A listener overhearing our discussion of shame and the possibility of its cathartic effect, our touching on the topics of guilt and blame, would have the impression that we aren’t sitting in the Marais over a cup of Darjeeling, but rather in an ivory tower, in a realm beyond time. But actually it all hinges on something as seemingly banal as going to the bakery for rolls. Dorner sometimes has to ask his sister to do that for him, and it makes him feel a sense of shame: “And I’m not the only one who reacts like this.” He knows that very well from the letters and e-mails he receives from handicapped people. He touches a responsive chord in them. And sometimes this is obviously happening for the first time, to people who have been handicapped for decades. This touches him very much and lends a deeper meaning to his writing.

This meaning is what has prompted him to follow up his initial books by once again emerging into the public eye to stage the comic opera “L’elisir d’amore” by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). It’s a vibrant, melodious piece with a lively pace. Doesn’t this exhibitionistic artistry make him sad? “No, on the contrary. I’m delighted and amazed by it.” Dorner has a talent for always living in the present: “No sentimental memories from the past, no illusions about the future beyond a period of a few months.”

He continues to roll his “demonic stones” up a mountain, like Sisyphus. But one must imagine this author as a happy man, much like the hero of antiquity depicted by Albert Camus.