Le Corps D'Helene

On the verge of turning 88, and afraid that his memory could deteriorate, the author of Corps d’Hélène is telling himself that “memory is an oblivion that anything can awaken.”The memory of his first childhood love came back to him quite by accident, as he was aimlessly composing two songs.A long-forgotten woman’s name resurfaced: Hélène Navachine. Curious to know whether she was still alive, he looked for her on the Internet and discovered that a contemporary author (whom we shall call “X”) used this name incidentally in one of his novels.The old man contacted him and asked him to tell him more about this unknown woman for the purpose, he specified, “of jointly investigating” what had happened to her.In a rather detailed letter, the old man confided to him the synopsis of his unusual love story – dating back to the years 1945-1950 – which had marked his adolescence. Inexplicably, X suddenly fell silent. Since this author had a reputation for spicing his writing with “stories” which had taken place before he was born, the old man quickly decided to write the story about his first love himself. He soon became caught up in it, reliving with a certain amusement – which “made him feel young again” – the emotions he had experienced at the age of 17.