'La Porte est ouverte':Reading André du Bouchet's Poetry as an Autistic Perspective on the World and Language

André du Bouchet (1924-2001) is known for the supposed difficulty of his poetic and prose writing. This interdisciplinary article argues that it becomes accessible when considered from an autistic perspective. Scholarship on autism and creativity tends either to study creative work by people with a diagnosis of autism in order better to understand the condition, or to attempt to identify autism in creative people. In contrast, this article does not suggest a retrospective diagnosis for Du Bouchet and, in line with recent research on autism, it aims to avoid the language of deficits. It argues instead that reading Du Bouchet’s work in relation to autistic cognitive processes and sensory sensitivity makes its perspective on the world accessible. It proposes that Du Bouchet’s writing displays four features that are also associated with autism: fragmentation, which suggests detail-oriented cognition; heightened sensory awareness; sensitivity to the interrelation between the metaphorical and the concrete properties of words; and processes of repetition, which together lead to a sophisticated body of work. Read in this way, Du Bouchet’s poetic writing reveals the potential of creative work to offer a nuanced picture of distinct cognitive and sensory experience.