Book Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997)

Each Wednesday, I review a French-related book. The subject varies, from culture to film to memoir to biography to whatever the heck I feel like reading that week and whatever strikes my fancy at the library or bookshop.

I’ve been stumbling through a sporadic meditation practice for a few years. Sporadic in the sense that entire weeks, months can go by before I find myself sitting down on the specially made cushion and pillow again, half-closing my eyes, attempting to focus on the breath. The breath, that locus of existence that nearly everyone takes for granted.

When all is well and I’m able to shove my admittedly weak powers of concentration into the rhythm of the breath, it is indeed a very calming experience. In and out, a barely audible but critical sign of life, you can almost imagine your organs falling into step in its slow, miraculous cadence. In those precious nanoseconds before my monkey mind starts revving up again for another pointless detour into errands, ideas and work, I can feel present.

Jean-Dominique Dauby, former editor-in-chief of French Elle, wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French title: Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) as a meditation of sorts after suffering a stroke and is thereafter condemned to live life with Locked-In Syndrome, a rare condition in which the victim permanently loses control of nearly all voluntary muscle movements. In Dauby’s case, he was only ever able to control his left eyelid, although after some effort he eventually was also able to swivel his head around ninety degrees. He spends the next two years living in a hospital in Berck-Plage, seeing visitors, imagining life outside the spare, white walls and painstakingly writing this memoir with the help of a therapist and a remarkable alphabet whose design is based on the letters’ frequency of use in the French alphabet.

As in the most profound meditative states, Dauby’s keen awareness of his existence transcends the tragic limitations of his useless body and embraces the tiniest details of his new, if somewhat compromised life. He can be forgiven for occasionally descending into self-pity, but for the most part he chose not to, instead focusing his mind’s eye on the great and small pleasures he derives from his surroundings, particularly the beach, the presence of his children, and the many, many memories that he conjures up with intense concentration. He “travels,” as he puts it, through the vast repository of memories in his mind and relives them, savoring the wisp of hair he twirls through his lifeless fingertips, the soft breeze that caresses his beloved’s face, the sip of a rich tonic that he years, even decades before.

Despite Dauby’s occasionally humorous attempts to make sense of his life, his relationships, his work, it was difficult to go through the book without thinking about the fact that he died of heart failure two days after its initial publication in France. It’s surely not what he would have wanted his readers to dwell on, but the shadow of his impending mortality does lurk in the shadows of this beautifully written book. That, and the amazing and simple fact of its creation: Dauby dictated it to the therapist one letter at a time, blinking his functioning eyelid whenever she hit upon the correct letter as she repeated the special alphabet created just for him. A few critics and book clubs will undoubtedly speculate on its message about “the human condition,” whatever that may be, but to me it resonates more as a testament to the power of one man’s spirit and stubborn determination to squeeze every last drop of life left in his mind, even after his body has surrendered itself to death.

Dauby’s recollections pepper the book and bring him and his world to life. He remembers a horse race from long before in which he and a colleague missed a golden opportunity to win a small fortune because they had lingered too long over dinner and missed placing their bets at the track. The episode hammers home to him the regret of lost opportunities, a mistake in the past he can never undo, a life of missed chances.

He reminisces of his father (ninety-two at the time the book was written), whom he had shaved the last time he paid a visit. A photo of the author as a child playing on a miniature golf course arrives in the post one day, sent by the elder Dauby, and he is struck by the sad serendipity of the location in which it was taken: Berck-sur-Mer, decades before, when the seaside town was a joyous holiday to the boy, before it became a prison to the man.

These and other stories and dreams that unfold in the book’s very short chapters comprise the life Dauby led in his mind in the two years before he died. They represent a life well-lived, perhaps not always with the singular focus with which he lived his life after the “accident,” but he redeems his occasional inattention with his astoundingly clear memories of them months, even years after the fact. They’re infused with a sharp intelligence and a deep philosophy of life earned in the most difficult way possible, and it feels a privilege to have been part of this conversation with such a thoughtful if imperfect man.

A movie was recently made based on the book, but as of today reports coming from the one indie theater in town indicate that it’s “Coming Soon.” If anyone of you has seen it, let me know of your impressions of it. Although it’s been done many times (notably Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment), I’ve yet to be wowed over by a film adaptation of any book where the action takes place almost exclusively in the protagonist’s mind. I fear that in this film in particular, sentimentality and hagiography will prevail over the richly layered facets of Dauby’s complicated life and illness. Still, I look forward to seeing it. And if you have seen the movie, by all means, get a hold of this book and read it like the meditation of life Dauby meant it to be.

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