In the 1950s, the influx of publications devoted to an underwater exploration in full renewal, thanks to innovations such as the spacesuit and the Bathyscaphe, gave birth to a rich imagination.
Myriam Marcil-Bergeron engaged in a rigorous and erudite analysis of a hybrid corpus where popular scientific works compete for adventure films and where the technical story rubs shoulders with children’s literature. Are thus summoned, among other things, the works of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, The world of silence (1953), by Philippe Dolé, The underwater adventure (1951), by Théodore Monod, Bathyfolages. Deep dives (1954), from Auguste Piccard, At the bottom of the seas in Bathyscaphe (1954), or even Jacques Piccard, Depth 11,000 meters. The history of the Bathyscaphe Triestepublished in 1961.
These publications are often based on a film production. Banning activity at first ; majestic and imposing then, with The world of silence de Cousteau and the filmmaker Louis Malle (Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956, Oscar for best documentary in Hollywood in 1957, prize for the union of criticism of French films the same year).
Sea, mountains and volcanoes
The books that the author is scrutinized by the author appear, for many of them, in so -called discovery and exploration collections, in a general context where this type of works is very successful. The world of silence is published by Éditions de Paris in 1953 ; He was reissued in 1957 in the illustrated collection “ Youth library From Hachette house.
But it is not only the seabed and their discovery that invite the dream in this decade of first tremors of mass consumption (the Mythologies de Barthes were written between 1954 and 1956 and appeared at the Seuil in 1957, while Towards a leisure civilization de Dumazedier appeared in 1962). Then widens, served by a plethora of publications, an audience fascinated not only by the oceans, but also by the mountains, the volcanoes or the two poles.
We think of Haroun Tazieff’s stories, especially Fire craters in 1951 and The voucher of the Pierre Saint-Martin in 1952. Following Maurice Herzog (Annapurna, first 8000 in 1952) appeared the bestsellers by Roger Frison-Roche (Mont-Blanc at the seven valleys in 1958) and Paul-Émile Victor (Greenland, 1948-1949 in 1951). And it was in 1954 that Jean Malaurie created his collection “ Human earth “, Which will publish the following year Tristes tropical by Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Technical and sensitive revolutions
It is in this context that the adventures of the Calypsoship with which Cousteau undertook, from the 1950s, the Odyssey which will mark the homes via television and the film. The world of silence consecrates the success of the autonomous space. Indeed, two technical innovations (the development of the staphander with automatic regulator and the invention of the Bathyscaphe) revolutionize oceanography. Autonomous and/or deep diving becomes reality.
Now released from metal helmets, lead soles and embarrassing equipment connected by cables to the surface, the diver equipped with an automatic registration diverse appears released from any attachment, safety rope and air hose. He can move throughout the marine mass, hovering, flying, released from gravity. As for the Bathyscaphe, a real technical feat, it will reach a depth of almost 11,000 meters in the Mariannes pit during a historic dive, January 23, 1960.
The literary and filmic production studied by Myriam Marcil-Bergeron testifies to the occurrence of new sensitivities of the public, disturbed by this unpublished seizure of the body: the idea of moving easily in a liquid environment appears exhilarating, received and perceived as an escape in this “ world of silence ». Diving (the authors testify to this abundantly) arouses new emotions, an unusual bodily practice, a strange experience of the senses, masked sight or transformed hearing.
She thus seems to approach mysticism, when she presents herself as a retirement far from crowds and noise. Each breathing seized by the camera, followed by a flood of bubbles escaping from the regulator, recalls the strangeness of the human in this environment long considered hostile. The texts studied underline the feeling of floating in space. The absence of a soil on which taking support gives the impression that the movements are released and fluid, impossible to imitate on firm land, outside the dream.
Myriam Marcil-Bergeron uses Icarus and Narcisse here. Released from gravity, the diver surpasses icare by gestures and light movements, as he also showed his superiority towards Narcisse. He freed himself from the reflections, controls his flight and his fall. With these two figures, the diver shares the temptation of dazzling and, once he experienced the feeling as euphoric as he was afraid of vertigo, he is looking for it again.
Science and technology combine in a prosthetic operation, to prolong the body of a spacesuit or protect it inside the Bathyscaphe. An increased body to perfect it and offer it, for the first time, a breakthrough within the liquid night.
Disturb the border
One of the interests of the book by Myriam Marcil-Bergeron is to show us how much production studied, if it attaches real importance to descriptions (physical geography, fauna and flora), does not disdain the tongue of a dose of fiction, via narrative processes derived from adventure narratives. What matters here is the intrigue, the confluence of popularization and fiction.
In fact, the five chapters of Marcil-Bergeron’s book are essentially devoted to a tight analysis of the system of representations in which the narrations are inserted (texts as images). It is not a question of considering the accounts of underwater exploration as novels, but rather of showing how the literary processes used are inspired by fiction and disturb the border between fictional and factual narrative.
Relying in particular on the work of Yves Jeanneret, the author shows that approaching the scientific imagination implies considering that ideological motivations and projections participate in the way in which science is done and written. This imagination includes the work of invention presumed by hypotheses and issues in which science and technology are evolving. Popularization feeds this imagination by participating in the dissemination of knowledge as well as their representation in social discourse.
Because it is for what we start to name “ general », It implies an operation in terms of language, the reformulation of scientific work in a text or a production under another medium, such as a film, accessible to a non -specialized audience. Popularization integrates science and technique into a story that does not necessarily obey the criteria of rationality of the scientific method. It is first of all a question of arouing public interest. By relying on this editorial craze of the 1950s, Myriam Marcil-Bergeron uncovered narrative devices allowing it to demonstrate the porosity between fiction literature and underwater exploration stories.
This exciting book is a contribution to reflection on the interaction between science and literature. In the particular case on which he looks, the writing processes which the divers use are at the origin of a constellation of poetic and rhetorical combinations in the oceanographic discourse now accessible to the general public. They renew, over the long term, with the whole emotional and subjective charge which was that of travelers and explorators at the end of the XVIIIe and XIXe century.