Jacques Abeille (; March 17, 1942 – January 23, 2022) was a French writer. Influenced by the surrealist movement, in which he participated in the 1960s and 1970s, he is best known for the novel cycle set in an imaginary universe that started with the publication of (1982). He has also written several collections of poetry and short stories, and is the author of erotic literature, published in part under the pseudonym Léo Barthe.
Jacques Abeille was born on March 17, 1942, in Lyon. An illegitimate child, he was raised by his paternal uncle after his father's death in 1944. During the 1960s he was part of certain circles in Bordeaux that were related to the surrealist movement. In his early 20s he discovered that he suffered from color blindness and such incapacity prevented him from becoming a painter like he originally intended since childhood. He then decided to become a writer instead, at one point expressing "I am a writer on the basis of [being] a failed painter."
Abeille started his literary career in 1971 with the publication of his first erotic fiction, , which he published under the pseudonym "Bartleby." He published various erotic stories throughout his life using different pseudonyms.
In 1982, Abeille published the novel , which would become the first installment in the novel cycle , the work for which he is known for in France. This was followed by in 1986 and seven other books in the series in the following years (the last one, , being released in 2020). He has named a number of influences in his overall writing and storytelling including Gérard de Nerval, Blaise Pascal, Leonora Carrington, Jean Ray, Gustav Meyrink, and Julien Gracq.
Abeille originally wanted to study ethnology but he mentioned his economic conditions and the state of the field at the time as the reasons for which he chose psychology instead and in turn leaving that for philosophy. He was a teaching assistant of philosophy for ten years and later passed the competitive agrégation exam in plastic arts,Interview with Jacques Abeille, La Femelle du requin magazine, 2018, published by the website En attendant Nadeau, January 30, 2022. earning admission to full teaching status. His teaching career ended in 2002.
In 2010 Abeille received a lifetime achievement award from the Wepler Prize for his work, as well as the 2015 Jean-Arp Prize for French language literature and the 2021 Grand prix de l'Imaginaire.
Early life Jacques Abeille was born on March 17, 1942, in the 6th arrondissement of Lyon, the child of an illegitimate relationship. His father, Valentin Abeille (1907-1944) - involved in the French Resistance and opposed to the Vichy regime - was the grandson of a senator sub-prefect. In order to recognize his son (illegal at the time), Valentin Abeille had a family certificate forged by the Resistance network to which he belonged.
After his father's death in 1944, Valentin Abeille's twin brother took in Jacques, raising him "in many ways [...] like the ghost of my father" in the words of the writer.Daniel Launay, "Lectures de Jacques Abeille", in Le Dépossédé,
Once the war was over, Jacques Abeille accompanied his uncle, a high civil servant, to his postings.Daniel Launay, "Lectures de Jacques Abeille", in Le Dépossédé,
After having spent some time in Guadeloupe, the Abeilles settled in Bordeaux in 1959. The shock of the contrast between this city and the seaside environment where he had lived before, associated with literary reminiscences of Kafka's and especially Gustav Meyrink's Prague, was key to the creation of Terrèbre, the capital of the empire of the Contrées, as it appears in (1986).
Career Adherence to Surrealism
Jacques Abeille frequented the literary and artistic circles of Bordeaux connected with surrealism, in particular the Parapluycha movement, led by Pierre Chaveau, the Mimiague brothers and Alain Tartas. He corresponded with André Breton, whose entourage invited him to befriend the painter and photographer Pierre Molinier, living in Bordeaux at the time. Abeille also participated in the work of the surrealist journal La Brèche, founded by Breton in 1961.Pierre Vilar, "Un surréaliste, même", in Le Dépossédé, .
In October 1969, three years after the death of André Breton, Jean Schuster declared the end of "historical" Surrealism in "Le Quatrième chant", published in the newspaper Le Monde. Jacques Abeille was one of those who refused to dissolve the group, and he joined the editorial committee of the Bulletin de liaison surréaliste, which was formed around Micheline and Vincent Bounoure and Jean-Louis Bédouin. Jacques Abeille wrote a total of four articles for the ten issues of the journal published between 1970 and 1976.Pierre Vilar, "Un surréaliste, même", in Le Dépossédé, .
However, his activity in the surrealist movement left few traces: while he is mentioned in the index of Gérard Durozoi's 1997 Histoire du mouvement surréaliste, as well as in Robert Sabatier's L'Histoire de la poésie française du xxe siècle, where he is mentioned as a surrealist author, he is, on the other hand, absent from the Dictionnaire du surréalisme et de ses environs edited by Adam Biro and René Passeron (1985), as well as from the database of the Mélusinemelusine-surrealisme.fr site of the Centre de recherches sur le surréalisme of the University of Paris III.Pierre Vilar, "Un surréaliste, même", in Le Dépossédé, .
From painting to literature Abeille explains having felt the "throbbing desire to be an artist" from childhood, a desire thwarted by "a confused, indecisive and anxious shyness", an incapacity and vague obstacle. He finds the key to unlock it at the end of adolescence, when at the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, while practicing psychology, Abeille discovers he is color blind.Daniel Launay, "Lectures de Jacques Abeille", in Le Dépossédé, "It was a great crisis and an immense sorrow" explained the author in an interview in 2007, which led him to give up painting and turn to writing: "I am a writer on the basis of a failed painter", he explained to another correspondent.
Abeille's first book was an erotic story entitled and published in 1971 under the pseudonym Bartleby by the publisher L'Or du temps, directed by Régine Deforges. The text, written between 1967 and 1968, was in response to a dare between friends to write an erotic work. This experience of writing, whose speed surprised him, opened new perspectives beyond his otherwise disappointing previous attempts to write idealized relationships.
Abeille published thereafter a set of erotic texts, under his own name or under pseudonym, the most frequent and the most constant being that of Léo Barthe, who also appears as a character in his famous cycle of novels.
Les Jardins statuaires and the Cycle des Contrées Les Jardins statuaires (1982) is a novel with dual inspiration. First, from an encounter with a gardener working the earth in which he grew squash: seeing the plasticity of these vegetables inspired in Abeille the image of statues emerging from the ground. Superimposed on this is an essay in the form of a philosophical tale about artistic creation, perceived not as a technical process (as would have accorded with literary tradition, represented by Gustave Flaubert for instance), but rather as the artist's accompaniment of an inspiration that pre-existed other works. In the course of writing, noting the absence of women in the tale, which seemed incongruous for a text dealing with artistic inspiration, Abeille came to imagine a story taking place in statuary gardens, from which women, cloistered, are physically excluded, kept as they are in reserved quarters and inaccessible to men or relegated to hotels that are in reality brothels.Gil Pressnitzer, "Jacques Abeille. La quête sans fin des marges du monde", Esprits nomades, June 2011.
Les Jardins statuaires was to be published by Régine Desforges, with whom the publishing contract had been signed. But the bankruptcy of the publishing house L'Or du temps prevented it."Note biographique", in Jacques Abeille, Petites proses plus ou moins brisées, Arfuyen, 2015, . Abeille then entrusts the typescript of the novel to Julien Gracq, who then gives it to José Corti, historical editor of surrealist publications. But the typescript seems to have been lost and never reaches Corti's hands."En France on condamne l'imagination", interview with David Caviglioli, BiblioObs, November 19, 2011. It is finally Bernard Noël who, several years later, discovers another typed copy of the novel and undertakes to publish it at Flammarion, where he is then editor. But a delay in production of the book hinders its release, which also suffers from the departure of Bernard Noël from his position in 1983. Various other events delay publication of the novel, which inaugurates the Cycle des Contrées, acquiring the status of a cursed novel.
Abeille nevertheless publishes in 1986, still with Flammarion, a second novel: Le Veilleur du jour. Becoming a novelistic cycle, this second instalment is the counterpart of Jardins statuaires: the action of the two novels is more or less simultaneous, and that of the last one is situated at the other end of the empire imagined by Abeille, in the capital city of Terrèbre. A third novel, the first draft of which dates from 1977,Anne Besson, " Chronique(s) d'un cycle", in Le Dépossédé, . evokes the period following the barbarian invasion, in the expectation of which the inhabitants of Terrèbre as well as those of the statuary gardens live. Initially titled Un homme plein de misère, in reference to Pascal's famous formula, it was finally published in 2011 as a double novel: Les Barbares and La Barbarie, published by Attila.
La Clef des ombres, a novel of a significantly different tone from the other novels and short stories, although set in Journelaime, a city in the fictional land, was not included in the cycle for a while, although it was when first published in 1991.Anne Besson, "Chronique(s) d'un cycle", in Le Dépossédé, . After having considered making it the first volume of another novel project entitled "Le Cycle des chambres","Le monde prend congé de moi au moment où je prends congé de lui ", interview with Yann Etienne, Diakritik magazine, October 10, 2020. La Clef des ombres was finally reintegrated into the "Cycle des contrées" when it was reissued by the Tripode publishing house in 2020, the year in which La Vie de l'explorateur perdu was also published, the last novel of the Cycle des contrées in which Brice Cléton, the protagonist of La Clef des ombres, reappears.
The cycle also includes three collections of short stories: Les Voyages du fils (published for the first time in 2008 and in an expanded edition in 2016), Les Chroniques scandaleuses de Terrèbre (1995), a collection of erotic short stories signed by Léo Barthe and featuring the characters of Le Veilleur du jour, and finally Les Carnets de l'explorateur perdu, published for the first time in 1993 and then in 2020 in an expanded edition. In addition, two shorter texts, "La Grande danse de la réconciliation", whose narrator is the same as that of the short stories in Voyages du fils (2016) and which was then included in the new edition of Les Carnets de l'explorateur perdu, as well as Les Mers perdues (2010) are included in the cycle.
Late recognition