Born the son of a postman on 31 March 1934 in Prêles in the Frenchspeaking part of the Bernese Jura, Giauque went to high school in La Neuveville. But he quickly dropped out of business school in Neuchâtel and retreated to his parents’ home, afflicted by a skin ailment. Living there as a recluse, he began to study the works of Samuel Beckett and the French poète maudit Tristan Corbière, both of whom would soon inspire him to write his own prose and poetry. Giauque worked for a while as a bookseller and proofreader in Lausanne, and it was there that he met the love of his life, the stunning 20-year-old artist Emilienne Farny, in 1956. Unable to forget her, he continued commemorating her in his poems long after she had left him.
In the throes of depression
It was as a French teacher in the Spanish city of Valencia that Giauque was first hit by severe depression in 1958. Once he had returned to Switzerland, he would become acquainted with the psychiatric hospitals of Geneva, Yverdon and Neuchâtel, moving from one institution to the next. His time in these units was punctuated by electroshock therapy, insulin jabs and suicide attempts. Vacillating between the deepest despair and optimism, he felt increasingly disgusted not only by the shackles of “normal” life – but life as such. The only thing that kept him going was his writing. Giauque published two works during his lifetime – “Parler seul” in 1959 and “L’Ombre et la Nuit” in 1962. Long in the making, a complete edition of his poems and prose was not finished until 40 years after his death, in 2005. Giauque’s mother prevented her son from committing suicide on more than one occasion, repeatedly picking him up from the abyss in which he had fallen. She died on 29 July 1954.
if I die tomorrow bury me in moist, heavy, warm soil may the curve of the coffin be my halo may no one weep I knew not how to live I will finally rise up amid clear sounds of night
Translated excerpt from “Die Glut der Schwermut im Schatten der Nacht”, Francis Giauque; Th. Gut Verlag, Zurich 2019
Testimony of a tortured soul
That a tormented individual could produce 156 poems of such immense power – first in his self-imposed dungeon, then in forced psychiatric care – is quite incredible. Giauque’s metrical, measured verses bear stark, unsparing testimony to his suffering: “Twisted soul. You must leave. Now. All exits are blocked. Thick walls. Cell bars. Locked doors. Barricaded windows. A world in which terror moves like a snake. You must leave. Through the noble gates of death.”
And yet it was not illness alone that transformed Giauque into such a brilliant yet self-destructive wordsmith. It was also his unrequited love for Emilienne Farny, to which one of his very last poems is dedicated: “Hours of agony / waves crash over me / deepest despair / and you have gone, never to return.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY: “Die Glut der Schwermut im Schattenraum der Nacht” – the inaugural German translation of the poems and prose of Francis Giauque, containing a biographical epilogue by editor Charles Linsmayer – is available from Th. Gut Verlag, Zurich 2019 (volume 37 of the “Reprinted by Huber” series).
Charles Linsmayer is a literary scholar and journalist based in Zurich
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