“I started writing this text without looking back. It occurs to me that all this could have been written differently, so to speak, as a statement of raw facts. Or based on individual details: the soap of the first night, the words written in red toothpaste, the closed door of the second night, the Apache jukebox that played in the Tally Ho Corner coffee shop, Paul Anka’s name etched deep into the school desk, forty-five Only you bought with R in the music store, after the two of us listened to it in the cabin and with whom I spent a Saturday night in Yveto in my room, with the lights out, dancing all alone in the dark. And it is the lack of meaning in what we are experiencing at the moment we experience it that increases the chances of writing.

“The memory of what I wrote about is already fading. I don’t know what the text is. Even what I was aiming for when writing the book fell apart. I found in my papers what looked like a statement of intent: to explore the abyss between the horrific reality of what is happening at the moment it happens, and the otherworldly element of the unreal that, years later, overshadows what happened. .”

A small excerpt from Anya Erno’s “Memories of a Girl” (we do not reveal which part of the book is from), which will be published in the coming days by the Metaihmio publishing house, along with an -even more concise -page “Young Man”. Both of these books, like all the works of this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature, have been translated by the authoritative and experienced Rita Colaiti, who is especially fond of the French writer’s prose.

As you know, the awarding of Anya Erno by the Swedish Academy caused a resonance. For Rita Kolaitis, however, Erno “definitely deserved the Nobel Prize,” adding, “It’s perfectly legitimate to dislike the author’s work. But to accuse her of simply using experience, I think it’s cheap. First of all, Erno composes the murals of the era, creates a socio-historical panorama. Experience is just the starting point. All her work is also permeated with the intensity of love desire. Memory, time, language, political consciousness – these are just some of the themes of her works.

Born in 1940 in a French village to a modest rural family, Ernault grew up in deeply conservative France, where a girl’s virginity is a “dowry”, abortion is illegal, and prejudice and strict social divisions prevail, according to a Greek translator. “Do not look at the Paris of Sartre and Beauvoir,” emphasizes Rita Colaiti. “France in the 1950s, especially in the countryside, is a different story. And this setting dominates the beautiful Memoirs of a Girl.

Through her education, Erno overcame social barriers. “She became something of an aristocrat through her education, and also through marriage to a socially superior man – but a marriage that subsequently fell apart. Because Erno cannot live without passion. In addition, she is still proud of her lineage, as well as her parents. And she’s a fanatical leftist. A few days after the announcement of the Nobel, he spoke in Paris with Mélenchon against punctuality. However, above all, it is distinguished by devotion to love experience, passion.

Indeed, in The Young Man, Erno, with her well-known disarming cruelty, speaks of a passion for a young man who is 30 years younger than her. We read: “Five years ago I had an awkward night with a student who wrote to me for a year and wanted to get to know me. I often made love to force myself to write. In weariness, in subsequent abandonment, I turned to find reasons not to expect anything more from life. I hoped that when the most powerful of all expectations, the orgasm, was over, I would feel confident that there was no other higher pleasure than writing a book. Perhaps it was this desire to plunge headlong into writing, which I hesitated because of its scope, that prompted me to invite A. to my house for an after-dinner drink in a restaurant, where, out of timidity, he remained almost mute. He was almost 30 years younger than me.”

Two of her similar books are coming out soon: “I’m Lost” (which is much talked about in America) and “Passion”. “Erno loved Beauvoir, but then he left her. She became a post-feminist. You see, she never saw a man as an enemy. Erno worships a man, but fanatically defends her right to pleasure as a woman. He also wrote candidly about what it means to be abandoned by a man, about the pain of loss, and he is blamed for this.

I ask Rita Kolaitis how she explains her cult in America. “I think it’s because in America she is considered the epitome of the European spirit. She is also adored for the courage she displays as an independent woman. That’s right: it’s amazing how this is reflected in personal human moments, in death, in the family.