The former writer and advisor to Emmanuel Macron is also passionate about lyrical art. For the Royal Opera of Liège, he has just signed an adaptation of Bartleby, Melville’s short story, set to music by the composer Benoît Mernier.
It is undoubtedly the most famous “at the same time” in literature. « I would prefer not to » – “You would rather not pass.” A reply as systematic as it is enigmatic from the copyist Bartleby, in the Kafkaesque short story by Hermann Melville which bears his name. A phrase which, since the publication in 1853 of this premature surrealist story, has been adopted by a good number of philosophers, sociologists… And even politicians! Some do not hesitate to see, in this paragon of inaction, preaching “almost no” with “almost yes”, a symbol of passive resistance, even dissidence.
Sylvain Fort assures us: it was not its political dimension which encouraged him to want to take Melville’s short story to adapt it into an opera libretto, at the request of the composer Benoît Mernier and the director Vincent Boussard. But good “the literary depth of the character. Bartleby is one of the most important characters in world literature…
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