courage (7) charly delwart
In these troubled times, we asked a number of authors we admire what ‘courage’ means to them. In the coming weeks, you can read their answers here, in the form of a poem, a memory, an anecdote or a more philosophical reflection.
When faced with danger, an animal has two choices: fight or flight. Humans are more flexible; they have more options, more tactics, at their disposal.
When faced with a pandemic, flight, on an individual level, might mean going elsewhere – somewhere the pandemic doesn’t exist. But a pandemic, by its very nature, is everywhere. So what might fight look like?
There are other dangers that can be fled but not fought, like islands that are overwhelmed by bodies of water, destined to eventually disappear. Some of their inhabitants leave and set up home elsewhere, on solid ground, sheltered from the consequences of climate change. Others decide to fight, building barriers, small walls, makeshift dikes composed of sand bags and tree trunks, or bailing out the rooms of their homes as and when the growing tides come in. They know that their efforts will be condemned almost straightaway, that in the end they serve no purpose, that they’ll have either to leave or be engulfed. But, in the meantime, the inhabitants are still there. Before things become irreversible, they will have been there.
Because humans, unlike animals, have managed to take an extra dimension into account: time.
When it comes to danger, time often doesn’t change much, but doing what you can has a value, as does being there for the longest possible amount of time. Because that’s what matters to these inhabitants, the source of their courage: making it so that their world continues to be as it’s always been until something stronger destroys it. Making it so that things exist until the last possible moment, like the extra breath of life that will be taken from the world.
Afterwards, they’ll think about what to do.
But in the meantime, because they’re fighting, it all still exists.
Translated from the French by Daniella Shreir
Charly Delwart is a writer of novels and scripts. Born in Brussels in 1975 and now based in Paris, he has published four novels since Circuit in 2007. Latest title: Databiographie.
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