Héloïse Godet
FRANCE | 2025
Héloïse Godet is a French author, actress and literary coordinator. She has often worked abroad,
driven by a deep linguistic and intercultural curiosity.
She had the opportunity to perform in Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to language (Jury Prize in Cannes), a cinematic experience she recounted in an article published in Cahiers du cinéma. She later co-wrote and starred in a series broadcast worldwide. Alongside her acting carrer, she has coordinated artistic and literary projects from start to finish for various media, often in multilingual contexts.
Her literary work is now at the core of her practice. Her first novel takes place in the wake of an
accident, in whose gaps memory returns to impose itself on the living. Héloïse was Talent Cannes Adami 2010 and she received the Roger Ebert Award in 2015 for ‘Goodbye to language’. She was also part of Mama is a Maker, an international network that supports artist mothers and their creative resilience.
2025
To you, house of beams full of voices, tower watching over the spirit, den of languages and libraries in
gestation,
You saw me arrive with a sentence stuck in my throat. In the suitcase, my mirages. A memory that
was limping, searching for its shoes. You welcomed me. You said:
– Sit here. Listen and let them out, let them run around in the garden. Let those you think you’ve
forgotten speak. Good spirits are welcome here. As long as they read.
So I let it happen.
I drank the water from the sky, laughter, wine and languages, all of them – sometimes in the same
sentence. We spoke a mixture of English, French, Italian and Spanish at the table, German on the
veranda and Hindi by the fire. Like a dream without borders.
There was that persistent rain, slowing down the walls. And yet, something was growing. A library, or
rather a lung. The construction site made the heart of the house beat. Beatrice held her breath between
the raindrops.
There was also fever. Bodies weakened by a virus. Our work more tenacious than the flu. And at the
centre, again, Beatrice, immutable, alert, a 99-year-old oak tree that doesn’t not yield to the storm.
Then there was the death of the Pope. The next day , I poked my head into the living room, where
Beatrice was watching the news. She looked up and said:
“Nothing new. He’s still dead.”
We burst out laughing.
“He could have risen from the dead” she continued. “He’s the Pope, after all. You never know.”
So I wrote. A story of mourning, of transmission, of familiar spectres. A deceased uncle spoke to me
in my book, and a bat flew through the tower without hitting the words. And you, tower at the edge of
all worlds, whispered ideas to me through the cracks.
Beatrice regaled us with legends, Grisha rested at the bottom of the garden. Aníbal Campos watched
over his trees and their roots. Jan Wilm gave rhythm to the silences. Pablo Maurette read the
architects’ oracles. Rasika, Manju and Maria took care of us. Then Kiran Desai arrived, with her
gentle storms. And finally, Atiq Rahimi, dear bearer of joy, made the air vibrate with his golden poetry
in the sun of exile.
11 years ago, Godard had me say in his film Goodbye to language : ‘I will tell you almost nothing.’
Here, I have answered him. Language is rediscovered. And Proust whispered to me: “Time wasn’t lost
either. It too was awaiting for you here, in Santa Maddalena.”
Time and language. Rediscovered. Caught in the smell of coffee steaming under the wisteria. Waves
of inspiration, far from the constraints of Parisian life, prevented as I was in my hectic life that cut
short every impulse. And far from the Spanish blackout onApril 28. So many events to follow in such
a short time, while feeling so far away from it all, so focused on my book. I’ve never worked so hard
on May 1st.
And the stock of Easter chocolate never diminished. Doped up on the pagan miracles.
House, tower, Beatrice, you are a novel that I’ve inhabited from the inside.
A poem with many voices, of which I have become a word.
I left, but I stayed. I left a little of myself here, of my memories, of my language. Take care of them.
I carry you in my dreams, sweet Tuscan parenthesis that I dare not close.
In all tenses, all languages and under all moons,
With love,
Thank you Beatrice.
