Publishing, the Rules of the Trade

Le Château de Cène

Urbain d'Orlhac, Jérôme Martineau, original edition, 1969, Coll. Bfm - Limoges

In a reflection about inner censorship, the writing of Le Château de Cène plunges revolt, and the morality imposed by the language of a bourgeois society, into the Algerian War. First published under the pseudonym of Urbain d’Orlhac by Jérôme Martineau, it was revised by Pauvert in 1972 under the real name of its young author, Bernard Noël. ‘This pseudonym censored me: it was the mask behind which I remained white, in the meanwhile.’ The two editions of this novel of initiation by sexual tortures, imposed by animals and men, were condemned for offending public decency. Bernard Noël continued his reflection on censorship and the privation of speech, by creating the neologism ‘sensure’, privation of senses, ‘the most subtle form of brainwashing, because it takes place without the victim knowing’. The ban on sales to minors was annulled in 1991.