Dr. Jacques Soulié's first and last dictionaries

By Janaka Samarakoon - Nice, 25/07/2025

In the final weeks of his life, Jacques read very little. He could still listen to music, but books had largely slipped out of reach.

For a man who owned more than 7,000 volumes, this must have been, I believe, a painful reality. His hand was too weak to hold a book open, his torso too unsteady to remain propped up in an armchair, and sudden waves of fatigue — unpredictable and overwhelming — brought on by his treatment struck without warning. After twelve years of relentless struggle, the neurodegenerative illness had finally taken over.

Cover photo: Jacques' office opened onto this veranda on one side, and onto his garden on the other © 2025 Suriyakantha CAC Pvt. Ltd.

Writing, too, had faded. The man of lists — his preferred form of reminders — could no longer manage his scattered notes. His fingers stubbornly refused to obey the signals sent by his brain. Even signing his name, the same signature he had used all his life, had become a source of distress. He was deeply pained when his checks were returned under suspicion of forgery. While sorting through his belongings, I found, with deep emotion, several loose sheets where he had tried to relearn his own signature. No two were alike.

After two hospitalisations in April and May 2025 — the only ones during this critical phase of the illness, which, after all, was relatively brief — he confided to me, with a touch of self-deprecating humour, that he had returned to reading The Malaise of Modernity by Charles Taylor. Physically exhausted, he remained as intellectually ambitious as ever. “So, how far along are you with the Malaise?” became our final running joke.

On July 13th, two days after his cremation and the day following the “seven-day” ceremony we organised to invoke the Buddha’s blessings for his soul — which, according to that belief, may still be wandering in search of a suitable vessel — I began dusting his daily belongings and tidying the desk that had accompanied him for as long as I had known him. Twenty-five years. In truth, this piece of furniture had been with him far longer, having come from his Paris practice at the foot of the Panthéon. A beautiful piece of design, two interlocking L-shaped panels finished in leather and chrome, as elegant as its owner, it lent Jacques’ study — overlooking his deep green garden — an impression of quiet strength. The leather, tested by the tropical climate, had aged; the metal, in places, had oxidised. Yet the ensemble retained its assured modernity — a timeless classicism.

Among scattered papers and notebooks containing passwords for his online subscriptions — Qobuz, Le Monde, and even a paid subscription to ChatGPT Pro version! — there remained only one book, in three volumes: Alain Rey’s Dictionnaire historique de la langue française. The work spans some 95,000 words, expressions, and idioms, each with its etymology, date of origin, and a description of its evolution in form, meaning, and usage over the centuries. So this was his daily fountain of youth during those final years! An ocean of words for a man who loved etymology. I did not dare move it an inch: imposing, generous, brimming with cross-references, the edition so perfectly embodied the man he was — the former psychiatrist turned French teacher, obsessed with intertextuality.

I can still see him, as if it were yesterday, in the early 2000s: his tall 1.75 m frame, the empathic smile that crinkled his eyes with unflagging humanism, never cynical, and the gait of a man who, almost shyly, knew that his presence commanded attention, that his pale skin stood out. This is how he would enter our French Language Diploma classroom at the Alliance Française in Kandy, Sri Lanka: a leather briefcase in one hand, the hefty dictionary, Le Petit Robert, pressed to his chest with the other. His treasure.

Indeed, the dictionary — this magnificent metatextual invention, in all its shapes and sizes — brings the story full circlefor the man who, as a child, had owned only one book: Petit Larousse, which he consulted until it was worn, until it became an obsession.

Today, on July 25th, twenty days after his death, I rediscovered on his now-offline blog a beautiful entry dated November 26, 2019. Jacques had just bought this three-volume dictionary — the very one that now stands as his presence, resting there, on his desk.

Once
Long ago
Seated on the stairway steps
At the heart of the family home
The image of a teenage boy
Methodically leafing through
The pages of the only book
Waiting to be devoured:
The Illustrated Petit Larousse…

Today
Far away
Amid thousands of books
Now stand
The three volumes of Alain Rey:
The Historical Dictionary of the French Language…

---

Let them go
Let them escape

from your minds
from your hearts

let them race singing down the hillside
caress the shimmering river stones
ride the force of the wind
refresh themselves in the spray of the wide ocean
play hide-and-seek with the stars
wander the brambled paths of the mountain
kiss the clouds in passing

Let them go
Let them escape

from your minds
from your hearts

the words
YOUR words

- Jacques Soulié | 26/11/2019