Jean Meckert: the other side of Polynesian paradise

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The Virgin and the Bull is the tenth book by Jean Meckert (alias Jean Amila) reissued in the Arcanes collection by Joëlle Losfeld . After La Marche au canon , Nous ont les mains rouges , la Lucarne , this fake spy novel takes place in Polynesia but Gauguin is replaced by Honoré, a second-rate painter who sells mediocre watercolors to tourists. Published in 1971, this fiction is a "curiosity" as the two authors of the preface, Stéfanie Delestré and Hervé Delouche, emphasize, who have undertaken a subtle reissue of the unpublished and unobtainable works of this formidable writer discovered by Raymond Queneau and André Gide.

The Virgin and the Bull is first and foremost a project by filmmaker André Cayatte. Meckert and Cayatte worked together on We Are All Murderers and Justice Is Done , but this time, it's about going on a reconnaissance mission to Polynesia. However, it's nothing like a dream trip. Jean Meckert returns from this experience with a desire to fight, he wants to show the other side of paradise, the horrors of colonialism, the exotic illusion, the shadow of radioactive fallout that officials carefully hide. "But that wasn't enough for the filthy military 'researchers'. What could be more exciting than infecting populations using cultivated and ingeniously distributed bacteria..."

Not to mention an impossible love story between a Sunday artist and a queen of the silver screen. Tahiti gradually becomes a cursed place and the novel, a sordid and mendacious story. The Virgin and the Bull is terribly pessimistic. We recognize the moving writing and the indignation of the author of Coups. Never a poser, always committed, enraged.