Nos douleurs montées sur un soleil comme sur un cheval de course

How to Be in the World?

The question is urgent, the stench unbearable. Through countless insults, the sun has finally given way. Pain has swollen our chests, drawing the cards of a grim future. Since yesterday, rage has been gnawing at the bowl of our memories. The dead strip our thoughts bare. Shame and anxiety plant themselves in the middle of our dreams, like a flag.

On page 24 of L’Apocalypse arabe, Etel Adnan writes: “an Indian sun / a Hindu sun / a Zoroastrian sun / a catacomb sun / my pain mounted on a sun like on a racehorse.”

The poet speaks the unspeakable. Poetry as antidote.

How to be in the world? Despite the absurd, the vertigo. Despair. What to do with rage, the tragedy of reality, wounds healed by wounds? If nothing matters, if death and suffering are inevitable, is it not better to end?

The child says: art is a revolt, a gesture to open the way.

Against resignation, there remain care, touch, friendship, the warmth of a kiss, and the irresistible desire to love. One must rediscover the strength of the imaginary, of the collective, the fleeting return of brilliance. The artist dreams of other places, of tomorrows, of a presence in the world that cries out for justice.

Emné places a prayer on the stone. A drop of water slides down a mother’s hand. The sky has regained the gaze of the child. The eye finds refuge in the cracks of the earth. Women dream of their lost children. The daughter receives the first words from a mother. Walls invent new worlds. The man in trance forgets the noise of the world. And poetry saves us.

Anasisana and Emné Nasereddine; Ismaïl Bahri; Dora Dalila Cheffi; Dhia Fadhloun and Amine Fradi; Nadia Kaabi-Linke; Amine Koudhai; Wafa Lazhari; Achref Toumi. Eight artists, one poet, one musician have responded to the question: How to be in the world?

Here are their answers.