Nicolas Bouvier

The scorpion-fish

«Je mehr ich den Boden unter den Füssen verlor, umso besser lernte ich, diese Leere zu möblieren, indem ich meine Erinnerungen aufpolierte.»

In Nicolas Bouvier’s oeuvre the scorpion fish takes on a central role. Bouvier remembers his 1956 sojourn in Sri Lanka during which he succumbed to illness, depression, bad dreams and the pain of love. We encounter the author in the town of Galle in a cheap room, increasingly trapped in himself. He is ill and oscillates between fascination for and desperation about his host country. Memories of the mild India he came from before makes this hotbed of lethargy all the more unbearable. His observations are blurred and sharp at the same time.
Pressed by the activity of the omnipresent insects who seem to take up all his attention his report is pulled into the maelstrom of images and associations. Moreover, his language is fraying and thereby reflecting the madness. It is in this aspect that we find the fascination for this capturing report of an «anti-journey».
Bouvier wrote the book in 1981 in retrospect, based on memories, notes and a nocturnal dictation, the «zone de silence». He himself called the text «surécrit», over charged and over orchestrated. But it is in that exact way that he renders the feverish agitation and the existential abysses linguistically palpable.

(Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)

Translation of title: Le poisson-scorpion

Carcanet, Manchester 1987

ISBN: 0-85635-551-8