yasmina reza

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From Dawn to Dusk: A Conversation with Yasmina Reza Author(s): Yasmina Reza, Daniela Hurezanu and Raymond Queneau Source: World Policy Journal, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 233-235Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40210166Accessed: 01-12-2015 02:57 UTC

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Yasmina Reza, a French playwright, actress, novelist, and screenwriter, is the author of Art, which won the 1998 Tony Award for Best Play, and God of Carnage, which is playing in London's West End. In 2006-07, she spent a year following Nicolas Sarkozy on his successful campaign for the French presidency and wrote, Dawn Dusk or Night (Knopf 2008).

^^ From Dawn to Dusk ^^^m A Conversation with Yasmina Reza

World Policy Journal editor David A. Andelman asked Ms. Reza to reflect on the intersection of the world of art and politics in an interview.

World Policy Journal: I would like to start off with a very interesting passage from Dawn Dusk or Night {L'aube le soir ou la nuit): "I am not looking to write on power or on politics, but rather politics as a way of being. I'm more interested in watching a man who intends to trump time." Since we are examining the shape of the world 25 years from now, what will the concept of time likely be then - political time, artis- tic/theatrical time, social time? Is the speed of our society and our world accelerating so rapidly that time may have a very different meaning or indeed no meaning at all?

Yasmina Reza: Frankly, I don't believe that Time - with a capital "T" - has anything to do with the acceleration process that is man-made. The way we experience the passage of time (the French expression I use in Laube le soir ou la nuity in the para- graph you quote, is fuite du temps) always runs parallel to human time. As long as man is mortal, he will feel that time escapes his control. Today, as well as in 25 years.

WPJ: You say, quite rightly I hope, "Writers, like tyrants, are capable of bend- ing the world to their will." Will the power

of writers increase over the next quarter century, will the power of tyrants increase, or will one eclipse the other? Tyrants, inciden- tally, have loomed so large in the last quarter century. Will they continue to do so in the next 25 years?

YR: The fact that your journal is cele- brating its twenty-fifth anniversary doesn't make me a seer! And there is something a bit artificial in any reflection that tries to see into the future. But I am quasi-certain that tyrants, as well as writers, are eternal in human societies. So, there is little chance that either would disappear. Besides, the second category isn't necessarily more com- mendable than the first.

WPJ: I'm interested in your thoughts on power. You ask, "Why it is so difficult to consider the presidency of the French Re- public as the supreme power? If not, what else would be? If that is true now, will it be in 25 years when so many different loci of power seem to be developing in such a multi-ethnic, multi-religious Europe.

YR: Supreme power doesn't exist. It's a completely old-fashioned notion; it survives only in religious fantasy. But it's an expression I've heard in politics. There is a need in politics to mythologize.

WPJ: "Literature is important, it raises your station in life," you quote Nicolas

© 2008 World Policy Institute 233



Sarkozy as saying. Do you believe that literature will continue to be as important as so much new media develops over the next quarter century?

YR: Literature is related to solitude. The question is: what place will solitude have in tomorrow's society? I am talking, of course, of the kind of solitude that is neces- sary and desirable for our being.

WPJ: The French actor Fabrice Luchini responded to your approbation with noting the size of his box office receipts. Are you worried that this is how all theater, all creativity, will be judged in 25 years, since we can calibrate such numbers now to the second?

YR: It's already the case. Creation is judged by its commercial success. It's sad

and absurd. History teaches us and we can see every day that success is not a good measure for anything.

WPJ: You seem very concerned with the passage of time. Your plays, many of them, seem to take place in "real" time. What does the world 25 years from now seem to hold for you? Will time have more or less meaning for us?

YR: This is the only subject. Everything comes down to this. Every event can be ap- preciated in relation to time. This relation- ship produces the real. In an older work, Hammerklavier, I wrote a short text on this subject titled Poor Kreutzer. Beethoven had written a sonata for violin and piano dedi- cated to a virtuoso of his time who didn't like it. Should we have said poor Beethoven

234 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2008



or poor Kreutzer? The answer depended on the temporal context.

WPJ: You quote Sarkozy at one point as saying, "Bowing and scraping to the past should not obscure the future.... Great na- tions hampered by a long history will forget the future... China is wedded to the future." Are we all? Or are we prisoners of the past?

YR: Who is "we" in your question? Western countries? The citizens of the Western world? I think we are constantly faced, by turns, with this dualism. The past and the future are our only points of refer- ence. I mean, they are the high wires on which we walk. The present is not a ground, we can't see it.

WPJ: You talk about A Spanish Play staged in New York by John Turturro. The characters, you say, "try to stay in the becoming," which is the obsession of all to whom I have given a name, a voice," while fearing to become an outcast. Is the world changing so fast that in 25 years we will all be outcasts?

YR: In A Spanish Play, "in the becoming" has an existential connotation. It means to stay in the becoming for-itself [Sartre]. To persist in a desiring function. The speed at which the world changes has nothing to do with it.

WPJ: Your father was born to Iranian parents in Moscow, married to a Hungarian, and recited poems of Victor Hugo and La Fontaine. Your accent sounds irrefutably French. You write your plays in French and consider this your begotten language, but your works have outstanding success in Lon- don, New York, and a host of other world capitals. So what nationality do you consider

yourself? Moreover, how important will such a concept - nationality - be in 25 years, especially in France with its growing Arab populations that seem so interested in retaining their own identity?

YR: As far as I am concerned, I've said it and written about it, my country is the country of my language, that is to say, French. "Country" is a big word and bizarrely defined, but I feel that when I say "my country is the country of my language," this is essential. None of my ances- tors was French. But I am a writer and the language of your writing is what makes you. The rest of the question brings up the question of identity. This identity that seems so primordial for others isn't mine. This is a very big question. It doesn't have a simple answer.

WPJ: You quote words from Sarkozy in his inaugural address: "Morality... dignity ...tolerance.. .justice.. .fraternity.. .love." Will these words mean as much 25 years from now?

YR: How can I answer this? Do they have a meaning today?

WPJ: In conclusion, you say, "so true it is that nothing is sweeter than native country and kin." Will that be equally true 25 years from now? Kin perhaps, eternally. But what meaning will be there be for "a native country," especially in France and Europe broadly?

YR: It isn't I who said this. It's Homer, 3,000 years ago. •

Translated by Daniela Hurezanu. Her latest translation is Eyeseas by Raymond Queneau.

From Dawn to Dusk 235



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