Five years after the publication of the consent which told the tragedy of his
Adolescence stolen by Gabriel Matzneff, the writer faces her story
family.
Does this book be a continuation of consent?
Yes, I have the impression of continuing a reflection on patriarchy, through the figures of my father and my grandfather who are a bit the paragon of toxic masculinity.
Beyond the intimate testimony, Consent was also the portrait of a predator. Surname has something to “ prequel »; My father, both by his absence and his toxicity, and my grandfather that I adored but who hid a terrible secret, conditioned a sensitivity to lies, my relationship to men, and therefore my meeting with Matzneff (The writer Gabriel Matzneff, of which she denounces, in consent, the grip, including sexual, which he exercised on her when she was minor).
The fact that my father and grandfather have made up their story, one out of madness, the other by pragmatism, refers me to the falsification of Matzneff who transformed his crimes into love stories.
In 2000, four days after the release of Consentyou learn the death of your father with whom you had no more relationships …
My father was harmful psychologically by his violence and mythomania. I knew that he had lived for over twenty years in the small 35 m2 apartment of his mother who had collected him.
I was turned upside down to discover in what state of physical forfeiture he had ended his life, he had known a maniac of order and hygiene. He lived in the living room transformed into a tramp den, buried under a heap of filth and objects, and he had left my grandmother’s room as it was, who died nine years earlier.
He continued to clean it, change the sheets. As if he had reorganized the premises to separate from the past of his parents.
At the origin of your book, there is this other discovery which concerns your grandfather …
It has been years that I was wondering about the origin of my last name, intrigued by the incessant fables that my father invented in this regard.
For the family, my grandfather was a Czech, forcibly enlisted in the Wehmarcht in 1938 at the time of the annexation of the Southtes. He had deserted the German army when he was in Normandy.
Alas, at the bottom of a drawer, I came across two photos of my grandfather in Nazi outfit, one of which showing his membership of the police of the Third Reich.
With this survey through the European continent, have you been able to access the truth?
Several hypotheses still coexist, even if it is undeniable that my grandfather belonged to the Nazi party, before the annexation of its region. His real name was Springer, he falsified it for the liberation in Springora in Czech consonance to obtain in France a status of political refugee.
My father knew it, but he remained a prisoner of the taboo. Beyond this family investigation, I also wanted to transmit the history of the southern that we know badly. History is not a series of abstract dates, men live it in their flesh. What do we do when you are caught in your turmoil?
Born in the German-speaking community, my grandfather lived in a country torn apart by changes in regime, languages, borders … I tried to understand even if I do not absoliate it and that, at times, I no longer know what to make tenderness that I had for him.
Do you think that a name still has a dimension that escapes us?
Of course, this is where I wanted to take the reader with the choice of title. Each family name carries in him a story of which we are not responsible, a fictional dimension; Everyone has their gray areas, their historical, geographic, cultural charge …
To be able to continue carrying this hapax, this name of which there is no occurrence in the world, I needed to dissect it. My grandfather invented him to cut with his past and protect his descendants, so I choose to assume it.
