Joë Bousquet romancier

Abstract

By Charles Bachat. (Archives des Lettres Modernes, 281). Paris — Caen, Lettres modernes Minard, 2003. 156 pp. Pb € 22.00. This is a brief but intellectually important contribution to the study of the novels of Bousquet, by one of his most eminent specialists. The author respects but seeks to go beyond the literary legend of the great poet nailed to his bed by a war wound and condemned to fill the existential void by means of the imagination. Bachat chooses to look at a relatively neglected part of Bousquet's œuvre, the novels, and show, through rigorous analysis, both the evolution of that œuvre and its deep structures. In the first section, manuscripts, correspondence and intertexts are cited to explore the genesis of such works as Le Rendez-vous d'un soir d'hiver and Iris et Petite Fumée, and to trace the maturation of Bousquet's novel-writing, culminating in his quest for the ‘conte pur’ in Le Roi du sel. The second section deals with Bousquet's aesthetics: recurrent themes and figures, narrative strategies, techniques of focalization, and antithetical pairs of characters, among other features of a very rich body of work. Bachat brings out the affinities between Bousquet and Simenon, and shows how Bousquet came nearest to achieving the feat of writing a ‘Surrealist’ novel. The reader may baulk at some of the terminological armoury borrowed from Genette, Hamon and others, but this is a very serious study, impeccably referenced and theoretically aware, which never loses sight of the pathos of Bousquet's attempt to bring together dire and vivre.