For about ten days, I work on a short film. A Japanese story called « Ume no tane ». Since it has something to do with ghosts, we watched « Kwaïdan », Kobayashi's master piece again. I listened to the soundtrack carefully: an amazing piece by Toru Takemitsu.

A few hours before, after swimming 2 kilometers on my back, I felt fizzy and went to the Fnac store. I'm a little bit obsessed with Arthur Rimbaud right now, because Paul Claudel said that his conversion was due to the reading of Arthur's « Une Saison en enfer » and « Les Illuminations ». Many poets seem to have been conducted to faith by Arthur the mécréant. Arthur is a digger: he's able to reopen the buried junction between language and faith through his poetry. I'm one of his many victims too! There is an amazing Claudel's letter to Paterne Berrichon, the poet who married Arthur's sister Isabelle, saying: « NO MONUMENT FOR ARTHUR RIMBAUD PLEASE! IT WOULD BE AN INSULT! ». That was in 1911; Claudel had understood who Arthur was better than Patti Smith.



Tonight at the dinner I said that I still regret to not have been able to go to Aden, where Arthur lived, when we visited Yemen with my brother's friend Jeannot. There were two Yemen at that time (1990). I also recalled that we started to live in Marseille one century after his death, in autumn 1991. I check Arthur's exact death date in Marseille hospital La Conception: it is today: 10 november 1891! 120 years ago. I'm a little Kwaïdan myself.