ABSTRACT
Not every writer’s house—however important the writer—is preserved as a historical landmark. Of many of them we just lose track, and of many more not even the site is recorded: in the course of time, they simply become other people’s homes, merging into the housing history and habits of generations. For a writer’s house to be transformed into a museum, it will have to undergo a preliminary process of assessment, at the end of which it shall find itself severed from the housing continuity of the city, or town, or countryside, where it happens to be located. This severance is preliminary to the theatralization of the act of writing of which the museum is to be the setting. A highly personal and private performance, such as writing, will therefore inscribe itself in the visitors’ memories by the mediation of the material objects—furniture, books, paintings, bric-à-brac, vistas, the rooms themselves—which accompanied it. What the visitors will be invited to enjoy is the mental mise en scène of the writer-at-work. The visible will thus lend enchantment to the invisible.
