Les fleurs de cimitière. Edmond Baudoin.

In French. 288 pages. Paperback cover with flaps; black-and-white; 29 x 22 cm. L'Association. 35,90 Euros.
Although Edmond Baudoin is one of the greatest cultivators and promoters of the genre of (poetic) autobiography in comics, this most recent volume is not only a new stage, or degree, but a new nature in his gestures. Making use of his entire archive of published work, travel notebooks, sketches and studies, portraits made by others, memories of his life and those of his interlocutors (family, friends, lovers), live drawings, spontaneous creations of visions and fantasies, graphic translations of his current concerns, photographic documentation and the practice of writing, a monument of almost testamentary quality emerges. Never has Baudoin been so stripped, limpid, and at the same time intimate and, therefore, painful, talking openly about some hitherto somewhat protected figures: his children, their mothers, his true lovers, some memories of violence.
An immense work that can only leave consequences on its readers, who will question the very nature of reading, of intimacy via book, and were as moved as they were grateful. Baudoin is close to that nature of Hokusai, who at the age of 80 said that he was finally beginning to learn to draw.