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I chose to read this book for two reasons; first because I thought the title was so poetic, gave me pleasure, was like an invitation ‘to come and see, come and taste’ and second because for years I have had and used the thick scholarly tome, The Language of Psychoanalysis. The idea that this same author is writing something called Love of Beginnings - a lyrical meditation on his own life' to quote from the advertisement, well, that aroused my curiosity.
In the book Pontalis says many remarkable things. He writes a piece of literature and stresses the requirement he has for himself to live in several spaces, not just in a psychoanalytic one. He wrote while on vacation (vacances, a word that for him always rhymes with enfance) on the island, Belle-Ile. We can see the room where he sits, a room with a small window, open to the sky and the ocean. He goes there ‘in order to feel impelled to write in a more wandering way, a way that (in the end) has no other object than itself, a way that has come to be called literature’. The title in French is L'Amour des Commencements. This title illustrates an important paradix concerning beginnings; that they arise in conjunction with endings. In my adolescence the moment of leaving high school was sometimes called ‘The commencement’. this moment was marked by a public gathering with music, speeches and the giving of diplomas. I am interested by Commencement and the way this one word embodies completion of one thing and the beginning of another. I am sorry that I am not fluent in French, as many idioms and subtleties in Pontalis's language will be lost in the process of translation, the fact that still so many come through makes me envious of those readers who have more.
His style of writing draws the reader into the places and situations of the story. I am standing behind him and see the photograph of the boy with his father, the father's hand touching, resting on the boy's shoulder. Three days afterwards the father is dead and the bo