Joë Bousquet
Bousquet, Joë (1897-1950). Permanently invalided after a 1918 war-wound, Bousquet filled notebook upon notebook with suggestive aesthetic, poetic, mystical, and erotic meditations, and published them in such compilations as La Tisane de sarments (1936) and Traduit du silence (1941), and, posthumously, Mystique (1973) and Papillon de neige (1980). His novels, gathered in Œuvre romanesque complète (4 vols., 1979-84), lend shape to a world of metaphysical premonition. The Carcassonne bedroom where he lay behind closed shutters became a place of pilgrimage, with Bousquet playing the role of spiritual mentor to visitors as diverse as Louis Aragon and Simone Weil. Letters to contemporaries like Gide, Breton, and Hans Bellmer make up his Correspondance (1969), while tender letters to a young woman appear as Lettres à Poisson d'Or (1967). Bousquet's reputation is still growing, and the posthumous publication of his journals and jottings proceeds steadily. That of Le Cahier noir (1989) disclosed an unsuspected physical explicitness to Bousquet's erotic fantasy-life, though even here the quasi-pornographic detail manifests an ethereal translucency.
— Roger Cardinal
