Philippe Sollers' unpublished novel excerpt explores love, memory, and time

Artpress publishes the first pages of Philippe Sollers' new novel, tentatively titled "Trésor d'amour" (Treasure of Love), reproduced with permission from the author and Gallimard. The excerpt weaves together memories of Venice, a mystical experience in a Dorsoduro antique shop called "Tesoro d'amore" where Sollers and his companion Minna acquire two intertwined gold serpent rings from the 16th century, and reflections on the words "treasure" and "love" as everyday utterances. Sollers contrasts a global financial crisis with the discovery of a 94-centimeter gold-hilted sword from the 12th century BCE in a Mycenaean tomb, and discusses the acoustics of prehistoric painted caves, where sound served as a navigational tool. He recounts his youthful experience at Lascaux, noting that paintings are often in nearly inaccessible chambers and that ochre marks correspond to points of maximum resonance. The text meditates on the evolution of love from religious sublimation to libertinage, romantic passion, prudishness, sexual proliferation, and back to repression, concluding that the cycle is complete and it is time to draw consequences. Sollers asserts that writing follows the same principle as navigating caves by sound.