Jacques Chessex and the Origins of Literary Creation

David J. Bond

Inside his native Switzerland, Jacques Chessex is a controversial figure whose depiction of Swiss society in several of his works has provoked scandal and intense hostility.¹ Outside Switzerland, and particularly in France, he is known almost only for his novel L'Ogre, which won the Goncourt Prize in 1973.² This is the story of a man trying to escape the crushing influence of a cruel and domineering father. As the novel opens, Jean Calmet's father, Dr. Calmet, has just died, and Jean is filled with a sudden sense of liberation. However, his father's image appears before him at critical moments, as though to punish him for his new pleasure in life. When he tries to make love to Thérèse, the young woman who represents escape and freedom in his eyes, his father seems to enter the room, and renders him impotent. Dr. Calmet thus becomes like the ogre whose statue his son sees in Berne: a grotesque giant devouring a child. The father's function as ogre is reinforced by the role of the principal in the school where Jean teaches: a figure of authority whom Jean fears, and who tells him: "Je pourrais être votre père" (p. 124). When the students at the school stage a sitin, the principal restores order by driving them out with a whip. This whip, like the razor that Jean associates with his father and that he uses to commit suicide, becomes a symbol of oppressive authority.³

Yet, despite the depiction of Dr. Calmet in L'Ogre, the relationship of father and child is shown in other works as being based on love and respect. Alexandre Dumur in Les Yeux jaunes suffers deeply because he has no children, and he lavishes love on Louis, the boy he and his wife adopt. Although Louis becomes an evil influence and destroys his marriage, Alexandre still declares: "Nom de Dieu, j'ai paternellement aimé ce sale petit voyou de fauteur de troubles" (p. 65). In L'Ardent Royaume, Maître Mange loves his daughter and frequently evokes memories of her as a child. That the father's presence is essential to a child is illustrated in "A la droite du père" ( Où vont mourir les oiseaux, pp. 221-25). The narrator of this story attributes all his emotional problems to the fact that his father died when he was still a child. When he was asked what his father's job was, when the teacher threatened to speak to his father, when he was invited to friends' homes, and when hearing references to God the Father or the Fathers of the Church, he was filled with a sense of emptiness. Even Jean Calmet in L'Ogre

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recognizes the importance of his father to him, and sometimes he expresses affection for him. When Dr. Calmet accuses him of ingratitude, he is horrified: "Il aurait voulu crier qu'il se trompait. Qu'il l'aimait" (p. 58).

Chessex's own father is remembered with love and respect. He writes with nostalgia of his father's learning and knowledge, his love of the region they lived in, his energy and enthusiasm as a teacher. His father's suicide made Chessex feel guilty for not having anticipated this act, and gave him the impression of having been abandoned. He speaks of "[le] sentiment de la déperdition, de la perte d'un bien qui m'était donné, qui m'était dû, puisque j'étais né de lui" (Garcin, p. 68) and says that: "Quelque chose en moi cherchait mon père, je tâtais le vide pour y chercher son corps absent-oh son odeur, la joue où je déposais un baiser" ( Portrait des Vaudois, p. 256).

As a writer, Chessex views the figure of the father as essential because he is the origin of the writer and the inspiration of his work.⁴ This is due in some measure to the fact that Chessex associates his father with another influence in the creation of his work: the land where he was born. Chessex explains that his father was deeply attached to the Vaud, the region of Switzerland where he was born and lived, and that he was a keen amateur historian and etymologist who studied the past and the speech of the Vaud. For Chessex , his father became the Vaud: "Mon père est devenu le pays" ( Portrait des Vaudois, p. 254). When his father died, ...