How does one cope with the death of a loved one, rid oneself of a pain that clings like glue to the image of the deceased, and transform it into a pleasant memory—in short, perform what is referred to in psychoanalysis as mourning work? On each page of his book, Daniel Servella strives to tame the anxiety of separation. The death is that of another, loved and cherished. But it joins, in perspective, one’s own death like the wave that tirelessly crashes onto the shore. The chosen title, “The Angel of the Bay,” creates this allegorical dimension, this beyond-human element necessary for the accomplishment of his approach. Faith is not far off, even if the author is not deceived. “Life sometimes likes to disguise itself to help us distinguish between reality and illusion,” he writes as a welcome breath after detailing the horror of a dream: an introduction in the form of a phantasmal and foretelling tale of the urban disfigurement of cities, including Nice, and an Orwellian “lobotomization” of all its inhabitants.
In this nightmarish reverie, salvation will come from a female character, “enigmatic” as desired, bringing the weary hero a message of hope. Before deciphering its content, understanding its meaning that serves as a heralded salvific regeneration, and simply accepting it, Théo, the main character, must confront many obstacles: firstly, his own ignorance, his refusal to be carried away, decentered from himself and his calm little life. Too many reassessments, behaviors to modify, perceptions of others to change while presenting himself “differently” to his surroundings. But the Angel of the Bay persists with divine benevolence. Every unexpected encounter causes Théo an internal tension, a “strange struggle with his demon” as Stephan Zweig might have written. Each time, the Angel delivers him a message accompanied by a white feather, the significance of which becomes clear in a final twist.
Théo embodies a character much like any one of us. He seeks to give his life a meaning he feels he has lost along the way, through renunciations and goals that must be achieved at all costs. Unknowingly, Théo benefits from an environment whose advice corresponds to the ends of the angelic design. Louis, an old bookseller and man of letters, acts as a wise man and an initiator. He prepares the ground, warns of the uncertainties of the trials, and encourages to help the supplicant overcome his inadmissible resistances.
“Books do not make a writer,” publishers like to repeat. But two surely do. “The Angel of the Bay” will soon have a sequel, in another form, a different story. Perhaps this second work, past the time of questioning like “the time of regrets,” will offer our author from Nice, the opportunity to make a more asserted choice of writing, of an adulthood freed from the Oedipal conflicts of childhood?
Does Daniel Servella not consider death, after all, as a flight?
Daniel Servella, “The Angel of the Bay”, Mélis editions, 2006, 229 p., 17 Euros.
