Eyeless Sight

by Jules Romains

Jules Romains is internationally known as one of the towering giants of twentieth-century literature. His magnum opus, the 27-volume Men of Good Will, has been translated into a dozen languages and will be read into the foreseeable future. Lesser known is Romains’ earlier career as a student of physiology, botany and science, when he published (under his real name of Louis Farigoule) the startling volume La Vision Extra-retinienne et le Sens Paratique in Paris in 1921. It was first published in English as Eyeless Sight and literally created a revolution, both in the treatment of blind persons and in the ability of blind persons to feel sight. In Eyeless Sight, Romains promulgates a theory suggested by the writer Jonathan Swift as far back as 1726, when he wrote in Gulliver’s Travels about a “man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition; their employment was to mix colors for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling.” Romains describes his many experiments which appear to prove that people can see with parts of the body other than the eyes, and Leslie Shepard in his new introduction records some sensational contemporary instances of this phenomenon. (from the back cover)

Paperback

First published August 1, 1978

About the author

Jules Romains, born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule (August 26, 1885 - August 14, 1972), was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement. His works include the play Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine, and a cycle of works called Les Hommes de bonne volonté (Men of Good Will).

Jules Romain was born in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil in the Haute-Loire but went to Paris to attend first the lycée Condorcet and then the prestigious École normale supérieure. He was close to the Abbaye de Créteil, a utopian group founded in 1906 by Charles Vildrac and René Arcos, which brought together, among others, the writer Georges Duhamel, the painter Albert Gleizes and the musician Albert Doyen. He received his agrégation in philosophy in 1909.

In 1927, he signed a petition (that appeared in the magazine Europe on April 15) against the law on the general organization of the nation in time of war, abrogating all intellectual independence and all freedom of expression. His name on the petition appeared with those of Lucien Descaves, Louis Guilloux, Henry Poulaille, Séverine... and those of the young Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre from the École normale supérieure.

During World War II he went into exile first to the United States where he spoke on the radio through the Voice of America and then, beginning in 1941, to Mexico where he participated with other French refugees in founding the Institut Français d'Amérique Latine (IFAL).

A writer on many varied topics, Jules Romain was elected to the Académie Française in 1946, occupying chair 12 (among the 40 chairs in that august academy). In 1964, Jules Romains was named citizen of honor of Saint-Avertin. Following his death in Paris in 1972, his place, chair 12, in the Académie Française was taken by Jean d'Ormesson.

Jules Romains is remembered today, among other things, for his concept of Unanimism and his cycle of 27 novels in Les Hommes de bonne volonté (The Men of Good Will), a remarkable literary fresco depicting the odyssey over a quarter century of two friends, the writer Jallez and politician Jerphanion, who provide an example in literature of Unanimism.