French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Roussel, La vie secrète des mots et des choses
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
La Vie secrète des mots et des choses
Alain Roussel
Published by Maurice Nadeau
Available in bookstores on June 7, 2019
ISBN 978_2_86231_280-4, 19 euros
“Words have always been here. They are among us, they are within us. They are part of our most intimate lives, and they speak—continuously they speak among themselves—hardly noticing my presence. In the first part of this book, I penetrated their private lives. I joined in their games, becoming their accomplice, their confidant. I witnessed their romances, their rivalries, their emotions. Like a psychoanalyst, I even interpreted their dreams, which turned out to be somewhat my own. I questioned words in their sound, their spelling, their etymology, to draw forth—through a sort of maieutics—poetry, imagination, mini-narratives, the threads of legends and myths, secret meanings, and a deep reflection on language, all within a thoroughly joyful context.
In the second part, I turned my attention to things, and more specifically to objects. If words have a private life, things do too. They speak beyond words, but they can also speak through words. Through this approach, I brought real-world objects into my inner universe without distorting them too much. The meaning that emerges, the emotion emanating from all these ordinary things, is what I call ‘metaphysics’.
Words, things, the unspeakable—in these texts I have traversed vast semantic territories, listening, always listening to a singular song that wells up from the depths of being, to which, as I write, I can set the rhythm of my life and thought, often accompanied by hearty laughter. This is quite simply what I call the joy of existing.” — Alain Roussel
Alain Roussel was born in 1948. From an early age, he took an interest in esotericism—including alchemy and phonetic Kabbalah—as well as Eastern spiritualities. However, it was poetry—discovered in his youth through reading Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Apollinaire, Breton, Desnos, Péret, Aragon, Artaud, Michaux, and others—that inspired him to write. He has published around thirty books or booklets, notably with Plasma (Drachline), Lettres Vives, Cadex, Apogée, and La Différence, and regularly contributes book reviews to En attendant Nadeau, the journal Europe, and his blog, Passager clandestin de la pensée.
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An article about this work can be read on the website en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"Mots et merveilles", by Albert Bensoussan (July 2, 2019)
Babel rather than babble: when French borrows from Franglais, Globish, California-speak, and all those flashy, showy trends that spew out text messages and tweets, exhausting diction by drawing on speech devoid of meaning, it is refreshing for the language—for its vitality, its well-being, its fresh air—to discover Alain Roussel’s latest writing. This alchemist of the verb, capable of making gold and cinnabar shine in the crucible of words, following a prolific output ranging from Le Labyrinthe du singe (Apogée, 2014) to La phrase errante (Le Réalgar, 2017), develops here—as a counterweight to “this world falling apart,” gathering Foucault's primary title and Barthes' semiotic arcana—the notion that a thing is a word and a word makes a thing (“in the letters of the word rose is the rose,” as Borges already noted), that the letter is being and enamels the words. In doing so, caught between a Flaubertian orgie and a Hugoesque logorrhea, the author delivers a brilliant, delightful, and dizzying linguistic bacchanal.
The reflection on language and everyday objects found in Alain Roussel's work connects with broader traditions of experimental writing and poetic inquiry in modern French literature. Throughout the twentieth century, writers and critics have frequently examined the autonomous life of language, exploring how lexical elements, sounds, and etymologies generate unexpected narratives and mythic associations. By turning attention toward the hidden dimensions of ordinary items and semantic territories, such texts participate in a long-standing dialogue concerning the relationship between physical reality and textual expression. Readers interested in contemporary French poetry and essays exploring the intersections of language, imagination, and everyday experience may find this volume relevant.
As described in the provided materials, Alain Roussel approaches vocabulary and material objects by examining sounds, spellings, etymologies, and the emotional resonance of things. The texts traverse vast semantic territories, drawing forth poetry, mini-narratives, legends, and a deep reflection on language while engaging with the inner universe of real-world objects. This approach highlights how words and things interact within a joyful and reflective framework, capturing a singular song that wells up from the depths of being. The author's extensive background in poetry and related cultural interests informs this playful yet deeply reflective exploration of the lexical and physical world.