Les yeux fermés

A first-person narrator, recently rendered blind, recounts his adjustment to loss of sight, recalling pleasures of reading, dependence on dictionaries, visits to the library, and the tenderness and tensions of a relationship whose partner leaves for a restorative stay. Isolating himself for a month to test his resilience, he decides to write as a means to occupy solitude and perhaps transmute suffering into art. He reflects on memory, pride, fear of pity, the limits of heroism, and the commonality of domestic temptations, mixing intimate reminiscence with philosophical observations about creation, humility, and the difficulties of turning personal pain into literature.