End of the 1970s. After studying at EDHEC, Gérard Vincent, 26, enrolled in the Faculty of Arts. He loves poetry and wonders about spiritual life. At Easter time, after a fast and a mystical exaltation which kept him awake for several nights, he was victim of a psychotic episode. He feels himself tipping over and sinking into turmoil, “the hell of delirium and terrifying landscapes”he writes. Hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic, he is treated there by electroshocks, which have little effect. The doctors have little hope, and then defying all medical prognoses, the young man is recovering, “an exit from this psychic hell, which remains mysterious to me”, he declares. Quickly, he retraces on paper this terrible ordeal from which he emerged with “the feeling of having been changed from the inside”. His book, published by “L’age d’Homme”, received a literary prize.
“Writing has become a part of my life”
The second part of the work resumes extracts from notebooks in which the author delivers his philosophical questioningtheosophical, interspersed with poems and quotes, of feelings towards art, towards nature. Its rebirth. “I started reading frantically. Some of these crossings were decisive for my path. Writing has become a part of my life,” traces Gérard Vincent. Why “Incandescence”? “Because I saw terrible things. And then one day: a tree, theophany in bloom”, such as Bonnard’s almond tree in front of which, at the bend of a museum room, the writer remains in contemplation and the one painted by Van Gogh which adorns the cover of this profound and erudite work.
“Incandescence”, Ed. des instants, €17
