The Lincoln Review, 2026
Initially published in revue Esprit (2024), translated by Tobias Ryan in The Lincoln Review (Issue 7)
“Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native was the favourite novel of a sculptor friend of mine—my dearest friend. He would often evoke its prologue, which described the heath; it’s the main character, he would say, a landscape become visage. Of this first section, I knew nothing more than its title, which he would sometimes cite when we saw each other, a while having passed: A face on which time makes but little impression. I would regularly promise to read it, but always got waylaid. The time will come, I thought. Later on, I discovered Seamus Heaney’s bog poems, those written about the mummified bodies found in the acid soil of the moors, which resonated for the Irish poet with the Troubles and the terrible sacrifices made to pacify the people. These poems raised a melancholy as changeable as the face of the swamp, something between pain and fascination, fright and reverie. For me, they were linked to that book of Hardy’s, and to the memory of my friend’s enthusiasm, even if I had given up on reading the book, which had become the custodian of our dead friendship.
Because, in the meantime, our friendship had broken down…”