Cytomégalovirus: Journal d'hospitalisation

Forms of Living

by Hervé Guibert

« Cytomégalovirus. Depuis deux jours, j'avais du mal à lire, de plus en plus de mal. Soudain je fermai mon oeil gauche : les caractères d'imprimerie au-dessous de la ligne gondolée que je déchiffrais avec difficulté étaient effacés, tout le bas de la page était vierge. » - H.G. « Les mots sont victorieux », écrivait Hervé Guibert. Cytomégalovirus, texte paru en janvier 1992, quelques semaines après sa mort due au sida, le 27 décembre 1991, à l'hôpital Antoine-Béclère de Clamart, où il avait été admis après une tentative de suicide, témoigne encore de cette vérité consolatrice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, France, LGBT, Queer, Anthropology, French Literature

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

(Saint-Cloud, 14 décembre 1955 - Clamart, 27 décembre 1991) est un écrivain et journaliste français. Son rapport à l'écriture se nourrit pour l'essentiel d'autobiographie et d'autofiction1. Il est également reconnu comme photographe et pour ses écrits sur la photographie.

Hervé Guibert est issu d’une famille de la classe moyenne d’après guerre. Son père est inspecteur vétérinaire et sa mère ne travaille pas. Il a une sœur, Dominique, plus âgée que lui. Ses grand-tantes, Suzanne et Louise, tiennent une place importante dans son univers familial. Après une enfance parisienne (XIVe arrondissement), il poursuit des études secondaires à La Rochelle. Il fait alors partie d’une troupe de théâtre : la Comédie de La Rochelle et du Centre Ouest. Il revient à Paris en 1973, échoue au concours d'entrée de l’Idhec à l'âge de 18 ans.

Homosexuel, il construit sa vie sentimentale autour de plusieurs hommes. Trois d’entre eux occupent une place importante dans sa vie et son œuvre : Thierry Jouno, directeur du centre socioculturel des sourds à Vincennes rencontré en 1976, Michel Foucault dont il fait la connaissance en 1977 à la suite de la parution de son premier livre La Mort propagande et Vincent M. en 1982, un adolescent d’une quinzaine d’années, qui inspire son roman Fou de Vincent. Il est un proche du photographe Hans Georg Berger rencontré en 1978 et séjourne dans sa résidence de l’Ile d’Elbe.

Il est pensionnaire de la Villa Médicis entre 1987 et 1989, en même temps qu'Eugène Savitzkaya et Mathieu Lindon. Ce séjour inspira son roman L'Incognito.

En janvier 1988, il apprend qu’il est atteint par le sida. En juin de l’année suivante, il se marie avec Christine S., la compagne de Thierry Jouno. En 1990, il révèle sa séropositivité dans son roman À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie - qui le fait connaître par ailleurs à un public bien plus important. Cette même année il est l'invité de Bernard Pivot dans Apostrophes. Ce roman est le premier d'une trilogie, composée également du Protocole compassionnel et de l'Homme au chapeau rouge. Dans ces derniers ouvrages, il décrit de façon quotidienne l'avancée de sa maladie.

Il réalise un travail artistique acharné sur le SIDA qui inlassablement lui retire ses forces, notamment au travers de photographies de son corps et d'un film, La Pudeur ou l'Impudeur qu'il achève avec la productrice Pascale Breugnot quelques semaines avant sa mort, ce film est diffusé à la télévision le 30 janvier 1992.

Presque aveugle à cause de la maladie, il tente de mettre fin à ses jours la veille de ses 36 ans. Il meurt deux semaines plus tard, le 27 décembre 1991, à l'hôpital Antoine-Béclère. Il est enterré à Rio nell'Elba près de l'ermitage de Santa Catarina (rive orientale de l'Ile d'Elbe).

Les textes d'Hervé Guibert se caractérisent par la recherche de simplicité et de dépouillement. Son style évolue sous l'influence de ses lectures (Roland Barthes, Bernard-Marie Koltès ou encore Thomas Bernhard, ce dernier "contaminant" ouvertement le style de A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie).

Hervé Guibert compose de courts romans aux chapitres de quelques pages, qui se fondent souvent sur des faits biographiques maquillés de fiction. Le lecteur est saisi par l'intrigue brutalement exposée (ainsi dans Mes parents), et appuyée par des passages au vocabulaire sophistiqué ou par des descriptions crues de tortures ou d'amours charnelles. Ce texte est en grande partie extrait de son journal intime publié en 2001 chez Gallimard (Le Mausolée des amants, Journal 1976-1991).

Il travaille avec Patrice Chéreau avec qui il coécrit le scénario de L'Homme blessé qui obtient le César du meilleur scénario en 1984, mais aussi avec Sophie Calle. Journaliste, il collabore dès 1973 à plusieurs revues. Il réalise des entretiens avec des artistes de son époque comme Isabelle Adjani, Zouc ou Miquel Barceló qui fait plus de 25 portraits de lui. Il écrit des critiques de photographie et de cinéma au service culturel du journal L

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cytomegalovirus: A Hospitalization Diary
After To the Friend who Didn't Save my Life, I've checked out this diary by Guibert, one of the major writers about AIDS in 1980's/early 1990's France. As my homeboy, award-winning translator Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel, explained to me this morning, it was Guibert's aesthetic concept to break down the barriers between art and life, and this document is another proof for that. Writing in the tradition of Genet, Bataille and de Sade, Guibert showed illness as violence and obscenity, and created some ground-breaking works.

Cytomegalovirus is a strain of Herpes that can lead to heavy complications when the patient is infected with HIV. Written in 1991 over 22 days, the book depicts Guibert's autobiographical/autofictional experiences with both illnesses. Two months after the last entry in this diary, Guibert attempted suicide; he died two weeks later.

I'm glad that this writer is currently re-discovered, and apparently, several English translations of his work are in the making. You should definitely start with To the Friend who Didn't Save my Life though.

[Ije the Devourer of Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Herve Guibert was a strong literary voice on AIDS in France and his writing is distinctive. I hadn't heard of Herve Guibert before reading this memoir but I was drawn to this book because it is memoir written during the AIDS crisis but from a European perspective.

Many of the journals and memoirs about HIV and AIDS come from the US: Paul Monette, Sean Strub, Dale Peck, George Whitmore, Fenton Johnson to name a few, all writing about the different ways in which they were affected. Loss and grief is always a strong theme in these memoirs. Either a pending death or a death of friends or loved ones. These memoirs make compelling reading because of the way HIV was ignored and because of the way people living with HIV were judged and stigmatised by Governments and societal institutions.

Still judged and still stigmatised.

Thirty-four years on from the onset of the AIDS pandemic Herve Guibert's writing resonates, not just because of AIDS but because of the way in which he had to struggle to be recognised as human within the hospital, an institution that was supposed to be seeking to heal and care for him.

In 1990 Herve Guibert was hospitalised for three weeks because of Cytomegaloviris. This is a form of herpes, normally harmless to healthy people but which killed a great number of people with AIDS, also causing blindness. When the author wrote this he had about two months to live and was admitted into hospital for an eye operation. It was hoped that the eye operation would help add some comfort to his life but the operation could also have left him blind.

Herve kept a journal about his stay in hospital and in this way witnesses not only about AIDS, but about the way in which hospitals can become dehumanising as patient care and recognition of the person becomes lost in the hospital processes. Under the pressure of work, some hospital staff, it seems, can forget that the patient is actually a person.

An example of this is when Herve has an ultrasound and is told by a doctor that he has 'a truly exceptional and very rare interior configuration.' The doctor then says that she will take some pictures for herself and for her assistant. I mean really? She doesn't ask permission, she just takes, forgetting that the person before her is a young man dying of a horrendous illness. In her eyes he is therefore a subject to be studied, not a person who is losing his life to a vicious disease. She only sees him from her perspective. She doesn't see him as human.

As a reader I found this journal to be both fascinating and courageous, but also worrying. It is worrying because France is supposed to have an excellent healthcare system and yet all these kinds of things were happening. Patient care was compromised by a distinct lack of compassion, creating a sense of powerlessness which Herve Guibert has managed to convey in his short writing.

It is fascinating and courageous because in this writing we see Herve Guibert's desire to live and his desire to be seen as a human being and not a specimen for further study. He was so ill and yet he managed to write this journal. It wrenches my heart when I think of what he went through.

And then there is the alarm. This isn't just an AIDS memoir. This is a prophetic call to health institutions and professionals to remember compassion and the need to treat people as human beings. Last month in the UK Healthwatch England published their report into hospital discharge. Thousands of people provided stories about the poor way in which they were treated in hospital and then discharged. It makes sobering reading that more than ten years after Herve Guibert's experience in France, similar attitudes and lack of compassion is being experienced by hospital patients in the UK.

Why do our caring institutions lack compassion? Perhaps this is the question to be asked.

Of course it is not every healthcare staff, nor is it every institution that is uncaring but it still makes worrying reading to see that some things just have not changed. And it doesn't matter whether it is AIDS, dementia or a broken leg. A lack of compassion is still a lack of compassion and has a way of undermining patient care, leaving the person feeling vulnerable.

And this sense of vulnerability and powerlessness is something Herve Guibert struggled against during his three weeks in hospital. AIDS was the reason Herve Guibert was in hospital and although treatment and care for people with HIV or AIDS related conditions has vastly improved there is still stigma and discrimination. There are still debates and arguments about prevention strategies and people are still being infected. People still die of Aids, albeit not in the catastrophic numbers of the early nineties, but a loss is still a loss.

In this memoir Herve mentions aspects of his impending death: the kind of funeral he would like, the need to write until the end. But he also writes about being a patient: that his room is dirty with old used bandages under the bed and he worries about whether he can trust his nurses. He has heard of a terrible story where some nurses had killed elderly people in their care and this concerns him. Herve's writing shows us how fear can grip us when we are most vulnerable.

His writing reminds me why I hate hospitals: bright light, constant noise, sometimes impersonal care.

' A hospital stay is like a long voyage with an uninterrupted parade of people, of deliveries, or of rituals to pass the time. There isn't even any more night. Hospitals are hell.'

How right he was.

Herve can hear the conversation of some of the nurses mocking him. Mocking his complaints despite the fact that he is a seriously ill and dying man. He recognises very quickly who are the heroes amongst the medical staff and who are the villains.

Herve very much sees himself as against the hospital as an institution. AIDS is ravaging his body and he needs to fight against that, but he also needs to fight for respect and fight to be recognised as a human being by the institution that is joining him in the struggle to keep him alive.

The part that really touched me is at 70% where he has had the operation and mentions the orderly who bathed him and was kind to him. This contrasts with the nurse who he challenges for being unkind. I find this heartbreaking not just because it happened to Herve but because these things still happen today.

Herve's short memoir is striking in its relevance for healthcare professionals and patients today.

I think healthcare is challenging and stressful and some medical and caring staff receive quite low salaries for what they do (here in England), but I think there is a need for personal ethics and integrity. If healthcare staff feel so beaten and worn down that they cannot show compassion it is time then to find another job.

As individuals we are not bound or forced to practice the profession for which we trained. We have freedom to change jobs and careers, and we should change if we can no longer serve compassionately.

In his writing Herve does not identify that his treatment is related to discrimination or stigma. It is simply a matter of the patient versus the institution. Whilst he does not observe Aids related discrimination it doesn't make the reader feel any better because whilst Aids may not affect all of us, hospital care does. Herve Guibert very articulate. Even though he was seriously ill he still managed to push back against poor practice and the lack of compassionate care. What about the patients that couldn't? Why must vulnerable people bear the cost of pressurised hospitals and stressed hospital staff?

Herve's memoir is supported by a foreword written by David Caron. The foreword highlights the imporatnce of Herve's writing for us today especially now that the AIDS crisis is passing into history. He emphasises that although the crisis might be history the disease hasn't changed and is still around. People are still being infected. People are still dying. David Caron see this memoir as a ways of engaging people today and reminding society that we still need structures in place to support people and we should still have discourse on AIDS.

I think this is a thoughtful and poignant piece of writing which speaks to its time, but also continues to speak on contemporary issues.

Well worth reading.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a review.

[Platon Cristina]

Cytomègalovirus, publicat la câteva săptămâni după moartea lui Guibert, povestește despre lupta sa cu SIDA. Internat în spital în urma tentativei nereușite de sinucidere, corpul său cedează luptând cu boli care precedă altele.

Timp de 2 săptămâni, Hervé a scris cronica propriei morți, ilustrând grijile și nevoile unui tânăr învins. În încercările de a-și salva văzul, El strecoară reflecții despre prietenii și apropiații săi într-un cadru sumbru, trist, de spital jegos.

Acceptul unui sfârșit inevitabil se intersectează paradoxal cu dorința de a trăi. Un jurnal sumbru, trist, a unui tânăr de 36 de ani care a pierdut lupta cu viața, dar care nu a încetat să scrie nici pe patul de moarte.

Достаточно ли я прочитал в своей жизни, достаточно ли написал?

Здесь только и говорят: 《Приятного аппетита!》, 《Хорошего дня!》, 《Хороших выходных!》, 《Хорошего отдыха!》, 《Хороших каникул!》и никогда - 《Хорошей смерти!》.

[Thomas Liano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très court, trop court. Ce journal d'hospitalisation sent un peu l'inédit, publié un mois à peine après la mort de Guibert, par une édition du seuil qui, comme toutes les autres, ne crache jamais sur une publicité gratuite, aussi macabre qu'elle soit.
Une fois cela dit, on peut commencer à regarder un peu en profondeur.

Tout d'abord c'est Guibert. Ce n'est pas simplement pour jeter un nom comme cela, c'est que cela implique une distance par rapport à lui-même, comme un humour et un esthétisation de tout.
C'est Guibert et si cela ne garantis pas une haute qualité (c'est bien inférieur à mes lectures précédentes de lui), cela sous-entends que ce journal d'hospitalisation ne sera pas qu'un enchaînement factuel de détails déprimants.

Guibert devient pointilleux, il devient humain, et cela en devient presque étrange.

Après, au milieu des plaintes il y a aussi cela:

"C'est peut-être très beau une veine qui éclate : un jaillissement qui en met partout, un sang d'artifice bien rouge, un bouquet de sang. Dès que j'y pense, mon sang se met à bouillonner dans les tubulures de plastique. Non, ce n'est pas un éclatement de la veine, mais un reflux de sang.

Et rien que pour ces quelques lignes, cela vaut le coup.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hervé Guibert was a prominent French writer, who wrote much about AIDS and its impact, particularly in his native France. Born in Paris in 1955, he died from AIDS in 1991. Popular and well-known in France, he is little known in the UK, and this re-issue of his book may well redress that. I hope so, because it’s an illuminating book, not only just about AIDS but also about hospitalisation for any illness. It takes the form of a short diary of a hospital stay based on his own admission for complications arising from AIDS. He contracts cytomegalovirus, which affects the eyes, and he has to face the prospect of going blind. It’s ostensibly a fictional account but very firmly based on fact. It’s sometimes acclaimed as a “medical humanities classic” and I can see why, as it offers a real insight into what it is like to be hospitalised, the daily petty indignities and humiliations involved, and the frequent lack of empathy and understanding from medical staff. This edition has an invaluable introduction and afterword. A worthy, but also moving, read.

[Sarah Germano Mühlen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Assim como Annie Ernaux, Herve Guibert é um mestre da autoficção. Em "Citamegalovirus" ele descreve sua estadia em um hospital francês, ocasião em que uma infecção pelo vírus que dá nome ao livro ameaça sua visão. Ele morreria pouco tempo depois em decorrência da AIDS, no começo dos anos 1990.

É um relato duro, cru e sincero, cuja leitura leva o leitor de volta aos dias mais tenebrosos da epidemia, quando o diagnóstico da doença ainda era sinônimo de uma sentença de morte - muitas vezes envolta em solidão e preconceito.

[malinka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrible d'humanité. J'ai été émue comme si je lisais le journal d'hospitalisation d'un copain « gai » proche.

Dans certains passages, j'ai beaucoup aimé ce j'ai interprété comme un rapprochement entre la lutte politique pour la dignité menée par les infirmières et aide-soignantes & celle menée par les séropos.

[Agoaye Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je ne connaissais pas Hervé Guibert. Avec cet ouvrage, journal de bord de son hospitalisation suite à un cytomégalovirus, j'ai découvert l'auteur, mais aussi l'homme.
J'ai adoré ses mots, j'ai appris un peu de sa vie.
Superbe.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the diary of the hospitalisation of Herve Guibert because of an eye infection. He died of AIDS in France at the age of 36 in 1991. It also includes Todd Meyer's experience with AIDS too. It seems as if hospitals are pretty much the same with the mix of good, kind people and those who are not so nice. Such a shame how too many of the staff treated him like an object, not a person who has hopes, dreams and feelings. It made me feel shame on their behalf. It is to be hoped that lessons have been learnt since those days. A poignant and thought provoking book. Many thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC.

[CharlieC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Encore un Guibert qui se lit les dents serrées, les ongles agrippés à la couverture. Un livre très court, qui paraît très vain et qui ne laisse apparaître que quelques fulgurance. On voit cet auteur se mourir dans le sens propre mais aussi dans le récit même car Guibert perd de son côté incisif, son cynisme apparaît comme une excuse. Tristesse.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Relire Hervé Guibert pour la 1ère fois en près de 20 ans m'a étrangement fait l'impression de retrouver un vieil ami.
Pour autant, Cytomégalovirus est sans doute son livre le plus clinique, le moins écrit (même s'il garde des fulgurances parce que Guibert !) et fait toujours l'effet d'un coup de poing même en 2017.

Ca m'a donné envie d'en relire d'autres, urgemment.

[Géraldine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Auteur (et photographe) talentueux. Mort trop jeune :(

[Tfalcone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Got an advanced reading copy from NetGalley for an honest review.

Wonderfully intimate. Way too short for me. Reminded me os a Solschenizyn's Cancer ward.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cytomegalovirus es un diario in extremis, aunque seguramente cuando su autor lo comenzó, no tenía conciencia de ésto. Guibert llega esa internación por un virus alojada en uno de sus ojos, infección vinculada con ser una persona que vive con el virus del HIV. Allí decide hacer un diario de sus días, sus condiciones de internación, el trato de recibe de enfermeras y médicos, los tratamientos que le hacen y cómo se va sintiendo. Desgarrador por momentos, sobre todo en aquellos donde cuenta lo que pasa a su alrededor con otros pacientes y, como al pasar, cuenta lo que ha sucedido con uno de sus amigos. Originalmente había sido pensado como un diario de 15 días de duración.

[Adrien Berger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notes quotidiennes lors de l’hospitalisation d’Hervé Guibert en 1991. Un journal marquant par sa simplicité, son experience limite (alité, il continue à écrire) et un combat pour ne pas avoir à penser la mort.

[Patricia Boyle]

Just a reminder of how difficult it was to be diagnosed with AIDS when there was NO effective treatment.

[Arno Vlierberghe · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Last wishes: incinerated, as soon as possible. No religious ceremony, no gathering of friends and family at the moment of cremation, no music. Throw away the ashes in the first garbage can."

[Lauren Herzfeld · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Luke Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Writing is also a way of giving rhythm to time and a way to pass it.”

[alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

[lk]

спасибо Андрей за рекомендацию спасибо колонна за публикацию . фотографии гибера - 🥹❤️‍🩹

[Maiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

« Écrire dans le noir ?
Écrire jusqu'au bout ?
En finir pour ne pas arriver à la peur de la mort ? »

[Louise Oppenheimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

We must never ever lose sight of the individual when we examine the suffering of disease and the monotony of hospital

[kyra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to read. Took a lot of analyzing to understand meanings

[Lars Meijer · Rating 5 out of 5]

’The War Diary of Babel: if I lose my eye, it will be one of the last books I opened. This diary should also be a war diary.’

[Dakota]

Resonating the right things in me right now.