Author Q&A:
Delphine de Vigan

Now in a care home Michka is losing her grasp on language and desperately wants to express her gratitude to a couple who rescued her as a child before she loses the capacity. But by her side is Marie, a young woman well equipped for her imminent single motherhood thanks to Michka’s nurturing, in spite of no family connection. Marie repays her debt to Michka with regular visits but she is also visited by Jerome, a speech therapist who becomes enchanted by his client. Delphine de Vigan is a prize-winning French novelist preoccupied with the relationships that make us human. None of her sharp language and creative wordplay appears to be lost in this latest translation of her work by George Miller, but the original French answers to Big Issue North’s questions are still included here.

Michka’s loss of grasp on language is particularly tragic because it’s bound up with her identity as an editor and reader. Does this reflect a personal fear for you as a writer?
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but it could be that it reveals a fear that is more personal and less conscious than I’d imagined. In general, I’m scared by the idea of any loss of cognitive ability, such as memory. Now more than ever, I seem to need words and language to try to make sense of everything going on around me; to grasp how complex the world is and to depict it with nuance. My novels are often made up of several themes, like drawers which the reader can choose to open – or not.

One of my aunts – a woman who played an incredibly important role in my life – was 99 years old when she died in a care home a few years ago. She was losing words, but she wasn’t replacing them with others. Her discourse became something enigmatic, made up of silences, in which you had to fill the gaps. That’s what inspired me to write about language loss, but I thought it would be more interesting, from a literary point of view, to have Michka reinventing her own language.

Je n’y ai pas pensé, mais peut-être que cela révèle une peur plus personnelle, plus inconsciente, que je l’imaginais. La perte des facultés cognitives en général (la mémoire, par exemple), me fait peur.
Plus que jamais il me semble avoir besoin des mots, du langage, pour tenter de comprendre ce qui m’entoure. Pour appréhender la complexité du monde et en rendre compte avec nuance. Souvent mes livres contiennent plusieurs thèmes, comme des tiroirs que le lecteur a le choix d’ouvrir, ou non.

Une de mes tantes, âgée de 99 ans (une femme qui a joué un rôle très important dans ma vie) est morte il y a quelques années dans une maison de retraite. Elle perdait les mots, mais ne les remplaçait pas par d’autres. Son discours devenait une sorte d’énigme, composée de silences, dont il fallait reconstituer les trous. C’est ce qui m’a donné l’idée d’écrire sur la perte du langage, mais j’ai pensé qu’il serait plus intéressant, d’un point de vue littéraire, que Michka réinvente sa propre langue.

As Michka’s grasp on language becomes increasingly weak, she produces some clever and comic wordplay. Did this pose a particular challenge in the translation process?
The way language was used here was very important to me. I wanted to create her manner of speaking, a slightly absurd language, deceptively disjointed, which would create poetic or comedic events. I considered every word, every neologism, every slip, making them meaningful. These things are almost more important than the missing words. It was an intricate process, and I found it fascinating.

I quickly realised that this was going to be a challenge for translators in every country where my work is published in translation. I wrote a sort of guide for them, explaining my process. And then I had to leave it to them, entrusting my manuscript to them to make it their own, because every single one of them had to reinvent Michka’s language. They had to create their own versions of the wordplay. It was a creative translation process, which was essential for this particular book.

Ce travail sur le langage était très important pour moi. Je voulais inventer sa manière de parler, une langue un peu absurde, faussement décousue, qui créée des effets poétiques ou comiques. J’ai travaillé sur chaque mot, chaque néologisme, chaque lapsus, afin qu’il soit porteur de sens. Car les lapsus de Michka racontent la femme qu’elle a été, ses traumatismes et ses craintes. Ils sont presque plus importants que le mot manquant. Ce fût un travail de dentelle, qui m’a passionnée.

J’ai très vite eu conscience que cela constituerait un défi pour les traducteurs dans tous les pays où je suis traduite. J’ai rédigé une sorte de guide à leur attentio, pour leur expliquer comment j’avais procédé. Il m’a fallu m’en remettre à eux, leur confier mon texte pour qu’ils se l’approprient. Car chacun d’eux doit réinventer la langue de Michka. Ensuite, ils ont dû, à leur tour, inventer des jeux de mots. C’est un travail de traduction créative, essentiel pour le livre.

Michka is haunted by not having expressed her gratitude to a couple who harboured her during the war but she repays that debt by caring for Marie, a neglected child, who in turn goes on to care for Michka in old age. Is there as much power in the things left unsaid as those we find the words for?
Gratitude examines the thank-yous that we don’t always have the time or the chance to say. As Michka loses her language, she realises that there is one than- you which she has never been able to express. But it’s clear that she acted “in return” for what she received, in that she later took responsibility for the life of another child, just as Marie, who is now a young woman, is taking care of her in return for the care which Michka lavished on her. What we show, what we give in return, our actions: those are the most powerful things, without a doubt.

Saying thank you is sometimes more difficult. You’re scared that you won’t be able to find the right words, or that you’ll be too emotional, or solemn, or clumsy. Sometimes, we think we’ve still got time… and then people disappear before we’ve had a chance to thank them. But beyond gestures and loyalties, I believe that it’s important, when we can, to actually say things, to put our thanks into words – just as much for the person saying thank you as the person being thanked.

Dans les gratitudes, il est question de ces « merci » que nous n’avons pas toujours le temps ou l’occasion de dire. Au moment où Michka perd le langage, elle se rend compte qu’il y a un merci qu’elle n’a jamais pu formuler. Mais il est vrai qu’elle a « rendu » ce qu’elle a reçu, en prenant en charge elle-même, plus tard, la vie d’un autre enfant. Tout comme Marie, devenue une jeune femme, prend soin d’elle en retour des soins que Michka lui a prodigués. C’est sans doute le plus fort, vous avez raison. Ce que l’on montre. Ce que l’on donne en retour. Les actes.

Dire merci est parfois plus difficile. On a peur de ne pas trouver les mots, d’être trop ému, ou solennel, ou maladroit. Parfois, on pense qu’il nous reste du temps… et puis les gens disparaissent avant qu’on ait pu les remercier… Mais au-delà des gestes et des fidélités, je crois qu’il importe, quand on peut le faire, de dire les choses, de formuler sa gratitude. Pour celui qui exprime cette gratitude, comme pour celui qui la reçoit.

Your previous book, Loyalties, explored the relationship between a teenager and the adults around him. What is it that compels you to explore inter-generational relationships in your writing?
For me, the idea of transmission is at the heart of the novel. What matters is the connection which Michka has built with Marie, and which she is in the process of creating with Jérôme as the story takes place. These connections are the only things that make sense, and they are the best remedy for melancholy.

Just like in my other novels, I was trying to understand what makes us human, what connects us, what binds us together. And for me, that question of transmission, particularly between generations, is central.

Pour moi c’est l’idée de transmission qui est au cœur du livre. Ce qui compte, c’est le lien que Michka a créé avec Marie et celui qu’elle parvient à créer avec Jérôme, dans le temps du récit. Ces liens sont les seuls qui fassent sens, et le meilleur remède contre la mélancolie.

Comme dans mes autres livres, je cherche à comprendre ce qui fait de nous des êtres humains, ce qui nous lie, nous relie. Et pour moi cette question de la transmission, notamment entre générations, est centrale.

“Ageing is growing used to loss,” Jérôme says. Do you agree with his assertion?
Yes, even if it’s a little reductive. When Jérôme says this in the novel, it corresponds completely with a moment where he is feeling discouraged. A bout of the blues, you might say. He’s a speech therapist in a care home, and he has the privilege of witnessing the period when everything seems to disappear for his patients, little by little. Day after day, he watches as his patients lose their mobility and their language. It’s old age. He knows how cruel it is, but he also knows how capable humans are of adapting as their universe gradually shrinks.

Readers often talk to me about these passages on old age: they resonate with everyone, because we encounter old age, and we dread it. An elderly lady who had read the novel once said to me that you lose a lot, but you also gain things. She was talking about a sort of distance, of hindsight and appeasement.

Oui, même si elle est peut-être réductrice. Cette réflexion de Jérôme dans le roman correspond sans doute à un moment de découragement. De blues. Il est orthophoniste dans une maison de retraite, et spectateur privilégié de ce moment où tout semble, peu à peu, vous échapper. Il voit ses patients, jour après jour, perdre leur mobilité, leur langage. C’est le grand âge. Il sait à quel point c’est cruel, mais aussi à quel point l’être humain est capable de s’adapter à ce rétrécissement progressif de son univers.

Les lecteurs me parlent souvent de ces pages sur la vieillesse, qui résonnent pour tout le monde, parce que nous la côtoyons ou nous la redoutons. Une vieille dame qui avait lu le roman m’a dit un jour : on perd beaucoup, mais on gagne aussi ! Elle parlait d’une forme de distance, de recul, d’apaisement.

Elderly people in care homes have been hit particularly hard by Covid-19 in the UK – through the virus itself but also through isolation from loved ones. Has it been the same in France, and what do you think it says about the way society treats the elderly?
In France, almost one out of every two people who died from Covid-19 was a resident of a care home. During the first wave, in the newspapers and on television, we heard the testimonies of their loved ones, who had been sidelined during those awful weeks, not allowed to see their parent, or to know whether their parent was well, or to say goodbye to them. It was terrible. The second wave has been managed far better in that respect.

But we can’t deny that this crisis has brought our attitudes concerning old age to light: we put elderly people into establishments which are often overpriced, out of sight, removed from society. That’s another example of how we need to rethink the relationships between generations.

En France, près d’un mort du Covid sur deux est un résident d’Ehpad. Lors de la première vague, dans la presse ou à la télévision, nous avons entendus les témoignages de proches, mis à l’écart durant de longues semaines, empêchés de voir leur parent, de connaître son état de santé, de pouvoir lui dire adieu. C’était terrible. La deuxième vague a été mieux gérée de ce point de vue.

Mais cette crise met indéniablement en lumière la manière dont nous traitons le grand âge : dans des établissements souvent hors de prix, loin des regards, à l’écart du monde. Là aussi, il y a sans doute des liens transgénérationnels à réinventer.