Peacock and Vine by A. S. Byatt: An Auctorbiography

Le dernier texte en date d’A. S. Byatt, publié en 2016 à l’occasion de son 80e anniversaire, est tout à fait singulier et fait figure d’exception dans l’œuvre de l’auteure. Livre illustré retraçant la vie et l’œuvre de William Morris et Mariano Fortuny, il ne s’agit ni d’un roman, ni d’un essai de littérature tels ceux que Byatt a publiés précédemment. C’est un essai informel qui mélange le récit de voyage, la biographie de personnes et d’objets, l’autobiographie, et surtout, l’auctorbiographie, pour reprendre le terme forgé par le traducteur français de Byatt, Jean-Louis Chevalier, à propos du texte ‘Arachne’. Peacock and Vine dessine en effet un autoportrait de l’artiste qui dévoile ses propres obsessions d’écrivaine au travers des figures de Morris et Fortuny. En rendant hommage à la dévotion de ces deux artistes à leur travail, en établissant entre eux une connexion qui lui est toute personnelle, Byatt livre en réalité un texte sur son propre processus créatif.A.S. Byatt’s latest text, Peacock and Vine, published in 2016, is hard to qualify and thus stands as an exception in her work, or does it? The illustrated book dedicated to the lives and works of William Morris and Mariano Fortuny is not a fiction, but neither is it an essay in literary criticism like the ones Byatt published previously. It is rather an informal essay on art and life that has elements of a travelogue, a biography, an autobiography, and maybe most importantly, of an auctorbiography, to use the term coined by Jean-Louis Chevalier à propos a story entitled ‘Arachne’, as Byatt’s meditation sheds light on her own writing life and obsessions. Through the two figures whom she considers as exceptional in their dedication to their craft, Byatt draws her own self-portrait in this testimonial book published on her 80th birthday. The ‘tangential’ connections between the two artists, as they were qualified in several unfavourable reviews, provide an insight into the author’s creative process

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