Do you suffer from RDS?

(by Jerome Leroy, via)


He went to the doctor who examined him briefly, then asked:
- What's the color of the sky?
- White, doctor.
- For how long?
- Forever.
- C'mon. No way.
- Yes.
- You have an explanation for this?
- The absence of color is a reflection of the soul.
- So you're white?
- Yeah.
- Like snow? Like a new-born lamb?
- No -- white like anguish. White like fear, sin, nothingness. White like death.

He got a prescription, but came back a few days later.
- So the sky's still white?
- Still.
- You've come down with it, my friend.
- Oh yeah?
- Yes. Classic. You've been in The Spectacle too long. RDS.
- What?
- Rigaut-Drieu Syndrome. An illness for the end of the world. My colleage Michel Bouna also calls it alexthemia. He diagnosed it in Life Unnamed.
- Symptoms?
- Not having "words to describe it", finding yourself in the horrible situation where it seems like you have to participate in the system that's killing you. An untenable paradox. Finally, you'd have to say you're in a high-risk group.
- Is there hope? A cure?
- To write. To write some more. To write always. But I don't guarantee anything.

More about the surrealist poet, Jacques Rigaut

More about the writer, Pierre Drieu de la Rochelle (but beware, it's shabby and imbalanced, but has some links and titles)


(my translation from M. Leroy's infinitely better original in French)


image via