Abstract EN:

This thesis contributes to the redefinition of the concept of tradition in literature through a comparative study of three important poets working at the turn of the century. Strictly reserved to the religious sphere during the classical period, the notion of tradition was applied to literature around the middle of the 19th century. This coincided, on the one hand, with the birth of the concept of modernity, but more importantly, with the realization of the conventional nature of language: language was an inherited system. In this context, Hofmannsthal, Valéry and Rilke are united by their radical questioning of the capacity of language to express adequately the singularity of the self and the diversity of the world. Their work represents three ways of overcoming the crisis of confidence arising from the idea of language as an inherited concept, and the result is a threefold redefinition of firstly, the position of the subject in the creative act, secondly, the position of the artist in society, and thirdly, the position of the poetic word in relation to the world. Hofmannsthal, who described himself as an inheritor, rejected the primacy of aesthetic values, which in his youth threatened the world order and coherence of the self, putting in its place the ethical aspect of the creative act. Hofmannsthal's "passive" narcissism can be compared to Valéry's "active" narcissism; Valéry gave up poetry in order to devote himself to an in-depth examination of the issue of inheritance in his cahiers. But he returned to it in La Jeune Parque. Where he developed a concept of "the art of verse" freed from the illusions and constraints of tradition. Rilke, who from the beginning of his career felt he was lacking in literary culture, worked to create his own tradition and to consolidate a fragile self, and ended up by resolving the crisis at the end of the Duino elegies by restoring the right of the poet to name the world, and indeed, the initiatory role of poetry.