French Author Catherine Millet on Jealousy: 'The Little Demon in Me'

• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

SPIEGEL: The experience of pain, the desire for control, also made you physically ill. Your intestines rebelled. Doesn't this show that you couldn't step out of your body, after all?

Millet: Who am I? The fact that I had so many sex partners in life made it clear to me that not all people see me in the same way. People have many different ideas about me. These images and interpretations of me are all somehow real, and yet, somewhere in the midst of all of these projections, there is a deeper self, although I can't say whether its existence outweighs the other self. My body exists in different forms.

SPIEGEL: You paint an almost Cartesian picture of yourself, as if you were a ghost in the machine. But you are your body, and you can't separate yourself from it.

Millet: It's strange, but you're saying the same thing Jacques said to me recently. I was able to lead the sexual life of Catherine M. because I separated the body from the mind. I probably exaggerated this separation, but it was useful to me. It helped me get to myself.

SPIEGEL: The separation of the body and the mind is also reflected in the importance of the imaginary in your sexual life. Aside from the sex acts themselves, the fantasies are almost more important. But in "Jealousy," you are no longer at the center of the imagined world. Instead, it is your husband, with his playmates.

Millet: That really destabilized me. I had the impression that strangers had taken control of my imagination. The fact that my mind develops a vibrant fantasy world made it easier for me to separate mind and body. When I find myself in a situation that I don't like, I can escape it with the help of my imagination. This has made me a very patient, adaptable woman. A remnant of my childhood that I have preserved in myself.

SPIEGEL: But not anymore, in the end. The child rebelled. Did your sex life actually come to a standstill after the three years of jealousy?

Millet: Not with my husband, but it did with others. My husband, on the other hand, had to provide proof of his love, as a happy ending after the scenes that I had made.

SPIEGEL: Did you feel that he too was suffering?

Millet: I suspect he was more dismayed than angry or hurt. Of course, I talk about my suffering in my book. He could discuss his own suffering.

SPIEGEL: Did you sometimes have the feeling that you were emotionally at risk, that your self, which you had also constructed on the basis of promiscuity, threatened to break apart?

Millet: I am certainly no less vulnerable than many others, but I can't stand the feeling of weakness. That's why I hide it. During all those years, I took great pains to hide my distress from my female friends. I didn't want them to know how wounded I was.

SPIEGEL: But then you write a book about it and display everything in public?

Millet: You find that curious? I'm also capable of discussing it in a completely uninhibited way here with you. Writing about it and talking about it allows me to regain control over myself. I choose the words with which I tell my story, and I shape my experience and my memory.

SPIEGEL: And you still remain honest?

Millet: Absolutely. The narrated truth is a controlled truth. Falsifying it would be counterproductive.

SPIEGEL: You always wanted to be the mistress of your fate, a self-determined woman who distinguishes herself from the crowd. Is licentious sexuality a means of liberation?

Millet: For every young person, having sex the first time is a way of asserting his or her independence. I grew up in an environment of strict rules and many taboos. Maybe I had to keep proving my independence to myself again and again. I never wanted to be subjected to an exclusive relationship with one man.

SPIEGEL: Did this desire for freedom also lead you into the world of art?

Millet: Probably. The profession of art critic was not predetermined for me. In fact, I was more influenced by the ideas I had about certain writers -- the way other pubescent girls dream of acting. And they weren't necessary classic writers, like Stendhal or Balzac.

SPIEGEL: Who were they?

Millet: Françoise Sagan. A sophisticated life, fast cars, the liberated woman at 18 -- that was the notion I had of being a writer.

SPIEGEL: And feminism? Simone de Beauvoir?

Millet: Hardly. I agreed with their demands, of course, but I never became involved in the feminist movement, probably because I never encountered significant difficulties in my professional life as an art critic. Art offers women a favorable environment.

SPIEGEL: Did the success of your book about your sexual life change you?

Millet: It hardly changed my everyday life at all. I have more money, that's all.

SPIEGEL: But since then people see you in a different light when you appear in public. That's Catherine M., they say. Isn't it awkward?

Millet: You know, the people I interact with are usually very polite and well-bred. Just as you are. And in my experience many women feel that I have encouraged them to talk about themselves. No, I don't hear any unpleasant whispers when I go out in public.

SPIEGEL: Do you feel a sense of satisfaction, now that you are so widely known as someone who violates taboos?

Millet: I'm not a provocateur, even if I provoke people with what I write. My literary ambition is to say the unsaid and describe behaviors that have not been described. It's similar in painting: A new perspective discovers something that no one has seen before and that everyone suddenly recognizes. That's the extent of my breaking the rules.

SPIEGEL: Montaigne defines jealousy as a disease of the spirit, for which there are many causes and few remedies. Are you cured today?

Millet: Not completely. I have shed my neurotic jealousy. But the little demon doesn't go away, and it's always ready to wake up again. Psychoanalysis can help, but you don't understand how and why you are being helped. It's as if a block, a horrible weight, were being shoved into the subconscious. With a lot of luck, it falls into the wastebasket. But the cure? You can only hope for it once you have gone through the fires of hell.

SPIEGEL: Madame Millet, thank you for this interview.

• Back
• 1
• | 2
• | 3
• | 4

• Part 1: 'The Little Demon in Me'
• Part 2: 'I Twisted the Knife'
• Part 3: 'Jacques Didn't Understand'
• Part 4: 'I Separated the Body from the Mind'