Malcolm de Chazal was Born in 1902 in Port St Louis, on Mauritius. Philosopher, poet and artist, he is mainly known for "Sens plastique", published in Fance in 1947, and immediatly acclaimed by André Breton, Georges Bataille, Francis Ponge, Leopold Senghor and especially Jean Paulhan. Breton went as for as stating he hadn't seen "anything as powerful since Lautréamont", adding that the book was "the greatest event of our time".
It must said that the book is highly startling ; it is made of 2150 aphorisms, toughts, forebodings, poetical insights, such as : "hapiness sharpens our eyesight, unhapiness our hearing" ; "breath pressed by emotion has the feel of a hand". Chazal explained its philosophical principles a year later in "La vie filtrée" published by Gallimard. He published some ten books in all, mainly at his expense, in Mauritius (Petrusmok, 1951, Le livre de la conscience, 1952). Chazal was also a gifted painter, his medium being gouache on paper, handled in big blots of flat colours, sometimes on black backgrounds for added contrast. Chazal's favourite subject were the flowers and landscapes of his native island ; he died there in 1981. |
CHAZAL
