Les yeux de l'âme by Jean-Claude Rolland Gallimard, Paris, 2010;  268 pp; €19.00

Les yeux de l'âme is a title which requires a little commentary prior to translation. The words are taken from the poet Yves Bonnefoy's French translation of Hamlet, the most famous of all tragedies. We thus have to express in English what a contemporary French poet found in the writings of the greatest of English-language poets of all time. Horatio, seized by the sight of the dead King Claudius, is surprised to hear Hamlet say to him: “Methinks I see my father”. Hamlet then adds: “In my mind's eye, Horatio”. Here, the image determines the words used. Its visibility and invisibility are shared, depending on the exchange of words with which it is interlaced in Hamlet's inner dialogue, relayed by his discussion with his friend Horatio. That said, Les yeux de l'âme is above all an image based on sound. Rolland's hypothesis is that the poet Bonnefoy took his inspiration from the rhyme, in French, between ‘âme’ [soul/mind] and ‘amour’ [love].

With image and language, we find ourselves once again in touch with the main themes of Rolland's previous book, Avant d'être celui. qui parle [Before Being a Person Who Speaks]. Without words, nobody could ‘be’ before being able to speak. Without images, which are available to us before words, we would not come to be. These summary formulae are an attempt at expressing the contradictions Rolland so skilfully preserves.

Rolland's idea is not to defend the mind [âme] either as a concept or as a signifier. The English-speaking reader will not find in this book the reasons which have made the idea of the ‘âme’ so successful in French psychoanalysis — at least since the recent translation into French of Freud's complete works has sanctioned its use. Strachey systematically translated ‘die Seek’ by ‘the mind’. Shakespeare proves that he was right and the specific parameters of the image — the wonder of irony? — would seem to demand that the title of Rolland's book should be In the Mind's