Readers, Others: Genet

Abstract

Jean Genet’s first novel, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, is described on its second page as written in honour of the crimes of murderers,¹ and his texts are punctuated by murders committed and described with almost casual detachment.² For the eponymous hero of Notre-Damedes-Fleurs, becoming a murderer is all too easy:

Tuer est facile, le coeur étant placé à gauche, juste en face de la main armée du tueur, et le cou s’encastrant si bien dans les deux mains jointes. Le cadavre du vieillard, d’un de ces mille vieillards dont le sort est de mourir ainsi, git sur le tapis bleu. Notre-Dame l’a tué. Assassin. (104–5)

Killing is easy, since the heart is placed on the left, just opposite the armed hand of the killer, and since the neck fits so neatly in his two joined hands. The corpse of the old man, of one of those thousand old men whose lot is to die in this way, lies on the blue carpet. Notre-Dame has killed him. Murderer.

Les romans ne sont pas des rapports humanitaires. (Novels are not humanitarian reports)

(Miracle de la rose, 271)