Jean-Dominique Bauby

Jean -Dominique Bauby ( born April 23, 1952 in Paris, † March 9, 1997 at Garches ) was a French journalist, author and editor in chief of Elle magazine.

Period of life

At the age of 43 years, on 8 December 1995, Bauby suffered a massive stroke, was damaged by his brain stem. As he spent two weeks later in the hospital of Berck awoke from his coma, he was not only silent, but also completely paralyzed. He could only move his head a little and grunt and blink his left eyelid. This rare phenomenon is called locked-in syndrome. About this experience he wrote - in paralyzed state - the book Le et le papillon scaphandre (literally, " The diver's suit and the Butterfly ") by the book he dictated by blinking when the correct letter was reached in the alphabet. For a special alphabet was created, which arranged the letters in order of frequency in the French language.

Bauby had the book fully create the head and edit to it then dictating letter for letter. The book was published on 6 March 1997 in France; Bauby died just three days later of heart failure.

The book was made ​​into a film by U.S. director Julian Schnabel, with Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner in the lead roles: Butterfly The Diving Bell and celebrated in May 2007, during the film festival in Cannes premiered and was there awarded the prize for best director.

Work

• Le et le papillon scaphandre. Robert Laffont, Paris 1997, ISBN 2-221-08172-2 German Translation: Diving Bell and the Butterfly. German Uli Aumüller. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-552-04869-3 Paperback edition: German Taschenbuch Verlag ( dtv literature 12565 ), Munich 1998, ISBN 3-423-12565-9