"Les Treize" ..#23

During the seventies, I was a student in Paris, living in the Latin Quarter. In Winter 72 , a movie was released in the indie circuit called "OUT 1 spectre" by Jacques Rivette. It was a shortened version, though lasting 4 and a half hours, of a 12 hours long film. Rivette was some kind of heroe to me and to student friends of mine, specially due to a previous film he had directed , "L'amour fou", which had the same title as that André Breton book. We rushed to see the film and the 4 hours just vanished..we wanted more (I still haven't managed to view the full 12 hours version but I know that the video does exist...). Next day we went again to see the same movie and we were still fascinated.. It was loosely based on the story of the 13, a book by Balzac. The next step was to read Balzac's novel.. The introdutive sentences were the following :

"Il s'est rencontré, sous l'Empire et dans Paris, treize hommes également frappés du même sentiment, tous doués d'une assez grande énergie pour être fidèles à la même pensée, assez probes entre eux pour ne point se trahir, alors même que leurs intérêts se trouvaient opposés, assez profondément politiques pour dissimuler les liens sacrés qui les unissaient, assez forts pour se mettre au-dessus de toutes les lois, assez hardis pour tout entreprendre, et assez heureux pour avoir presque toujours réussi dans leurs desseins; ayant couru les plus grands dangers, mais taisant leurs défaites; inaccessibles à la peur, et n'ayant tremblé ni devant le prince, ni devant le bourreau, ni devant l'innocence; s'étant acceptés tous, tels qu'ils étaient, sans tenir compte des préjugés sociaux; criminels sans doute, mais certainement remarquables par quelques-unes des qualités qui font les grands hommes, et ne se recrutant que parmi les hommes d'élite."

With the book and the film in our minds, we met altogether in a brasserie nearby the Place Denfert-Rocherau, a place called l'Orientale.. in that place , before 1917, Lenin and Trotsky used to have discussions about their plans to sovietize Russia.

orientale, originally uploaded by zapcomix.

And there in 1972, we decided to start a secrete society called "Les Treize" which would use the lessons of the novel and of the film by the means of a fully surrealistic attitude. We were so serious about it that I cannot help smiling thirty years later , considering those student plays..which were of course a different way to know and eventually seduce the girls who were part of our group. We were three girls and three guys actually , we had got close because our tastes in arts and litterature were similar and not really shared by the remaining of the student community we knew...

The 13 society had rules like never say any predictable thing and try to distort clichés, also we tried to be on a different level of mind than the average regular one. We were elitists and dandies. It was fun really but people outside of our circle were considering us as perfect cases for heavy psychotherapy. I remember us having this poets in danger attitude and also enjoying life differently. This is the time where we visited "la promenade de Venus" where the surrealist group used to meet, another place which caught our attention was a small thriftstore with the beautiful name of "L'angle du hasard".

Our society lasted several years, love conflicts grew and everything ended the day V. one of the girls disappeared to never show up again.. This was a shock for all of us and my friend involved with her never gave us a coherent explanation of what had happened.. This vanishing bothered me for a long time. I did all kinds of enquiries to find her again ...it took me 15 years to meet V. again and understand why she had left the 13 so dramatically, and also to find out she had loved me.