Jean-Louis Schefer's Chardin and Polyxène: A Singular Writer's Intimate Confrontation with Images

Jean-Louis Schefer, a writer who defies easy categorization—novelist, poet, essayist, philosopher, diarist—has published two recent works, *Chardin* and *Polyxène*, in which he explores his own life through intimate engagement with paintings. Schefer, known for his deliberate distance from the novel genre, describes his attachment to Chardin's figures as a "romanesque desire." Rather than direct confession, he uses images to probe personal mysteries, maintaining a principle of delicacy. The works feature Chardin, a Bellini, three young girls (a Trojan Polyxène sacrificed on Achilles' tomb, a Rhenish Virgin, and a Japanese woman from the film *In the Realm of the Senses*), which drive his writing. Recurrent themes in Schefer's oeuvre—an obscure crime and the search for an origin—appear without pathos and with his singular humor, rooted in a traumatic childhood event that shaped his lifelong inquiry into desire.