A multi-sensory experience during the 2020 Night of Reading
I like to explore, to discover.
This was recently the case with The Maritime Ode, a poignant and dizzying text by the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa, which was going to be the subject of a multi-sensory reading during the Night of Reading 2020 at the Library-Museum L'Inguimbertine from Carpentras (France).
I immersed myself in this whole story. His lively, accelerated and sharp style stung like sea salt. His energy carried me on a chaotic interior journey. The elements were unleashed to lose ground. The call of the open sea, its siren, which bewitches me.
This first reading left me exhausted, breathless, disoriented by so many adventures and smells that brought so much realism to these lines.
I frantically noted passages and words, noted here and there olfactory sensations.
“The joy of arriving, the sadness of leaving”
"The faraway, already here and now in my head!"
How these words echo in me, me the traveler!
So many sensations, where to start?
The iodized odor which takes to the nostrils, which floods and hypnotizes. The smell of ships, between wood and metal. The smell of a summer morning: “The wind quivers. The morning comes up. The heat is blooming ”.
So many sensations to express: the omnipresence of this submerged marine note, which drives you mad to imagine heinous crimes, and the fleetingness of the ships coming in and out of the port, the morning smell of the awaking gardens, the quay before the noisy and thunderous arrival of these travelers who come and go.
TYhe objective was to create a scent to accompany the bewitching voice of Charlotte Assemat of Compagnie du A, which makes us take off instantly, and the sound punctuation of Jessica Tinkler, who subtly to the sound of her violin and her voice, underlined the dramaturgy of the text.
A first multi-sensory experience combining reading, music and smell for the L’Inguimbertine Library-Museum in Carpentras.
It is a great pleasure for me to meet this public in love with books who curiously lent themselves to such an experience.
The Maritime Ode by Fernando Pessoa on Amazon.