L'Ecriture romanesque d'Albert Cohen
Institution:
Toulouse 2Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
The romanesque writing of albert cohen reveals a contrapuntist structure, which fluctuates between the occident's satire and an oriental and poetical topic. Structurally, the foundation of his novel is the quest for absolute in solal. Solal wavers between occident and orient, between the world of having and the world of being, between a brilliant existential success, and a return to his origins, to his jewish feeling, to the innermost part of his heart. By a horizontal writing, cohen demystifies the idea of occident with its human world and its topics of novels seeing that, without any human being, this universe is fated to disappear. Consequently all the ambitious dreams of solal are destroyed. Then the occident novel finds its inner limits which interfere with the inventive genius of albert cohen. When he writes about his native origins, he creates freely a fantastical and poetical tale where everything is possible. Then he finds his way to a transfigured childhood again. Partly issued from his memories, the characters created by the author, called the valeureux, are odd and loony, funny and tender. Seeking for his jewish being, solal entirely identifies himself with the valeureux. They set albert cohen's mother at the very centre place of the romanesque writing of which the originality is confirmed by the lack of any literary relationship, and by a peculiar challenge. As a matter of fact, as he writes a novel in the "occidental way", cohen ruins at the same time the myth and the mystic face of the set and dreadfully dull occidental novel. Undeniably, the most original feature of his novels is the vertical writing. It leads one down into the depths of his immost being so as to better rise up to eternity, to infinity, to god, to a god in who the novelist would like to believe but cannot.
Abstract FR:
L'ecriture romanesque d'albert cohen revele une construction contrapuntique, qui oscille entre la satire de l'occident et une veine orientale et poetique. La quete d'absolu solalienne constitue la cle de voute de l'edifice romanesque. Solal hesite entre occident et orient, entre le monde de l'avoir et le monde de l'etre, entre une brillante reussite existentielle et le retour a ses origines, a sa judeite, le repli sur son interiorite. Par le biais d'une ecriture horizontale, cohen opere une demystification de l'occident, de son univers humain et de la thematique romanesque : univers qui debouche sur la mort et le neant. Il ruine donc les reves ambitieux de solal. Le roman occidental decouvre ainsi sa finitude, entravant le romancier dans sa liberte de creation. Avec l'ecriture des origines, l'imaginaire du conte poetique, il se libere de ces chaines et voyage au pays de l'enfance, retrouvee et transfiguree, ou tout est possible, grace a son imagination creatrice. A partir de ses souvenirs, il cree des etres fantasques et loufoques, droles et tendres, les valeureux - prolongements de la figure maternelle - auxquels solal, en quete de son etre juif, s'identifie pleinement. Ainsi la mere se situe au coeur de l'ecriture romanesque, dont l'originalite s'affirme dans l'absence de toute filiation litteraire et dans un defi singulier : par le biais d'un roman "a l'occidentale", cohen demystifie et demythifie le roman occidental fige et mortifere. La facette la plus originale de l'oeuvre romanesque est incontestablement dans la verticalite de l'ecriture qui incite a descendre dans les profondeurs du moi pour mieux s'elever jusqu'a l'eternite, l'infini, dieu, un dieu auquel le romancier voudrait croire sans y parvenir.