MAURA DALY
411
friend .
It
is a magnificent social structure, much more attractive
than ours. It is the mother's brother who lives with the children,
who brings them up ... etcetera.
MD:
You use fairy tales as well as myths in your works . What is the
difference between the fairy tale and the myth?
MT:
The fairy tale - you will see in
Le Vol du Vampire
-
I have a
chapter on fairy tales - for me, they are broken and diminished
myths -little myths. Fairy tales have an effect on us because we
do not recognize the myth, but it is there . . .. For example,
Charles Perrault's
Bluebeard
is full of unlikely events , and we ac–
cept these events because underneath there is a great myth, but
we don't recognize it. Bluebeard leaves, saying to his wife, "I'm
leaving on a trip, here are the keys to the house. You can use all
the keys except the one that opens this chamber.
If
you open it,
you will die ."
It
is a crazy way to act. He is courting disaster, but
he does it anyway, and we accept it. Why do we accept it? Be–
cause we recognize, without realizing it - it is a matter of remem–
bering- Yaweh's saying to Adam and Eve, "You can eat of all the
fruits of Paradise except that one, and if you eat from it, you will
die ." And Yaweh goes away. It is that memory that is at work–
that explains why we accept Bluebeard's pronouncement. Nat–
urally, the wife opens the chamber door and drops the key on the
ground. The key is stained and she cannot get the stain out. In
that respect too, the myth of the indelible spot is very much
established, very profound - the anguish of the small stain and
then besmirched honor, and then virginity.... There is a whole
mythology of the indelible spot which makes us accept this story
but which doesn't hold up apart from it. For me, that is what a
story is, but not necessarily a fairy tale.
MD:
Which of your novels do you prefer, and why?
MT:
I prefer
Gemini.
Simply because it is the most my novel. . it
is the one that (but these are purely personal considerations) is
based on nothing.
Vendredi
is based upon Daniel Defoe's
Robinson
Crusoe; The Four Wise Men
is based upon the Scriptures;
The Ogre,
although it is less obvious, is based upon Nazism; there is the war,
etcetera . . .. These are ways of treating, of retreating those things,
whereas with
Gemini
there is nothing. It is a thick book based upon
nothing.
It
is
I.
MD:
A personal invention?
MT:
Yes, that's right-and then, it is also the one that is the most
ambitious.
