Régine Robin, medley avec Bob Dylan et un pas-de-deux avec Georges Perec
Régine Robin, medley with Bob Dylan and a “pas-de-deux” with Georges Perec

Summary/Abstract: In all her writings, Régine Robin regularly pays tribute to her favorite companions: among them,there is a particular emphasis on Jewish writers or authors who vaguely claim Jewish origins.First of all there is Kafka, whose book is on the table of a black and white picture of Régine, PaulCelan, the two Roth (Jozef and Philip), Romain Gary, philosophers Steiner, Derrida, Arendt, andNobel laureates such as Patrick Modiano and Emile Ajar (Romain Gary). The last one preoccupiedher in the last book she published: Ces lampes qu’on a oublié d’éteindre, but nobody seemsmore prominent in her formation and vision on literature than Georges Perec. Indeed, the famousmember of OuLiPo (founded in 1960) is sharing multiple things with Robin: first of all, both arehidden children (she is three years older than Perec), second, they grew up in the same “arrondissement,”and thirdly, both practice literature as a way to keep both the memory of the past aliveand to transcend its traumatic nature. Literature is never “Spielerei” but must be innovative andit is this last domain that I illustrate as brilliantly “conversive.” Both intersperse the places ofeveryday life with their own “memories” and take solace in music and movies when writing istoo much a burden. Both think about the future of the arts, on the impact of modern life and theinvention of the personal computer. The relationship between jazz and its mirroring effect in thenarrative (the sudden breaks, the repetition and improvisation) are corresponding tools that alleviatethe pain and kill the void of everyday life. In that respect, Dylan (in Cybermigrances) andthe list of famous jazz-[wo]men in Je me souviens (Perec) are worth “pereckoning”… betweenthe principle of free jazz (creation) and “contrainte” (foundation of OuLiPo) both authors navigatebrilliantly.

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