Kim Blankenship
LIT 4093
April 22, 2010
Twins: Bauby and The Butterfly
Once I dreamed I was a butterfly. I knew I was a butterfly and did not know I was a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I was, visibly a man. I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, Or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man. ~Zhuangzi
Jean-Dominique Bauby reflects upon his life in his memoir, The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, A butterfly, mentioned rarely, reaches title status because he identifies himself with the butterfly in Zhuangzi's poem, I Dream. I According to Bauby, the Diving Bell was an initial consideration for the book title, but the term butterfly was not mentioned. (Bauby, 55), yet this is placed in the chapter “Voice Offstage” which parallels much of I Dream. t would not be a surprising to expect that he would use a renowned story to serve as a foundation for his own. As an editor of a national magazine, Bauby was well-read, and prior to his stroke had aspirations to rewrite a feminized version of The Count of Monte Christo.
One passage of the I Dream poem is familiar to the general public, and he would have had many opportunities to read the more complete version in any general survey literature of Chinese philosophy. The poem begins:
I do not know how long I dreamed, or what came before.
The dream was my world and I was content within it.
And as I dreamed, a man spoke to me..
The dream was my world and I was content within it.
And as I dreamed, a man spoke to me..
Bauby's metamorphosis into his new life followed “twenty days of deep coma and several weeks of grogginess and somnolence” (Bauby, 4). In describing an ordinary day, His first reference to the butterfly in his memoir is that his “mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tiera del Fuego or for King Midas' court. (Bauby, 5). We often think of butterflies as representing freedom or to symbolize rebirth into a new life after being inside a cocoon for a period of time, and he speaks of a certain kind of happiness through his imagination.
In I Dream, the narrator hears a man (speaker) tell him the butterfly story; the speaker tells the narrator that in the speaker's dream, he cannot distinguish between being a man and a butterfly. The narrator is Bauby with locked-in syndrome; the speaker is Bauby before the stroke. Locked-in Bauby is the Narrator of his memoir, Healthy Bauby is the speaker. Bauby's memoir is Locked-in Bauby telling us about stories and dreams that he knows through his Healthy self. Bauby transports the reader back and forth between past and present, using his imagination to glue the edges together.
The narrator then asks about the meaning of the story and finds the speaker replaced by his own reflection in a moonlit pool.
I was struck by how this man was me and yet not me. While my hands were old and wizened, his were young and smooth. While my skin was dark and rough, his was fair and soft. Yet in his eyes I saw myself, or rather who I would be had I been born another.
This image he sees of himself is of his Healthy self. Bauby's formerly strong body is now fragile. He is shocked when he first looks in a mirror. Like the new self that has emerged from the coma, the butterfly is a fragile insect with delicate wings. Had he come out of the coma, his cocoon, without the locked-in syndrome, he may have returned to a more normal life.
Next, the narrator wants to reach out to the speaker and makes a discovery. “I reached down to touch the shimmering surface. It was then that I realized I was looking up through the pool.” Here in the poem, everything is upside down. The narrator thinks that he is on top, looking down into water, but discovers when he tries to use his physical senses, here the sensation of touch, that his perspective is wrong. He is not in the physical world. He realizes that he is looking up to the speaker who then tells him:
You are that which I would be but cannot. You follow a path I dare not follow. You live a life that I shall not lead, for I have chosen another.
In the final reference to butterflies in the memoir, Bauby defines himself as one. In this chapter, he references butterflies twice, one as subject and object. First he wants to be able to listen to them, and then he claims to have butterfly hearing, identifying himself as a butterfly. “when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one much be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible...This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have butterfy hearing.” (Bauby, 97)
I Dream ends with a positive ending. “It is said that life is not a problem to be solved, But a reality to be experienced. This is truer for you than you know or can imagine. With this, a cloud passed over the moon and the dream began to fade into darkness. I am awakening.”
Bauby's chapter, Voice Offstage, parallels Zhuangzi's “I Dream” poem. Bauby says he has the final scene written in his mind. The stage is darkness, except for a halo of light around the bed in center stage. In the poem it is dark excep for the light of the moon. Mr. L will jump up walk around and it grows dark again, just as “a cloud passed over the moon.” In the memoir – after it is dark we hear Mr. L “Damn! It was only a dream!” (Bauby, 56) in contrast to the poem's “I am awakening.” Here Bauby's play leaves a literal and psychological darkening, quite possibly too dark for any reader, but it may be the most significant clue about Bauby's private state of mind.
Works Cited
Arnold, Beth. "The Truth about "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"" Salon 23 Feb. 2008. Salon.com. Salon Media Group, Inc., 23 Feb. 2008. Web. 15 Apr. 2010.
Association ALIS. Web. 16 Apr. 2010. .
Bauby, Jean-Dominique. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: a Memoir of Life in Death. New York: Vintage, 1998. Print.
