There is a sadness that hangs over Jaques Roubaud’s ‘the great fire of London’ (his beguiling work of mourning) that I have never quite experienced in writing before. It is a presence embedded within the text, in the blackness of the lines, in the act of their coming-into-being – as they were written – under lamplight each night.In this maddening book (itself about not being able to write a book) Roubaud has managed to uncover a ‘realness’ that is more tangible than any other work I have encountered before. Maybe it’s the act of failure, the expression of loss, the architecture of memory – the combination of things passed – that result in this ‘realness’? The strength here is in the fact that this is something I will never know.
Roubaud’s sadness is the flicker (like a flame: both alluring and destructive) of lost moments; the yearning for their initial coming-into-being, knowing that they will pass again. At least, within the pages of this most beautiful, urgent book, something remains of them. Of it: the urge to remember, to capture the voice.
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