Jacques Abeille has just died on January 23, 2022 at the age of 79, in Libourne. The writer saw himself as an “obscure writer”, rather “a literary madman”, a surrealist with a dreamlike universe, an admirer of Gérard de Nerval (“For me, the act of writing is the outpouring dream in real life”). In 2010, the reissue of Statuary gardens, a walk in an imaginary society planted with statues, a philosophical tale illustrated by François Schuiten, had given him deserved recognition, which he was surprised at.
First published in 1982, The statuary gardens had inaugurated the country cycle, set completed in the fall of 2020 with The Life of the Lost Explorer and the collection Lost Explorer’s Notebooks, both at the Tripode, which thus completed the complete publication of the cycle.
Born on March 17, 1942, from an adulterous couple, he had been recognized thanks to false papers by his father, a resistant prefect shot by the militia in 1944. It is the twin brother of his father, also a prefect, who will raise him. The question of identity runs through his work. He said in an interview: “I am a bastard, an adulterine child. I am bi-adulterin, neither my father nor my mother could have given me a name. The name of Jacques Abeille is a usurpation. It’s a fake. There is nothing legitimate about my identity, however I take it. […] One could make a complete analysis of my writings and find this thread, serious, important, possible, of all that I wrote. »
From 1959, in Bordeaux, he frequented surrealist circles and contributed to the Surrealist Newsletter. A plastic arts teacher, he began to write early. In 1971, his first book appeared under a pseudonym, an erotic story entitled The twilight published by L’Or du temps. His bibliography includes many erotic texts, in particular under the pseudonym of Léo Barthe, also a character from the Cycle of the lands.
“There is not much more to add”
His novel The statuary gardens lives through multiple adventures before fully hatching. Régine Deforges had planned to publish it in L’Or du temps, but her house went bankrupt and closed before. Jacques Abeille then entrusts the typescript to Julien Gracq, whom he admired and with whom he maintained a correspondence. The author of Shore of Syrtes promises to pass it on to José Corti, but the manuscript will be lost, and the publisher will never have it in his hands.
The name of Jacques Abeille is a usurpation. It’s a fake. There is nothing legitimate about my identity, however I take it.
Finally, it was Bernard Noël who had it published in 1982 by Flammarion, but, there again, bad luck persisted with a fire in the stocks and the departure of the publisher the following year. The watchman of the day, the second novel from the same universe, will be published by Flammarion four years later. It was only more than twenty years later, in 2004, that Joëlle Losfeld would try to bring out of oblivion The statuary gardens, then Attila Editions in 2010.
The end of the cycle having been published in the fall of 2020, Jacques Abeille said in an almost testamentary way in an interview with Diacritik October 10, 2020: “This book closes the cycle, there is not much more to add. I haven’t said everything. Ever since I said it was over, I’ve had all sorts of echoes of songs that I know are lying around somewhere. But I’m dying, I won’t do any more. Currently, I put scattered ideas on paper, but I can no longer write, I no longer have the strength or the ability to do so, it is my wife whom I summon and to whom I dictate, and she takes over the speech. This is to tell you that I am very badly. You come very late in my life. I won’t do any more. »