‘The “trop plein de désir” is itself a rather elaborate phrase, trying to convey this thirteen-year-old’s appetite for life, his vitality, his energy, the multiplicity of his wishes, plans, projects and so forth. It’s already “un trop plein” – an overflow system, within the world of plumbing, hydraulics and so forth – it is quite a refined phrase with a lot going on in it. The next phrase, however, “un trop vif de vivance”, plays on the writer’s own rather unusual use of the word “vivance” earlier in the letter; it’s not an overflow, it’s an over-life of vitality that’s being spoken about, and “vivance” has a semi-technical sense to it. This suggests to me that the writer is half in love with her own literary language, and with her own ingenuity, as well as keeping a motherly eye on the lost child at the beginning, at the dawn, of his summer flowering, “à l’aurore de l’été”. And this is a haunting phrase. Since first reading this letter, I have thought to myself how extraordinary that the French language, handled by an ordinary person – and she sounds ordinary in other respects – should be able to achieve this degree of intensity as the letter unfolds.’ He hesitated for a moment, and I suspect we were both thinking of the unknown ordinary person who had touched our emotions.

The Professor continued his analysis. ‘There is also the language of the weather, of seascapes, of the movement of waves, of winds, that is to say the whole natural world caught up in the life and the life expectancy of the individual, and the desolation of the bereaved person. This is something that nineteenth-century French poetry often does, and very movingly, too. One thinks of Victor Hugo, for example, as perhaps the supreme exponent of this orchestration to harmonize the movements of nature with the movements of human subjectivity. To find an ordinary person doing the same thing with such skill and such élan really is impressive. For me, as a literary scholar, it is that much more moving to find literary language being used in this way, as if it were part of everyone’s patrimony, whatever questions one may ask about authenticity. So this is not just a moving personal document, it talks about the uses of literature in ordinary life in a way that is itself cogent and compelling.’

I had never thought of language in that way before and somehow his words seemed to push open an unused door for me. Through the crack I could perceive a whole new landscape of thought that I had never even known was there.

Meanwhile, the Professor was thumbing through the book he had brought upstairs with him. ‘One of the strangest of Rimbaud’s prose poems in his collection Illuminations, entitled ‘Dévotion’, uses this particular formula, which is that of a toast, raising a glass to someone.’ He read out part of the poem: