"Hot Springs of Dax"

Né à Dax, y ayant grandi et y revenant régulièrement (à Dax, ou plus exactement en pays d'Orthe), je ne crois pas avoir jamais rencontré, au cours de mes lectures, et à condition d'exclure certains vers ou textes particulièrement locaux ou obscurs, la moindre référence aux sources thermales de ma ville natale, ni à la Nèhe -- pas même à la Fontaine d'Eau Chaude. Or, ce matin, poursuivant ma lecture de Snow White de Donald Barthelme (réécriture très post-moderne du conte, qui remonte aux années 60), je tombe sur le paragraphe suivant, au début de la deuxième partie :

PERHAPS we should not be sitting here tending the vats and washing the buildings and carrying the money to the vault once a week, like everybody else. Perhaps we should be doing something else entirely, with our lives. God knows what. We do what we do without thinking. One tends the vats and washes the buildings and carries the money to the vault and never stops for a moment to consider that the whole process may be despicable. Someone standing somewhere despising us. In the hot springs of Dax, a gouty thinker thinking, father forgive them. It was worse before. That is something that can safely be said. It was worse before we found Snow White wandering in the forest. Before we found Snow White wandering in the forest we lived lives stuffed with equanimity. There was equanimity for all. We washed the buildings, tended the vats, wended our way to the county cathouse once a week (heigh-ho). Like everybody else. We were simple bourgeois. We knew what to do. When we found Snow White wandering in the forest, hungry and distraught, we said: "Would you like something to eat?" Now we do not know what to do. Snow White has added a dimension of confusion and misery to our lives. Whereas once we were simple bourgeois who knew what to do, now we are complex bourgeois who are at a loss. We do not like this complexity. We circle it wearily, prodding it from time to time with a shopkeepers forefinger: What is it? Is it, perhaps, bad for business? Equanimity has leaked away. There was a moment, however, when equanimity was not the chief consideration. That moment in which we looked at Snow White and understood for the first time that we were fond of her. That was a moment.