Abstracts
Résumé
S’il a souvent et longuement exprimé ses réflexions sur la genèse de son oeuvre, sur son travail d’écrivain, Henri Lopes a longtemps été réticent à livrer ses brouillons et avant-textes à la curiosité des chercheurs en génétique des textes. Il s’y est enfin résolu à l’occasion de la sortie d’Une enfant de Poto-Poto, le 12 décembre 2011, en mettant à la disposition de l’équipe « Manuscrits francophones » de l’ITEM tous les dossiers génétiques qu’il avait pu conserver et ensuite, la mise au net à peine remise à l’éditeur, celui du Méridional consistant en deux tapuscrits autographes, versions 1 et 2 corrigées de la main de l’auteur. Une première lecture de ce dossier, qui se concentre sur l’incipit et l’explicit considérés comme les lieux stratégiques de l’écriture, permet de confirmer la théorie de sa pratique : immuabilité de la première phrase, premier jet dactylographié directement à l’ordinateur, re-travail acharné lors des multiples campagnes de relectures et réécritures. Au vu de celles-ci, cependant, la critique génétique peut avancer l’hypothèse que la singularité de ce roman autofictionnel tient à ce que l’écrivain aurait intégré, voire embarqué, le questionnement génétique dans le cabinet intime de son « écriture métisse », que ce soit pour le prévenir ou en émousser la pointe indiscrète. Le ver génétique est dans le fruit.
Abstract
Although Henri Lopes regularly expressed his views at some length on the genesis of his novels and on his work as a writer, he was long reluctant to hand over his rough texts and preparatory work and make them available to researchers in textual genetics. He finally relented when Une enfant de Poto-Poto came out, on 12 December 2011, when he gave all the files he still had about the conception of his novel to the « French manuscripts » research team at the ITEM. Then, immediately after sending the approved proof copy of Le Méridional to his publisher, he also gave them all of his files on this novel, i.e. two autograph typescripts, the first and second versions of the text corrected by his own hand. A first reading of these documents, which focusses more specifically on the incipit and the explicit as strategic sites of writing, confirms Lopes’ theoretical declarations about his own practice : his first sentence remains absolutely unchanged throughout, and he never stops editing and re-editing his text with each successive, unrelenting reading and proofreading. Taking those changes into consideration, however, it seems that the textual geneticist may suggest that Lopes’ auto-fictional novel owes its singular character to the fact that the writer has integrated, or even incorporated, this genetical questioning into the private cabinet of his own « métis » mode of writing, whether it be to forestall it, or to screen itself from its prying eyes. Even as it is conceived, the textual fruit has already been infected by the worm of genetics.