Querelle (Genet, Jean)

by Jean Genet

some inconsistent Pâté of love.

He felt no fear, no remorse either, and this will be less of a surprise once one realizes that Querelle had already accepted the fact that he carried the crime in him–not that he was part of the crime.

The eye may allow some confusion, but the mouth won’t stand for it, and thus Querelle was slowly proceeding through a universe of savors, of recognitions within recognitions.

Querelle was a night-tamer. He had familiarized himself with all the expressions of darkness, he had peopled the dark shadows with the most dangerous monsters he carried within himself. Then he had vanquished them by drawing deep breaths through his nostrils. Thus the night, although it did not entirely belong to him, obeyed his commands.

Then a bloody nocturnal tragedy would unroll, the somber story of the shipwreck of a brightly-lit ship, symbolizing the shipwreck of love. The dock workers, the fishermen, and the sailors would applaud. Leaning on one elbow against the zinc-topped bar, his legs crossed, Querelle would hardly look at them. He did not envy them their muscles or their pleasures. He did not want to become one of them.

Querelle metamorphosed his friends into bracelets, necklaces, gold watches, earrings.

Slowly, and taking this sense of salvation for his point of departure, he then established effective connections between that murder and what he thought he knew about homosexuals: if it were true that Nono had buggered him, then Querelle had to be a “queer.”