Writing to wait for the death: the last Louis-René des Forêts

Abstract

Pas à pas jusqu’au dernier is a posthumous text, published in 2001, by the almost secret and discreet Louis-René des Forêts. In this text with an air of selfportrait – from where, however, seems to be absent the “I” of the author, replaced by the barthesian and blanchotian neutral –, a fragmentary narrative is taken up by an almost indefinite subject waiting for death: there is represented physical and discursive figures reflecting on their last moment. So an elder body and the body of language enter into dialogue and conflict in order to postpone the moment that affects everyone: the moment of “our” death.