Comme un chant d'espérance

Man has often reflected on the nature of nothingness, the after life and what preceded the birth of the universe. We know nothing of these things, but we can invent and imagine... Which is what Jean d’Ormesson has done in this work. The idea occurred to him when he took a closer interest in the recent discoveries of physicists and astronomers. Thanks to the Planck spacecraft, we have access to images of the early Universe. What was there before the Big Bang? The universal laws which apply from one side of our immense universe to the other no longer apply. There are neither “nuances, reflections, hypotheses nor any of those nothings which we are so occupied with. Its quite simple: there is nothing.” Which is where the idea arose of writing a book on... Nothing. This novel, which bears a closer resemblance to a song, tells us the history of the universe through the eyes of an 89-year-old man. It contains questions on chance and necessity, the infinite and nothingness, on God, space and time, the comic and tragic sides of this world, on freedom and light... It is also the opportunity for Jean d’Ormesson to reaffirm his belief in a God that provides meaning, a God without whom nothing would exist but who would be nothing without man, a God hidden everywhere. I have loved God, who is nothing in the eyes of men who are something. I have hated neither men nor women. And I have loved a life which is much less than nothing, but which is everything for us. I will now sing of the beauty of this fragile, fleeting and changing world of ours which is the only treasure we possess as poor men, blinded by pride, condemned to the temporary, swept up by time and this eternal present which is sure to end, one day or another, as it dissolves into the nothingness of God and into his hidden glory. Jean d'Ormesson