L'imaginaire de la mort dans l'oeuvre d'Albert Cohen
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Université Stendhal (Grenoble)Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
To read albert cohen's works is to be invited to a death party. This haunting and recurring image was born in the writer's unconscious on his tenth birthday, when he was hoping to become part of the french community: a pedlar insulted him, treating him as a jew. This trauma caused the birth of the idea of death, and for all his life the writer tried to mediate between his double identity through the characters in his novels. Indeed, through these characters social-cohen was able to free himself either of his oriental "ego" or of his occidental "ego", until he finally arrived at the conciliation of these two opposites in solal-ariane. Ariane, his alter ego, the part lost at the age of ten, appeared as a lost, inaccessible being to solal's eyes, with whom he could be united only through death. The dead twin spirit could be reached only with death, and woman could be possessed only in another world. She was the double anguish which had not been won but made sublime. The imaginary of death is intimately linked to the very problem of literary creation, being implicit.
Abstract FR:
Lire l'oeuvre d' albert cohen. C'est etre invite a un festin de la mort. Cette image recurrente et obsessive est nee dans l'incoscient de l'auteur le jour de ses dix ans, alors qu'il desirait faire entierement partie de la communaute francaise: un vendeur amnulant lui jette a la face son appartenance juive. Ce traumatisme provoque la naissance de l'idee de mort, et l'ecrivain passe sa vie a essayer de maitriser sa double identite par les personnages de l'oeuvre romanesque. A travers ses figurants, solal-cohen se decharge tantot du moi oriental, tantot du moi occidental, jusqu'a arriver a la conciliation des contraires dans le couple solal-ariane. Ariane, son alter ego, sa moitie perdue a ses dix ans, apparait aux yeux de solal comme un etre perdu, essentiellement inaccessible, sauf par la mort. L'ame jumelle morte ne peut etre atteinte que dans la mort et la femme ne peut etre possedee que dans un autre monde. Elle est le double de l'angoisse non vaincue, mais sublimee. Cette imagination de la mort est intimement liee au probleme de la creation litteraire elle-meme, qu'elle sous-tend.