Hervé Guibert

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Hervé Guibert (born December 14, 1955 in Saint-Cloud near Paris , † December 27, 1991 in Clamart ) was a French writer and photographer .

life and work

Guibert attended high school in La Rochelle . As a teenager he wrote a short story under the pseudonym Hector Lenoir. Hector Lenoir later reappears as a first-person narrator in some novels. In 1973 Guibert returned to Paris. He tried to get into the Idhec Film School or the Conservatory, but both attempts failed. Instead, he began writing, initially film reviews for various magazines.

Although many of his works have been translated into German, Guibert only became known posthumously through his autobiographical novel The Friend Who Did Not Save My Life , in which he reports on his life with the HIV virus . In Paris, on the other hand, Guibert was an integral part of cultural life as a poet, screenwriter and photographer during his lifetime. For a long time he was also a photo and film critic for Le Monde and various magazines.

In 1979, after the first of many stays with the photographer Hans Georg Berger, whom he had met for the first time the year before, his lifelong love for the island of Elba began . In the same year he started taking photos. His first works were photos of his beloved great aunts Suzanne and Louise, about whom he had already written a play the year before (Suzanne et Louise) . Many trips and even more artistic successes filled the next few years. His work became more and more autobiographical over time. In January 1988, Guibert learned of his AIDS illness. During the difficult time up to his death he was supported by Berger (he appears as Gustave in Guibert's last novels).

In 1991 he traveled to Japan , Martinique and Bora Bora . It was there that the novel The Paradise was written . On the night of December 12th and 13th, 1991, Guibert attempted suicide . He died of complications in Clamart Hospital on December 27th . He was buried on Elba according to his wishes.

After his death

After his death, Guibert became a case study on coping with illness. His most famous novel The Friend Who Didn't Save My Life is about the death of his friend Michel Foucault (called Muzil in the novel) of AIDS. Since Foucault had concealed his illness and officially died of cancer in 1984, it was a scandal. But more than that, Guibert's ongoing confrontation with his own death in the record of pity or in the video film La Pudeur ou l'impudeur in which he filmed himself the last few months before his death. The film was broadcast posthumously on French television. The posthumously published novel Paradise is also about AIDS. All three novels are related to each other, but were not written as a trilogy. While your friend who has not saved my life and compassion log reports from people who have AIDS, third parties or even Guibert, is Paradise by the trauma of living with AIDS and, specifically not to write about the trial. James N. Agar called this self-mourning in Paradise.

Works (selection)

  • Suzanne et Louise ( photo novel ), Éditions Libres-Hallier, Paris 1980
  • Phantom picture. About photography. (L'Image fantôme) Autobiographical essays. (1981, transl. Thomas Laux 1993)
  • The dogs. Crazy about Vincent. Stories. (Les Chiens, 1982; Fou de Vincent 1989) German 1999
  • Journey to Morocco (Voyage avec deux enfants) Roman (1982, German 2001)
  • Blinde (Des Aveugles, 1985) trans. Thomas Plaichinger. Reinbek 1986
  • Mauve le vierge. Stories. Gallimard, 1988
  • Les gangsters. Minuit, 1988 (novel about his two great aunts)
  • L'Incognito (Gallimard 1989)
  • The friend who did not save my life (A l'Ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie) Roman (1990, German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel , Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991 ISBN 3-498-02463-9 )
  • Sympathy protocol (Le Protocole compassionnel) Roman (1991, German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel, Rowohlt Reinbek 1992 ISBN 3-498-02468-X )
  • L'homme au chapeau Rouge. Novel (1992)
  • The paradise. (Le Paradis) novel; (1993, German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1994)
  • Photographs. Schirmer Mosel, Munich 1993 ISBN 3-88814-708-5
  • Hervé Guibert / Hans Georg Berger: Phantom Paradise. Serindia, Chicago 2019 ISBN 978-1-932476-93-4

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1979 Coulisses du Musée Grévin , Remise du Parc, Paris
  • 1979 Suzanne et Louise, bribes , Remise du Parc, Paris
  • 1984 Le Seul Visage , Agathe Gaillard Gallery, Paris
  • 1993 Institut français, Seville

Awards

literature

  • Critical lexicon for contemporary foreign language literature KLfG, article by Uwe Lindemann. Edition Text and Criticism , Munich (ongoing)
  • Ralph Sarkonak Traces and Shadows: Fragments of Hervé Guibert in: Yale French Studies, No. 90, Same Sex / Different Text? Gay and Lesbian Writing in French (1996), pp. 172-202
  • James N. Agar Self-mourning in Paradise: Writing (about) AIDS through Death-bed Delirium in: Paragraph March 2007, Vol. 30, No. 1: pp. 67-84
  • Ralph Sarkonak (ed.): Le corps textuel d'Hervé Guibert . Lettres modern, Paris 1997
  • Frédéric Poinat: L'œuvre siamoise. Hervé Guibert et l'expérience photographique . Paris 2008
  • Jutta Weiser: Literary Defense. Immunization strategies in Thomas Bernhard and Hervé Guibert, in: Yearbook for International German Studies 43, 1 (2011), pp. 205–224
  • Jutta Weiser: Photography and writing as prostheses of the subject. Hervé Guibert's self-portraits , in: Jutta Weiser, Christine Ott (eds.): Auto-fiction and media reality. Cultural formations of the postmodern subject . Winter, Heidelberg 2013, pp. 69–87

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annegret Jackisch (married Riemann) Disease processing using the example of the French writer Hervé Guibert University of Göttingen Dissertation, Göttingen 2000
  2. ↑ James N. Agar Self-mourning in Paradise: Writing (about) AIDS through Death-bed Delirium in: Paragraph March 2007, Vol. 30, No. 1: pp. 67-84
personal data
SURNAME Guibert, Hervé
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 14, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Cloud near Paris
DATE OF DEATH December 27, 1991
Place of death Clamart