Archives : Yslaire

Sous la lune blanche

Sous la lune blanche

Julie and Bernard become lovers in a cemetery. Is that a manifestation of their strangeness, or that of their century? “It was quite normal then to make love in a cemetery” explains Yslaire in “La légende des Sambre.” “Rents were high; standards of moral behaviour were more strict than they are today. In the cemeteries, youths would meet young widows. One also went there to cultivate one’s world-weariness. Nowadays, our gilded youth goes to nightclubs. Back in those times, when all that was morbid was fashionable, skin had to be pale. You needed to have dark circles under your eyes and, if possible, the beginnings of a menacing cough. What happens in this provincial cemetery between Bernard and Julie must, in principle, reach its conclusion in Paris, in the cemetery of Père Lachaise at the time of the Commune. It’s one of the few elements that were determined at the very beginning.”

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