L'écriture à l'écoute

by Henry Bauchau

En réunissant et retravaillant quelques essais ou articles parus une première fois en revues, Henry Bauchau apporte une contribution passionnante à l'élucidation de son propre processus créateur, et plus généralement aux relations qu'entretiennent l'art et la psychanalyse.
Les textes que voici mettent en évidence le rôle de la poésie comme champ d'exploration de la vie intérieure. Et c'est à l'occasion du travail analytique qu'Henry Bauchau (re)découvre, dans la résurgence d'une scène enfantine, cette arme réparatrice qu'est l'écriture. Il s'interroge ensuite sur l'action de la psychanalyse dans son travail d'écrivain, mais aussi sur l'apport de l'entreprise littéraire dans la prise en compte, individuelle ou collective, des forces de l'inconscient et de la psychologie des profondeurs.

Paperback

Published May 3, 2000

About the author

Henry Bauchau was a Belgian political activist and psychoanalyst who is best known as an author of poetry, novels, and plays in French language.
He was born in Mechelen, Belgium on in a French-speaking family of the Catholic bourgeoisie. He studied law at the Catholic University of Leuven between 1932 and 1939 and became a regular writer for the influential Christian Democrat periodical "La Cité Chrétienne". He was also involved in the "Action catholique de la jeunesse belge" (AJCB). Although ideologically opposed to Nazism, Bauchau was inspired by the communitarian and youth movements established over the same period in Nazi Germany.
As a reserve officer, Bauchau was called at the outbreak of World War II and served in the Belgian Army during the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940. He was "profoundly humiliated" by the rapid defeat and embraced the call from King Leopold III to assist in national reconstruction under the German occupation. In this end, he helped to establish a small paramilitary youth movement in September 1940 which became known as the "Service des Volontaires du Travail pour la Wallonie" (SVTW). The movement was inspired by Christian youth organisations and was ideologically royalist and patriotic. In spite of this, it was widely seen as a collaborationist movement and popularly associated with the Rexist Party.
Opposed to the influx of Rexists into the movement, Bauchau left the SVTW in June 1943 and became part of the Belgian Resistance. He joined a group in hiding in the Ardennes and later fled to the United Kingdom.
After Belgium's Liberation, Bauchau's wartime activities led to him being stigmatized as a collaborator. He emigrated to Switzerland where he began to focus as a writer after undergoing psychoanalysis with the French analyst Blanche Reverchon.
Profoundly influenced by his experience of psychoanalysis, Bauchau's first collections of poetry was published as "Géologie" (1958). He subsequently wrote a number of well-received poetry editions, plays, and novels which he combined with his work as the director of a Swiss international college. He moved to Paris in France in 1973 and continued to publish a number of works while devoting himself increasingly to psychoanalysis. He was a friend of Albert Camus, André Gide, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida.
After 1990, Bauchau's literary work received increasing recognition. He was admitted to the "Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique" in 1991 and won the Prix Victor-Rossel for Antigone (1997). He remained active until his death on 21 September 2012.
Bauchau married Mary Kozyrev in 1936. Their son is the actor Patrick Bauchau.