Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam: "Western societies are too prosaic and commercial."

French writer Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam , winner of the Médicis Prize and the Inter Book Prize, came to Buenos Aires to participate in the 49th International Book Fair . At the event, she presented hernovels Arcadia and The Thirteenth Hour, two works that explore gated communities, identity, and the search for meaning.

In Arcadia (2018), the author introduces us to Liberty House, a utopian community led by a charismatic leader named Arcady, where the protagonist, Farah, seeks to understand her identity in a world that challenges traditional norms . On the other hand, The Thirteenth Hour (2022) focuses on Farah, a young woman who grows up in a religious congregation founded by her father , Lenny, and which mixes spirituality, poetry and unconventional beliefs.

It's a rather peculiar community: feminist, queer, and animal rights activist, where God is not mentioned and, instead, the poets Gérard de Nerval and Arthur Rimbaud are worshipped. In fact, the novel's title refers to a sonnet by Nerval called "Artemis," in which the author refers to the use of the thirteenth syllable, something unusual in sonnets, so that it could be the last, but also the first.

Both novels share common threads: a reflection on utopia and its limits, the role of charismatic figures, the fluidity of identity, and the power of language and poetry . With intense prose and an ironic perspective, Bayamack-Tam challenges social structures and invites us to question the relationship between individual freedom and community.

The writer, born in Marseille in 1966, is a professor of modern literature and taught literature at the Lycée for 35 years . She is the author of some twenty novels and two plays. Some of these works were published under the pseudonym Rebecca Lighieri.

In conversation with Clarín , Bayamack-Tam opens the doors of his literary universe to challenge us about the possibilities and contradictions of our own beliefs.

–These two works demonstrate your concern with exploring marginality, transgression, and identity. What experiences or feelings have inspired you to address these themes?

–I distance myself from my real life. I write fiction, even though that fiction is fueled by what I experience. In any case, what one writes is autobiographical, but I also try to choose characters who are very far removed from me, people who are often on the margins of society, because I don't want to tell the story of a bourgeois, white, heterosexual person, extremely constrained by norms, as is my own experience.

–In both novels, the characters, for the most part, are voluntarily on the fringes of society…

–Of course, they founded communities. There are characters who are physically strange, who are somewhat excluded from the love market, whether due to old age, decrepitude, ugliness, or, like Farah, because of her intersexuality. But what interests me is that, on the margins, in my opinion, dissident, freer ways of living are often experienced, which can inspire those of us who don't live on those margins.

–Like Charles Baudelaire's characters who seem to hover over his work all the time…

–The Flowers of Evil was a kind of initial shock for me, but also Ovid's Metamorphosis, which runs through everything I write, where I discovered a taste for fluidity, for transformation, for making the character pass from one species to another, from one gender to another. But writing, for me, is placing myself in a line of authors like Zola, Nerval, Balzac, Rimbaud. I can make references to Kafka, Dickinson, Woolf, Proust, Racine, and that doesn't stop me from alluding to more popular authors or works…

–In both works, but especially in The Thirteenth Hour , the idea of ​​worshipping poetry as if it were a God—the God Nerval, if you will—appears very strongly. What is its connection to spirituality and belief?

–I don't know if I wanted poetry to replace God, but, in any case, I wanted a collective of consolation to be created around poetry, and for poetry to take the place of faith for those people who no longer believe in God; for them to access something that gives them meaning. It's not as simple as that, but it seems to me that Western societies are too prosaic, too commercial, and so I imagined this slightly dissident, slightly delirious community, in which beauty and poetry will take the place of faith.

–What was the process of inventing these very unique utopian communities? What models did you use to create them?

–I was interested in sects like the Order of the Solar Temple, the eco-cities that exist in Portugal for example, a community that exists in France called Longo Mai and, on the other hand, there is a sort of religious fraternity that has interested me for a long time, which has existed in France at least since the 12th century, called “The Brotherhood of the Free Spirit”, which was clandestine and that is why little is known about it…

–What is your interest?

–In a certain desire for emancipation that one perceives there; a desire to break away from the system and fight against the established order, to invent other ways of loving, other ways of conceiving power and relating to money. It's always around these three themes: what we do with love—with polyamory, the rejection of exclusive love, the rejection of heterosexuality; what we do with money—these communities function in a communist way, let's say—and what we do with the distribution of power—in general, these communities adopt a certain horizontality in that sense.

–In Arcadia, above all, this shifting of boundaries is expressed in a forceful way…

–In Arcadia , Liberty House is a community founded by Arcady that tries to have more respectful rules of life, because they are vegetarians, it is a community in which all adults sleep together, it is not a pedophile community but men, women, of any age and of any specificity sleep together, I wanted to show those communities that have great principles, beautiful values, they are communities that welcome immigrants, for example.

–In your opinion, do these communities, which uphold freedom as a principle, run the risk of falling into the opposite, into a certain isolation, like other religious doctrines or systems?

–What is certain is that many of these communities throughout history have failed, either because of sectarian interests, or because there is a guru trying to lead, or because loving relationships, in the pursuit of freedom, end up failing. So, I have an ambivalent relationship with these communities: at the same time, I believe in them, in the small collectives that seek to be autonomous, but it is an ambivalent relationship because these communities can be simultaneously a nucleus of freedom and a nucleus of exclusion.

–Speaking of ambivalence, in The Thirteenth Hour the character of Lenny, the founder of the community, is perfect. Was your intention with this character genuine or ironic? Should we believe Lenny?

–I conceived Lenny as a perfect character. I completely sympathize with him. There's a quality about him: his lack of narcissism, egocentrism, and vanity. He's kind, selfless, energetic, and charismatic. For me, Lenny is truly altruistic, a saint. He's an admirable character, but I understand that the reader may perceive him in an ambiguous, contradictory way…

–Both works evoke a utopia. What will happen to them? Will they prosper or fail?

–They're two utopias that fail. In Arcadia, they settle in the countryside; they're environmentalists, they're against animal exploitation, that's why they're vegetarians; they're inclusive of people with disabilities. One would like that to work, but they're hounded by the press because their operation is judged as problematic, and ultimately, they fail. And in The Thirteenth Hour, that community, which is a kind of revolutionary home, they don't manage to galvanize their disciples. It's not certain that all utopias will fail; they're relative failures, but one has the idea, with Farah, who is young and has understood many things, that she will undoubtedly take over.

The author will be speaking today, Friday, at the Eterna Cadencia Bookstore at 7:00 PM, and on Saturday, the 10th, she will be interviewed alongside writer Miguel Bonnefoy by Professor Diego Chotro, director of the Alliance Française of Belgrano, at the Las Mil y Una Hojas Bookstore, 960 Córdoba Avenue, at 11:00 AM. This event will be held in French. All events are supported by the French Institute of Argentina. Free admission until the venue is full.