The Hallucinated Child, René-Jean Clot

A painter and novelist, René-Jean Clot drew on his dual experience to create the moving character of Jean Bressy, a "slow" teenager, as they say in the countryside, who lives exclusively for art and love. The love is the passionate, jealous love Jean has for his mother, "the swallow," a young, beautiful, chaste, and poor widow. The art is painting, to which he is drawn by that irrepressible urge called a vocation, and which he studies under the tutelage of a bilious and unrecognized genius, Ravot. It was inevitable that the mother and the master would meet one day, and this junction of his two worlds initially upsets the young man. But, paradoxically, the shock proves to be beneficial: it allows Jean to cut the umbilical cord binding him to "the swallow," while also pushing him to detach himself from Ravot to achieve his artistic autonomy. The child doctors had destined for an asylum has become a well-adjusted adult.