Faced with the difficult situations that life does not fail to present to everyone, Diane Ducret suggests diving into the heart of the wave rather than surfing on it. Her new novel, The master of the ocean, comes in the form of an initiatory tale inspired by the Orient. In this instructive story, a Taoist sage recounts the eventful course of his life. Haunted by mourning and grief, the orphan who takes refuge in a monastery refuses to become a monk as long as he has not seen the sea.
Through this story going from the East to the West, Diane Ducret evokes the sea, the waves and the sky, faith, the harmony between body and spirit, between man and nature. His hero’s quest for self and his need to find deep peace are also contemporary themes.
Diane Ducret, a gifted writer, has taken up many challenges in her life and the one she has been facing in recent months is not the least: she is battling a terrible illness.
“For two years, it’s been quite difficult and that’s also a bit the reason for this book,” she reveals, in a telephone interview.
“When I was young, I had already had a riding accident and an operation that had prevented me from walking for almost ten years. I was told that I would never walk again when I was a teenager. I had about ten operations, I spent ten years fighting. I had studied philosophy a lot, at the time, to enable me to find ways of reinventing a life that was no longer there and ways of not feeling exiled from one’s own life.
“Shortly before confinement, I was told that the nosocomial bacteria that I had caught in the hospital, which had gnawed my leg, was still there and was killing me slowly. »
The inner journey
She wanted to come back inside her. “Faced with the pandemic, it also seemed like the right time to me to respond to this forced immobility. Rediscovering the meaning of the inner journey, rediscovering the meaning of what it is to jump into the void, true inner faith, spirituality, with the image of a young orphan who makes this great journey between the East and the West. »
Did writing bring him a guideline to go through his own trials?
“I have always thought that literature should not be an author’s place of psychoanalysis. When I was told that, it was a hard blow, very hard, and in addition, the pandemic was coming. I learned that I was immunodeficient, therefore very fragile, when a virus arrived that could kill people like me. »
” I’m fine “
“It’s going to sound crazy what I’m about to tell you, but I’m actually fine. I am equipped for this. Inside, I know I’m going to get through this. I know there is an answer. There will be treatment. […] I realized that I was doing better than many others who had no illness. But why is it okay? Where did I get this? »
She understood that her inner strength came from all the spiritual and religious texts she had read, but also from the fact that she had spent a lot of time in front of the ocean.
“I drew a wave philosophy from it and I wanted to pass that on to others. Many of us will have the feeling of being alone, lost at sea, having lost all our bearings, our job, our husband, what made our life. I think people need a big breath of fresh air, to find a stable, infinite horizon. »
- Diane Ducret is the author of numerous novels and essays, including wives of dictators, The Forbidden Flesh, Undesirables, The best way to walk is the flamingo way.
- The dictatorhis latest novel, is being adapted as a series in the United States.