LSD-1 HumanSpirit and Miracle

The Human Spirit

and the Miracle

Book Review by Louie Camino

This is a published review of Jean Dominique Bauby’s book, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (which was translated from French by Jeremy Legatt and Alfred A. Knopf). This clipping comes from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

WRITING with your right or left hand all your life, you suddenly lose the use of that hand in an accident or a de bilitating disease. Now, you have to learn again how to write with your other hand. Imagine the difficulty, the distress, the trials and errors, the battle of learning again from scratch. What if you lost both hands?

The human spirit often finds a way. The Irish writer Cristy Brown wrote with his left foot. Physicist Stephen Hawkings, his face and body twisted, wrote the brilliant A Brief History of Time from his wheelchair. Jean-Dominique Bau­by wrote with his left eye.

Fate smashed Bauby on the road to the French country­side. Bauby had a quick tem­per, taste for good food, loved books, was the father of a 10-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl and the editor-in-chief of the popular French fashion. On Dec. 8, 1995, he was 43 and driving his son to what would have been their week­end together, at the same time test-driving a new BMW he was planning to buy, when he suffered a cerebrovascular ac­cident that knocked his brain stem out of action.

= = = = = = =

Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote

with only his

left eye!

= = = = = = =

"In the past," Bauby later wrote, "it was known as a mas­sive stroke and you simply died.” In his case, the latest re­suscitation methods worked and he survived "with what is so aptly known as 'locked-in syndrome'."

Paralyzed, save for mind

He was paralyzed from head to toe, but his mind re­mained intact. He could not speak or move. He could blink only his left eye; the useless right eye was sewn shut to avoid laceration.

In short, Bauby, in the prime of his life, suddenly found himself locked inside his own body. He was alive but only barely. He was trap­ped, he felt, inside a "diving bell" but he could "hear" like a butterfly. The quieter it was the sharper his mind's ear be­came.

The Diving Bell is Bau­by's memoir, written from and des­pite the cruel con­fines of his deadened body, and it is a most un­usual memoir. One re­viewer calls it "the most re­markable memoir of our time."

The way this little book was created is certainly most re­markable. Using his left eye, Bauby wrote, was a painful, deafening and funny process that took several months. He used the same single eye to communicate.

"It is a simple enough sys­tem," he wrote. "You read off the alphabet until, with a blink of my eye, I stop you at the letter to be noted. This man­euver is repeated for the letters that follow, so that fairly soon, you have a whole word, and then fragments of more or less intelligible sentences.

“That," he said, "at least, is the theory."

Frustrating, funny…

The actual "dictation" was something else. It was frus­trating, sometimes laughable, because of the assortment of people who, with only the best of intentions, tried to com­municate with him.

The ner­vous ones made mistakes, the impatient tried to guess his words before he could com­plete them; the sim­ply obtuse could not under­stand at all.

......."Crossword fans and scrab­ble players have a head start," he wrote. "Reticent people are difficult. If I ask them 'how are you?' (remember that Bau­by was blinking one letter at a time to express this simple greeting) they answer 'fine,' immediately putting the ball back on my court."

= = = = = = =

‘My condition is revolting…horrible.’

But that stab of bitterness pales against

the blinding flashes

of hope…

= = = = = = =

One day, he attempted to aks for his "glasses" (lunettes in French). He was asked what he wabted to do with the "moon" (lune).

Bauby retained his wit and hunour although he was often in pain and always hopeless. "If I must drool," he said, "I may as well drool on cashmere," because he refused the hospital's jogging suit and preferred his own college clothes.

Bauby had bouts of bitterness and self-pity, despite his son: "His face not two feet from mine, my son sits waiting -- and I, his father have lost the simple right to ruffle his bristly hair, clasp his downt neck and hug his small, lithe, warm body tight against mine."

Filled with love but unable to shoe it, Bauby's heart was suddenly flooded with self-revulsion. "My condition is monstrous, iniquitous, revolting, horrible."

But that stab of bitterbes pales against the blinding flashes of hope and the healthy humor in this wonderful life-filled book, which should be read not because of the amazing way in which it was produced, but because of these very virtues.

At the end, Bauby said: "Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell?... A currency strong enough to buy freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now."

Two days after The Diving Bell was launched in France early last year, Jean-Domi­nique Bauby died. Free at last, his spirit lives on in this book that is ultimately about free­dom.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BACK TO LSD-1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

To post FEEDBACK on this article, click HERE, join as member, and send your comment as a message.

.