The Tear off-heart

Last novel signed Boris Vian, the Tear off-heart is published in 1953. It is the first shutter of a trilogy entitled the young girls of the queen , but who will never be born.

the Tear off-heart , of Boris Vian (1953)

the Tear off-heart is a surrealist novel (where mix poetry, imagination, the emotion and the absurdity) divided into three parts where one follows the progression of Jacquemort, psychiatrist lately made at the village and of Clementine, mother of " trumeaux" who tests for his children a love which will become passion.

Summary

Jacquemort, psychiatrist, arrive to Angel and Clémentine, his wife about to be confined. Jacquemort then will help it to put at the world three boys: twins, Christmas and Joel and " a isolé" , Citroen. Angel, the father of the piers has then been locked up for two months by his wife who badly accepted the pregnancy. After the childbirth, Angel finally will be released and Jacquemort will settle on their premises.

Jacquemort exposes to Angel the experiment which pushed it to come in this quiet corner; it is in fact a capacity empties and seeks to fill by psychoanalyzing people, by assimilating their thoughts. He seeks to carry out an integral psychoanalysis .

Jacquemort goes to the village to order beds for the newborns, at the request of Clementine, and passes then close to the " fair with the vieux" where those are put at the biddings; Jacquemort is badly at ease. He dares to ask people who are there if they do not have shame and receives a punch. He carries on his way to go in the carpenter, he finds there the carpenter and a very young apprentice, a thin child let us haillons some who works a such automat. It results from the " You should have honte" of Jacquemort addressed to the carpenter a blow with the chin. A few days after the psychiatrist makes knowledge with Glory, man old whose work consists in fishing out with the teeth the dead or rotted things thrown in the red river. It must digest the shame of all the village; the villagers give him much gold which it cannot spend so that it has of the remorses in their place.

Then Sunday of the first week of its arrival, Jacquemort meets the priest in order to require the baptism of the piers. This priest considers that the religion is a luxury: “God it is a cushion of gold brocart, it is a diamond crimped in the sun, it is an invaluable decoration engraved in the love (...)”

Clementine does not support any more to be touched by Angel and excludes it from the education of the children. On the councils of Jacquemort it will build a boat because it is bored. Once the finished boat it will leave, Jacquemort will be private of a friend.

Jacquemort becomes aware that here psychoanalysis rhyme with fornication and thus “will regularly psychoanalyze” good Clementine.

As the children grow the love of their mother for them goes intensfier, it with which it sometimes happened at the beginning to forget the hour of tétée. She thinks all that could arrive to the children and tries to avoid that. She estimates that to deprive itself for them of the good pieces of meal, to go until eating extremely damaged meat is a proof of love in their connection. To protect them from all, because all is threat, it will make uproot the trees of the garden, it will make build walls, then cages. It will take all the possible precautions so that it arrives nothing evil at its three boys.

During this Jacquemort time is accustomed to manners of the village and gives even a snap to a child of chorus. It psychoanalyzes initially a cat, then tries to psychoanalyze the good one but in vain, then psychoanalysis Glory; when this one dies it takes its place.

The children them fly in the sky thanks to the blue slugs and have fun to pursue the maliettes (birds), and Citroen can be made push two additional fingers by blinking the eyes of a certain way…

A parallel universe

Boris Vian poetizes the world in which the characters evolve/move; thus Jacquemort is in the presence of droppings of “goat of Sodome” and “Calamine flowers”, and observes dance in the air of the “mariettes”. In the same way the children speak with a green woodpecker which indicates to them where to find a great number of blue slugs giving them the capacity to fly.

Boris Vian likes to play with the words: “- Oh! Oh! persifla Jacquemort, you yawn it to me beautiful! - I bucket nobody, maréchala shoeing it”, evoking the answer of the shoeing marshal here.

He reinvents time. Jacquemort finds that time in the countryside does not have any more the same value but before: “To the countryside, fuller time, passes more quickly and without reference mark”. Without reference mark indeed; the reader is as Jacquemort without chronological reference marks as for the beginning of the chapters is indicated " 135 avroût" or " 14 marillet" … The junction of the syllables of different months creates another calendar out of the time in which these new months (juinet, janvril, févruin, octembre, novrier,…) comprise much more than 31 days. Are this still months?

And what is it value of the values (morals)? Jacquemort is found in a world where the old men are put at the biddings, where the too dévergondés standards are tortured, where young children work and die… shameless. What to think of that? Where is the good? Where is the evil?

Characters

Jacquemort, the psychoanalyst
Clementine, mother of the piers
Angel, Clementine husband
Christmas, one of the twins
Joel, one of the twins
Citroen, the third child “isolated”
Culblanc, the good one of Clementine
Glory
the priest
the sexton
the carpenter
marshal-shoeing It
the dressmaker
Nëzrouge, the good one of marshal-shoeing…

Quotations

I dispute that a thing as useless as the suffering can give rights whatever they are, to anyone, on anything. (second part, chapter)
One wrongly to say the closed eyes, ferranta the marshal. There are not the closed eyes because one puts the eyelids in front. They are open lower parts. If you roll a rock in an open door, it is not closed for that; and fenestrates it either besides, because to see these by far are not eyes that one serves, and, therefore you hardly include/understand the things. (second part, chapter)
One does not remain because certain people are loved; one from goes away because one hates others of them. There is only the ugly one which makes us act. One is loose. (second part, chapter)
How is it made, thought Jacquemort suddenly, that there are no fishermen here? The sea is however very close, and full of crabs, with arapèdes and edible scaly. Then? Then? Then? Then? Then?
Alors, it is that there is no port. It if was charmed to have found that it is smiled with kindness. (third part, chapter)
Gold is useless since it can nothing buy with. Therefore, it is the only valid thing. That does not have a price. (third part, chapter)
But it only let rot all these rejects. The children deserved this sacrifice well - and more they was dreadful, plus that felt bad, plus it had the impression to consolidate its love for them, to confirm it, as so torments which it inflicted could be born something from purer and truer - (third part, chapter)
Already Joel and Christmas had recovered to dig.
- I am sure that one will find other things, known as Christmas.
Its shovel, against this moment, ran up against something of hard.
- Here is an enormous stone, says it.
- Show! known as Citroen.
a beautiful yellow stone with breaks luisantes which it licked to see whether they were good as that had the air of it. Almost. Ground grated under the tooth. But in a creu of stone, a small slug, yellow also, was stuck. It looked at.
- Ca, known as Citroen, it is not good. You can eat it nevertheless, but it is not good. They is the blue ones which makes fly.
- There are the blue ones? asked Christmas.
- Yes, known as Citroen.
Joel finds two slugs black and keeps some for him…
However, Joel tasted his.
- Not famous, he says. Tapioca would be said.
- Yes, known as Citroen, but the blue ones, they is good. It is like pineapple. (third part, chapter)

See too

List of imaginary objects

External bonds

Extracts from the novel
Article on the style Vian
Critique
Citations of the work of Boris Vian

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