Monica Sabolo: 'I needed a man to sit across from me and acknowledge the pain he caused'

With the story

(1), Monica Sabolo has chosen to approach a subject that is a priori the opposite of herself – the members of Action Directe – through a prism that is familiar to her: that of young people. girls.

Just as the latter, incarnations of innocence and purity as much as of temptation, already populated his novels, from

to

via

, it is the figures of Joëlle Aubron and Nathalie Ménigon who attract in the first place… Before the echoes between the object of his investigation and his own journey multiply, as if he had to go as far as possible from oneself to better return to it, with delicacy.

The author of

thus closes a cycle in the most beautiful way.

Maintenance.

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Madame Figaro.- How did you come to adopt a two-voice structure?

As I learned about Action Directe, pieces of my family history came to the surface.

Resonances kept appearing.

The first arose when I thought of my mother's youth in the 1970s, during the lead years.

She had never told me about this period, when Milan was at that time a city full of smoke and fury… My father worked for the International Labor Office which works for better social conditions and the well-being of the population. humanity, and Action Directe worked in a way towards the same goal, even if in an equally misguided way in my opinion.

There was a very disturbing set of mirrors there.

The most spectacular echo undoubtedly comes from the work on violence and forgiveness,

to the fact of looking in the face or not the acts that one has committed.

It was an essential question to ask the members of Action Directe, and it was an essential question in my personal trajectory.

Incest appears at the bend of a page in

Absolutely.

Silence is another link that knots the two threads of the text: with Action Directe, I tackled beings who do not speak, who are prevented from speaking – something that is very familiar to me, for other reasons.

I believe that

is the book of confrontation and combat, even if I was absolutely unaware of it when I wrote it.

It is the culmination of a life's journey.

At the moment

, I went as far as I could go then – two sentences.

It was already a huge step for me and an explosion to allow myself to write.

Time is an essential given in this context, like an ivy that surrounds the dark heart of things… It is not for nothing that women sometimes start talking thirty years after having suffered sexual violence;

I understand that perfectly.

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What do you mean ?

First you need time for the memory to emerge, for you to be safe enough to welcome the memory – even if it is often a cataclysm for those who suffer from traumatic memory.

What happened is locked in a dark room that we will never visit.

Then comes the confusion: everything happens as if the executioner and the victim were inside us, inextricably intertwined.

We feel great guilt, great shame.

It is like a net of knots that must be undone;

gradually, we put everything back in its place.

Then we do not realize to what extent silence is an injunction that is part of oneself.

We know that it is very serious to speak.

We couldn't even formulate it, but we feel that it

is a transgression and almost life threatening.

It takes years to feel empowered to say things without feeling like a traitor – though it's never entirely possible.

Always a form of reminiscence, of shadow, whispers to us that it's our fault... Finally, if we think today that speech liberates, speaking in a family, when we are alone - I am thinking of teenagers , for example – can also call for terrible retaliation.

It is not only a question of assuming the word that one carries, but the violence that it can unleash.

whispers to us that it's our fault... Finally, if we think today that speech liberates, talking in a family, when we are alone - I am thinking of adolescents, for example - can also call for terrible responses. .

It is not only a question of assuming the word that one carries, but the violence that it can unleash.

whispers to us that it's our fault... Finally, if we think today that speech liberates, talking in a family, when we are alone - I am thinking of adolescents, for example - can also call for terrible responses. .

It is not only a question of assuming the word that one carries, but the violence that it can unleash.

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It is not only a question of assuming the word that one carries, but the violence that it can unleash

Monica Sabolo

Do you think your book comes as society is about to break a taboo?

The moment is historic.

I don't know if women speak more, but their words are welcomed quite differently.

She is now heard.

The question now is to know what we are going to do with this word.

You have to be able to speak and be heard, but there has to be reparation, justice.

In this regard, we are far from having a functioning system;

as often, society is ahead of institutions.

It's inevitable, but you can be amazed when you see the extent of the phenomenon: the reception of complaints and testimonies from certain women has sometimes been scandalous.

We were able to minimise, brush it off, call them guilty, too, or blame them for not having spoken sooner,

suspecting them of wanting to be lauded… Emotional misunderstanding can sometimes be deep, insane, and I think that even without having suffered this violence, one should be able to understand.

There is something there of the order of the will and of a system of power which actually trembles.

Would you say that the same quest for truth carries the two threads of your text?

Absolutely, though I ignored for most of the writing what truth I was looking for.

Maybe

is it the meeting of life and literature.

I wrote it while living a lot, being on the road, meeting people.

The experience was physical, emotional, grounded in reality.

It was almost a reincarnation… And in the end, we had to accept that there was no answer.

That the line I wanted to draw between good and evil is impossible to draw.

We have to live with what happened.

But we can find peace.

I needed a man to sit across from me and acknowledge the pain he caused.

I found this man among the members of Action Directe, and this is what ties this narrative thread to the other - because if Yves S. recognized the facts, if he recognized what had taken place, he left it at that.

He does

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of Monica Sabolo.

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And the violence, whether collective or intimate, appeared in both cases under pleasant guises…

Which raises the question of responsibility.

There would be a violence that would find justification in the fight for the liberation of the working class, a better, fairer world,

.

This shocked me a lot.

Then the individual disappeared into the collective: no first name, no individual responsibility.

I find this idea unbearable.

As I wrote, at one point someone holds a gun and someone dies, and this refusal to face it made me think of my father – he was very individualistic but liked to pretend that nothing took place or mattered.

Then everyone spent their time finding that he was someone extraordinary, which rekindled the pain.

Here we find the confusion, that around Action Directe and their discourse, that around my father, whose seduction made things even harder.

Especially since there was in my feelings for him the love of a little girl for her father.

This complexity is that of most abused children.

It takes years to realize that power is not necessarily in the hands of being just and courageous.

Because as a child, we are convinced that only the right people exercise it...

(1)

, Monica Sabolo, ed.

Gallimard, 336 pages, €21.