Abstract

A taste for lands far from Metropolitan France marks Jean Rolin’s writing. He indulges that taste in Savannah (2015), an account of a trip he took to that American city in remembrance of a previous trip in the company of his friend, the photographer Kate Barry. An elegiac tone echoes throughout the book, for between those two trips, Kate Barry died. As Rolin charts his new itinerary, the films that Kate took during their first trip provide Rolin with a map that he follows very closely in this second trip. Or as closely as he can, for it shortly becomes apparent to him that many things have changed between then and now. The rule of the game insofar as place is concerned is a fairly simple one: if the remembered place has disappeared, one will choose to visit the place that seems to be the closest to it, both spatially and affectively. Thus, throughout Rolin’s account of his new visit, he notes a series of displacements, clinamens of a sort which serve to remind us that change is inevitable, however fervently one might wish it were not so.

摘要

让·罗林（Jean Rolin）的写作是对远离法国大都市的土地的品味。他沉迷于萨凡纳的味道（2015年），记述了他为纪念前一次与朋友摄影师凯特·巴里（Kate Barry）一起旅行而去美国城市的经历。整本书中回荡着一种语调，因为在两次旅行之间，凯特·巴里死了。当罗琳绘制他的新行程时，凯特在第一次旅行中拍摄的电影为罗琳提供了一张他在第二次旅行中非常关注的地图。还是尽可能地接近他，因为从那时起到现在，他很快意识到许多事情已经改变。就场所而言，游戏规则是一个相当简单的规则：如果所记住的地方消失了，人们将选择访问在空间上和情感上都与它最接近的地方。因此，在Rolin对他的新访问的叙述中，他注意到了一系列的位移，这些提示可以提醒我们改变是不可避免的，但人们可能希望改变并非如此。