Alix Cléo Roubaud's Journal Republished with New Preface and Photos

The journal of Alix Cléo Roubaud (1979-1983), originally published in 1984 by Denis Roche in the Fiction & Cie collection, has been reissued by Éditions du Seuil in a new version augmented with a preface by Jacques Roubaud and twenty-six previously unpublished photographs. Alix Roubaud, born in Mexico to a Canadian diplomat father and an artist mother, was bilingual and studied architecture, psychology, and philosophy. She suffered from severe asthma and died in 1983 at age 31. Her journal, written over more than ten years, documents her struggle with physical and moral suffering (depression, alcohol, barbiturates) and her quest for an 'absolute happiness.' She wrote on January 19, 1983: 'I needed a mortal illness, or one listed as such, to cure the desire to die.' She died nine days later. The journal alternates between French and English and reveals her Catholic faith, her voracious desire to live, and her use of photography as a means to 'bring the obscure to light.' Jacques Roubaud notes that Parisian galleries showed little interest in her work. The photographs depict ordinary subjects—a window, a room, a couple naked on a bed, self-portraits—and are described as possessing 'grace,' evoking Tiepolo rather than Grünewald.