Yesterday afternoon, an intense and magnificent moment was offered at the Saint Pierre d’Arène church in Nice.
A glance, is it a recital with the talented pianist Marielle Lemonnier, or a literary ‘café’ with the poems of Roland Nadaus? We will not resolve the question; one had to be in the nave of this church to begin finding an answer.
The music of Olivier Messiaen rose powerfully that afternoon. The “Twenty Gazes on the Infant Jesus,” a work created in 1945, the birth year of Roland Nadaus, a poet and storyteller whose perfect command of his text allows him to captivate his audience, all ears when he declaims Jesus from his cradle, his conception, his life, Jesus as a timeless hero. The poetry comes alive and active with the declaimed verses, while the piano, where Marielle Lemonnier, a member of the soloists of Versailles, gives it a soul by interpreting Olivier Messiaen’s work.
This duo should continue their collaboration; this is at least our wish.
On this Sunday when the Côte d’Azur wore its ash-gray, sad garments, Saint Pierre D’Arène shone with the magical light of poets and musicians.
Moreover, the storyteller was not mistaken when mentioning the lark piercing the gray sky. This gaze on the infant Jesus is a message of hope to a world that has lost all its bearings and gone astray. The poet describing our society with his words, his music, and the poetry: “Then there was in the universe an additional madness/ As if all the stars/ had drugged themselves/ And the constellations danced/ The great dance of Saint Glinglin.”
Glances at the infant Jesus, or rather a gaze from that infant Jesus on the world, that of two thousand years ago and our world today, for men, it seems, have still understood nothing.
Thierry Jan
