelle d’Emmanuel Kant. Son auteur, un mystérieux Jean-Baptiste Botul, y étudie l’hygiène de vie du philosophe, qui, exception faite de quelques mondanités d’usage,  se résumait à ceci : étude, étude et encore étude. Et c’est ainsi que Kant, en plus de s’être toujours préservé du mariage, n’a jamais fait de place (ne fût-ce qu’une toute petite place) à une femme dans sa vie.

            Qu’un homme reste chaste toute sa vie est déjà exceptionnel. Mais cela est d’autant plus étonnant dans le cas de Kant. En effet, la chasteté n’entre-t-elle pas en contradiction avec le premier principe de la morale kantienne : « Agis comme si la maxime de ton action devait être érigée par ta volonté en loi universelle »? Parce que l’humanité doit se reproduire, il est entendu, convient Botul, que la chasteté ne peut pas devenir une loi universelle. Cependant, les philosophes forment une catégorie atypique parmi les hommes. En effet, leur méthode de procréation est si extraordinaire que pour assurer la survie de leur propre espèce, et pour qu’au bout du compte l’humanité soit autre chose qu’« un vil troupeau sans mémoire autre que génétique », ils font l’amour à l’envers, c’est-à-dire qu’« ils ne pénètrent pas, ils se retirent. Ce retrait porte un nom : la mélancolie ». Qu’est-ce donc que la mélancolie? « Une maladie de la solitude, dit Botul. L’atrabilaire se met volontairement à l’écart. C’est alors que se produit le miracle de la vie contemplative ». La chasteté de Kant, loin de porter atteinte au premier principe de sa morale, était indispensable à sa démarche philosophique ; ainsi, elle servait l’humanité tout entière. 

            En refermant ce petit livre, nous n’avons pu faire autrement que de nous demander si, pour se reproduire, l’écrivain, comme le philosophe, n’était pas enclin à pratiquer le coït à rebours. Mélancolique, ne se met-il pas lui aussi volontairement à l’écart des autres pour pratiquer son art? Ne se retire-t-il pas de la vie au lieu de la pénétrer?

* * *

Pour explorer la délicate question du retrait et de la pénétration, demandons-nous d’abord dans quelle mesure l’écrivain est présent pour l’autre. Cette interrogation est essentielle ; elle met en lumière la profonde déchirure de l’écrivain. Dans La Détresse et l’enchantement, Gabrielle Roy décrit ainsi cette déchirure : « Mes livres, dit-elle, m’ont pris beaucoup de temps dérobé à l’amitié, à l’amour, aux devoirs humains. Mais pareillement l’amitié, l’amour, les devoirs m’ont pris beaucoup de temps que j’aurais pu donner à mes livres. En sorte que ni mes livres ni ma vie ne sont aujourd’hui contents de moi ». Il faut savoir lire entre les lignes de cet aveu. En effet, la vraie cause de la déchirure, est-ce simplement le temps que nécessitent à la fois l’amour et l’écriture? Le temps est toujours une excuse facile, et c’est celle qui vient spontanément à l’esprit de chacun, y compris de l’écrivain (par exemple : « M’accompagnes-tu à la campagne ce week-end? — Ah non. J’ai un chapitre à finir »). Mais au-delà de cette vulgaire question d’horaire, nous devons nous demander si l’écrivain est vraiment en mesure de se donner à l’autre. Est-ce que cela fait seulement partie de ses priorités? Ailleurs dans son autobiographie, Gabrielle Roy répond elle-même à cette question lorsqu’elle admet avoir tôt pressenti dans sa vie « devoir garder la première [place] à quelque chose d’autre que l’amour, peut-être encore plus exigeant ». Serait-il donc possible que le don de soi indispensable à l’écriture soit exclusif? « Plus l’homme cultive les arts, moins il bande », remarque Baudelaire, ce qui nous met déjà sur une bonne piste.

             « You put your art into your work. I put it into my life », dit Larry à son ami Harry, l’écrivain névrotique interprété par Woody Allen dans sa comédie Deconstructing Harry. Ainsi, le problème de l’écrivain serait de tout donner à ses livres au lieu de se concentrer sur sa vie. « All my juice goes in the damned book », écrit Hemingway à un de ses correspondants en 1945. Mais pourrait-il en être autrement? Tout bien pesé, ne se pourrait-il pas que l’énergie — entendre : le juice, l’art, la diligence, l’application, l’effort — qu’un individu consacre normalement à sa vie et à l’amour soit, qualitativement et quantitativement parlant, la même énergie que l’écrivain destine à son œuvre? « Ce que je donnais à ma femme, je le retirais en égale mesure à mon travail », reconnaît sans équivoque Silvio, le narrateur écrivain de L’Amour conjugal d’Alberto Moravia. Virginia Woolf, pendant qu’elle rédige La Promenade au phare, pressent également cette situation et le note dans son Journal en 1926 : « Je suis incapable de trouver un mot à dire quand nous [Léonard et elle] nous promenons autour du square, ce qui est mauvais, je le sais. Mais c’est peut-être bon signe pour le livre ». Ce serait donc cette impossibilité à distribuer son énergie à deux endroits différents en même temps qui provoquerait la déchirure profonde de l’écrivain et qui expliquerait pourquoi, règle générale, celui-ci est incapable d’être entièrement présent au monde. Il en va carrément de sa santé : « [Mon] épuisement, note de nouveau Virginia Woolf en 1933, vient de ce que je vis dans deux sphères à la fois, celle du roman et celle de la vie ». Or ces deux sphères sont comme deux planètes qui parcourent deux orbites différentes autour de deux foyers distincts, si bien qu’à trop vouloir avoir un pied sur chacune d’elles, on se sent vite étourdi, ou pire encore : écartelé. 

            Mais pourquoi, nous demandons-nous, l’écrivain doit-il tant donner de lui-même à son œuvre? Pourquoi cela l’absorbe-t-il ainsi? « Ma propre fécondité m’embarrasse », dit Bernard, le romancier des Vagues de Virginia Woolf. En effet, il y a matière à s’inquiéter, car l’écrivain, un peu comme la mère pour l’enfant qui va naître, doit demeurer constamment attentif aux contractions de son imagination. « Un récit, dit Gabrielle Roy, n’attend pas que l’on en ait fini : avec ceci qui paraît plus urgent, que l’on ait d’abord répondu à cette lettre, [etc.]. Le récit a son heure pour venir et si on n’est pas libre alors pour lui, il est bien rare qu’il repasse. À attendre, il aura en tout cas perdu infiniment de sa mystérieuse vie presque insaisissable ». Cette totale disponibilité de l’écrivain envers son œuvre se traduit, on l’aura deviné, par une indisponibilité émotive. « Les grands poètes, observe Diderot dans son Paradoxe sur le comédien, […] sont les êtres les moins sensibles. […] Ils sont trop occupés à regarder, à reconnaître et à imiter, pour être vivement affectés au-dedans d’eux-mêmes ». À cet égard, retenons le témoignage de Silvio dans L’Amour conjugal : « En dehors de mon travail plus rien n’avait d’importance pour moi dans la vie, pas même mon amour pour ma femme. […] Tout m’était égal ». Cette relation privilégiée qu’entretient l’écrivain avec son œuvre est bien entendu frustrante pour l’autre qui en est témoin et qui voudrait que l’écrivain soit tout entier à lui. C’est d’ailleurs la raison pour laquelle cet autre développera à l’égard du couple écrivain-œuvre un sentiment semblable au complexe de Laïos qui s’empare du père devant le spectacle de la relation exclusive qu’entretient la mère avec l’enfant. Se sentant rejeté, l’autre ne pourra faire autrement que de vouloir s’immiscer dans la relation toute particulière qu’entretient l’écrivain avec ses livres ; malheureusement, il se rendra compte très vite que cela est impossible, si bien qu’avec le temps, il ne manifestera plus que de l’aigreur envers cette relation (par exemple, à moins qu’il ne soit son éditeur, au début, l’autre demandera doucement à l’écrivain : « Tu ne trouves pas que tu travailles trop? » Ensuite, il ne fera que se plaindre : « Tu travailles tout le temps! »)  

            C’est ici qu’il faut émettre un avis aux intéressés : partager la vie d’un écrivain est une grande source d’insatisfaction.  Comme l’explique Francesco Alberoni dans son bel essai Le Choc amoureux, « [le métier d’écrivain], dans l’intimité, [est fait] de discipline, d’épreuves, de recherche continuelle d’une ligne d’arrivée, d’un résultat, d’une perfection. Le public ne voit pas toute cette recherche et cette routine et l’amoureux, lui-même, est ébloui par la performance et ne pense pas à ce travail humble, obscur, dont il devra comprendre la nécessité et auquel il devra apprendre à participer sans en être le protagoniste. Aussi la déception est-elle inévitable ». À ce propos, citons le témoignage de Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry, qui confie la chose suivante dans ses Mémoires : « Être la femme d’un pilote, c’est un métier. Être la femme d’un écrivain, c’est un sacerdoce ». Un sacerdoce qui ne comporte même pas l’avantage d’être reposant, pour peu que l’on tienne compte de cette confession d’Hemingway : « [When I am working on a novel], I am just about as pleasant to have around as a bear with sore toenails ». C’est donc un pensez-y bien.

            Cela dit, il serait dommage de confondre la disponibilité de l’écrivain envers son œuvre et l’espèce d’insensibilité aux choses extérieures qui en résulte avec de l’égoïsme. Un tel jugement serait erroné, car la vraie démarche créatrice est tout sauf narcissique. En effet, l’écrivain n’est pas seulement insensible aux autres, il est complètement indifférent à son Moi particulier : « Il faut sortir de soi, note Virginia Woolf en 1922, et se concentrer au maximum sur un seul point; ne rien demander aux éléments épars de sa personnalité ».

            L’écrivain oublie sa propre personnalité ; il s’oublie lui-même. Autrement dit, il s’applique à disparaître, à se fondre dans un Moi universel. Dans ce cas, comment (car c’est bel et bien une chose qui arrive) quelqu’un peut-il aimer un écrivain sans que celui-ci en ressente un profond agacement? « Promise you won’t fall in love with me », demande Harry, l’alter ego de Woody Allen, à la jeune Fay, lors de leur toute première rencontre. On admirera combien Harry est conséquent avec lui-même : en effet, l’écrivain qui presque sans relâche doit travailler à l’anéantissement de son Moi particulier serait vraiment sot de rechercher l’amour d’un autre, car cet amour s’attacherait nécessairement à ce même Moi duquel il cherche à se débarrasser. C’est pourquoi, comme l’Enfant prodigue (« On aura du mal à me convaincre, dit Rilke dans Les Cahiers de Malte, que l’histoire de l’Enfant prodigue n’est pas la légende de celui qui ne voulait pas être aimé »), l’écrivain fuit (ou sait qu’il finira toujours par fuir) ceux qui l’aiment. Aussi Katherine Mansfield confie-t-elle dans son Journal en 1919 : « I’d always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much ». L’écrivain est donc non seulement incapable d’aimer normalement, mais qui plus est, il ne désire pas qu’on l’aime outre mesure. Il veut qu’on aime ce qu’il écrit, bien entendu, mais sa personne, pas nécessairement. C’est pourquoi il est si souvent détestable ; et c’est aussi la raison pour laquelle un des traits fondamentaux de son caractère sera sa propension à se sentir rapidement étouffé, voire menacé par l’amour des autres. Par exemple, Gabrielle Roy admet, lorsqu’elle se remémore son idylle européenne avec un certain Stephen, le seul amour qui lui ait été donné de connaître dans sa vie — à une époque, il faut le dire, où elle n’était pas encore écrivaine, mais seulement en voie de le devenir —, que quand bien même elle aurait eu plus de veine et que cette relation se fût prolongée plus longuement, « tôt ou tard, [elle] [s]e serai[t] retournée contre un envahissement aussi complet de [s]a vie ».

            Ce refus de l’envahissement constitue le fond du problème de l’hygiène amoureuse de l’écrivain. Ne pouvant s’appliquer avec la même énergie à deux choses en même temps, étant incapable d’être complètement présent à l’autre, voire d’aimer et de se laisser aimer comme tout le monde, l’écrivain ne devrait-il pas simplement rester seul? Il faudra répondre à cette question avec prudence, car il n’est pas dit que l’écrivain, bien qu’il se retire ainsi de la vie, n’ait pas besoin de la pénétrer quelquefois.

* * *

 Le « héros » de Deconstructing Harry, loin d’être un solitaire, collectionne les femmes et les maîtresses. Ses amis, sa famille et ses ex (autrement dit, tout le monde sauf son psy) lui reprochent sa vie dissipée. Harry en viendra à reconnaître que le mariage n’est pas fait pour lui, mais il ne peut se résigner à cette pensée pour la raison suivante : « but then […] I get lonely ». Incapable d’être entièrement présent aux autres, l’écrivain ne peut cependant pas supporter l’isolement complet. Aussi Virginia Woolf parle-t-elle de la nécessité pour l’écrivain de posséder une chambre à soi, et non pas une maison au complet. Si au-delà des murs de sa chambre ne se trouvaient que de grandes pièces désertes, l’écrivain serait bien mal en point. Peut-on seulement imaginer l’ennui d’une vie qui ne serait faite que d’écriture? Hemingway lui-même en convient lorsqu’il dit à un de ses correspondants en 1945 : « Been writing everyday and going good. Makes a hell of a dull life too ». C’est à cette dull life que serait forcément condamné l’écrivain s’il choisissait la maison à la place de la chambre. Ainsi, une fois traduite en termes concrets, l’idée romantique d’Hemingway  selon laquelle « writing, at its best, is a lonely life » ne veut rien dire d’autre que ceci : « writing, at its best, is a dull life ». 

            Si la présence de l’autre est essentielle pour l’écrivain, c’est que seule cette présence peut lui permettre d’échapper à cette vie profondément ennuyeuse ainsi qu’à ce vide existentiel (Hemingway parle de vacuum) qui s’abat sur lui quand il n’écrit pas. Quand il sort de sa chambre, l’écrivain a besoin d’être repris par la réalité, il a besoin d’être récupéré et diverti par la présence de l’autre. « Je pense, dit Gabrielle Roy, […] avoir été infiniment consolée par le sentiment que, toute solitaire que fût ma voie, il ne serait pas tout à fait impossible, à l’occasion, d’avoir quelqu’un avec qui faire au moins un bout de route ». Notons toutefois qu’un bout de route à l’occasion, cela ne nécessite un grand engagement de la part de personne. Car s’il faut que l’écrivain soit récupéré et diverti par la présence de l’autre, cela doit se faire d’une manière telle qu’il n’ait à fournir aucun effort. « Quand j’écris à plein rendement, note Virginia Woolf en 1933, je ne désire que me promener et mener une vie enfantine et parfaitement spontanée avec Léonard et tout ce qui m’est familier ». Une vie enfantine et spontanée, autrement dit légère et distrayante (par exemple, en sortant de sa chambre, l’écrivain s’écrie : “ J’ai fini mon chapitre! Emmène-moi à la plage! Emmène-moi au resto! Emmène-moi au cinéma!”, ou n’importe quelle variante du genre).

* * *

                       La présence de l’autre derrière les murs de la chambre de l’écrivain est donc une nécessité absolue pour que celui-ci puisse être sauvé de la vie monotone et irréelle qui serait la sienne s’il ne faisait qu’écrire. Il a besoin de savoir que cette présence est là pour lui, même s’il sait qu’afin de ne pas négliger ses livres, il ne sera jamais complètement là pour elle en retour. C’est ce qu’illustre fort bien la drôle de dédicace dont se rappelle le narrateur de L’Amour conjugal, sans doute parce qu’elle résume sa propre démarche créatrice : « À ma femme sans l’absence de laquelle ce livre n’aurait jamais pu être écrit ». Or c’est cette logique unique en son genre qui fait en sorte que la vie sexuelle de l’écrivain ne saurait correspondre parfaitement à la définition de la vie sexuelle des philosophes donnée par Botul : « ils ne pénètrent pas, il se retirent ». L’écrivain, pour sa part, a besoin de pénétrer la vie. Toutefois, parce que cette pénétration n’est jamais poussée jusqu’à sa limite, la façon dont l’écrivain se reproduit demeure tout aussi paradoxale que la chasteté préconisée par le philosophe. En effet, si seulement l’écrivain était capable de jouir avant de se retirer de l’autre, sa présence au monde ne serait pas si problématique. C’est pourquoi le coït interrompu s’avère une définition plus juste de la vie sexuelle de l’écrivain, celui-ci trouvant dans cette pratique non pas une méthode de contraception, mais bien sa technique privilégiée de reproduction.

            Cette vérité à l’esprit, il nous faut à présent imaginer le partenaire idéal de l’écrivain. Car le coït interrompu, semble-t-il, n’est vraiment pas quelque chose d’agréable pour celui qui le subit sans en comprendre la nécessité. Dans de telles conditions, le partenaire idéal de l’écrivain devra être quelqu’un dont les habitudes de vie se marient harmonieusement à cette pratique. Pour que le retrait dont il sera souvent l’objet se fasse tout en douceur, le partenaire de l’écrivain devra présenter lui-même des prédispositions au retrait : ainsi, le grand voyageur, ou encore, le bourreau de travail, paraissent des candidats potentiels. Mais cela ne saurait suffire, car en ce qui concerne la pénétration, ce même partenaire devra également être d’un tempérament très patient, du genre à ne pas s’exciter trop vite. Puisqu’il devra occuper son esprit tout en attendant devant la porte close de la chambre de l’écrivain la prochaine apparition de celui-ci, il serait bon que ce partenaire soit aussi un adepte de mots croisés, un amateur de jeux de cartes solitaires, ou quelque chose de semblable.

            Voilà pour le type idéal. Mais que fera l’écrivain, en admettant que cet idéal, comme tous les autres idéaux, n’existe pas? Que fera-t-il donc, à supposer que ni les grands voyageurs adeptes de mots croisés ni les bourreaux de travail amateurs de jeux de cartes solitaires ne courent les rues (ce qui semble fort probable)? Est-il condamné à faire « un bout de route à l’occasion » avec une personne différente chaque fois que le besoin de pénétration s’empare de lui? Est-ce vraiment ainsi qu’il doit envisager sa vie? « Mais attendez! nous crie le lecteur qui voudrait bien que cette histoire soit plus gaie. Pourquoi le partenaire idéal de l’écrivain ne serait pas simplement un autre écrivain? » Pensons-y une minute. Tous les éléments ne sont-ils pas réunis pour que cette combinaison soit parfaite? Deux professionnels du retrait, qui demeurent cependant avides d’une certaine forme de pénétration contrôlée. Une telle union comporte certainement plusieurs avantages, comme celui de ne jamais se faire dire : « Tu es si bizarre, je ne te comprends pas ». En effet, l’écrivain pourra difficilement en vouloir à son partenaire d’être comme lui, c’est-à-dire un jour dans la vie, trois jours dans sa chambre, deux jours à aimer, quatre à vouloir être seul, et ainsi de suite, sans horaire fixe. De toute évidence, ce couple se comprendra sans rien se dire, ce qui est un idéal de vie pour tout le monde, mais davantage pour l’écrivain, car celui-ci éprouve toujours plus de difficulté à parler qu’à écrire. Mais qu’adviendra-t-il si l’ardent désir de pénétration de l’un surgit dans la phase de retrait de l’autre? Celui-là ne pourra pas reprocher à celui-ci son comportement, mais son urgent besoin d’entrer dans la réalité diminuera-t-il pour autant? « Emmène-moi à la plage, dira l’un. J’ai terminé mon chapitre! — Tant mieux pour toi! dira l’autre. Je dois finir le mien. » Et que penser de la compétitivité qui est susceptible d’envenimer cette relation? Imaginons que le plus médiocre des deux, après moult années de persévérance, soit démoralisé par l’insuccès de son œuvre. Cet écrivain ne sera-t-il pas jaloux de son partenaire? Ne voudra-t-il pas lui nuire, de la façon très vicieuse qui consistera à prolonger la pénétration? À ne plus vouloir se retirer du tout? N’y a-t-il pas là de quoi avoir peur? Du reste, deux ours aux ongles de pieds endoloris, pour reprendre la formule d’Hemingway, peuvent-ils vraiment vivre ensemble sans finir par s’entretuer? 

            L’écrivain, le partenaire idéal de l’écrivain? Nous n’avons pas vraiment foi en cette solution ultime. Au fond, forte de nos recherches, nous pensons qu’il serait naïf de croire encore en quelque arrangement digne de rendre la vie sexuelle de l’écrivain, avec toutes les conditions qui la sous-tendent et les complications qui en découlent, moins paradoxale et problématique. Un tel constat est déprimant, cela va sans dire ; et le lecteur qui aurait voulu une fin joyeuse est sans doute très triste. Cependant, pour des raisons que nous ne souhaitons pas développer ici, il ne l’est probablement pas autant que nous.                 

 

 

 

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