Images de l'autre dans l'oeuvre de pierre loti
Institution:
Paris 3Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
The life of pierre loti, origin of his oeuvre and starting point of this thesis reveals the importance of the very idealized mother figure. She does not only appaer in his autobiographical texts. His novels and the relations of his travels recounting the other, either french or foreign, man or woman, attest the impossibility of making close relationships because of this particular attachment to the mother. This aspect is developed in this thesis. The death of the exotic heroine who, whether adored or detested is never really considered as a human being, and the unfortunate fate of the french fiancee confirm the failure of the encounter between the traveller and the feminine-other. The only notable exception being fatou-gaye, the senegalese lover and mother. The travellernarrator seems to feel better in the company of sailors whom he sees as brothers. Often from brittany, they show regional peculiarities like the spahi from the cevennes and the basque ramuntcho. All of them are similar to the primitive people from africa or tahiti that the traveller has never reencountered, thinking they are too crude, nor the too westernized asian people. India keeps him too far away to seduce him. On the contrary, the orient where time stands still, attracts him. It offers him paintings where the other is only an apparition before being erased. For the canvas clears in the course of his writing. The sea has only the appearance of a means of access to somewhere else and also to the other. The taste of the traveller for wide spaces (deserts, seas) or enclosed areas (islands, caves, especially of his chilhood garden) confirms this feeling he was constantly searching to return to his childhood rather than to get closer to the others, whom finally he reduces in variety. He ends with a universal need of belief and love which he was not able to fulfill for himself. At the end of his journeys, if there is nowhere he feels at home, at least, he has learned through all his scenes, the identity of the writer.
Abstract FR:
La vie de pierre loti, source de son oeuvre et point de depart de cette etude, manifeste l'importance de la figure maternelle, tres idealisee. Elle n'apparait pas seulement dans les textes autobiographiques. Les romans et relations de voyage representant l'autre, francais ou etranger, homme comme femme, temoignent de l'impossibilite d'une relation du fait, precisement, de cet attachement a la mere. C'est du moins ce que montre cette etude. La mort de l'heroine exotique qui, adulee ou execree, n'est jamais vraiment consideree comme sujet, et le sort malheureux de la fiancee francaise confirment l'echec de la rencontre entre le voyageur et l'autre-feminin. Fatou-gaye, amante et mere senegalaise constitue une exception notable. Le voyageurnarrateur semble mieux en compagnie des marins, en qui il trouve des "freres". Souvent bretons, ils sont caracterises, comme le spahi cevenol et le basque ramuntcho, par leurs particularismes regionaux. Tous sont proches des "primitifs" tahitiens ou africains que le voyageur n'a pas rejoints, les jugeant trop "rudes", pas plus que les asiatiques, trop occidentalises. L'inde le tient trop a l'ecart pour le seduire. Mais l'orient, lieu du temps immobilise, l'attire. C'est l'occasion de tableaux ou l'autre n'est que figurant avant d'etre gomme. Car l'espace depeint se vide au fil de l'oeuvre. La mer n'est qu'en apparence acces a l'ailleurs et a l'autre. Le gout du voyageur pour les espaces vides (le desert, la mer) ou fermes (l'ile, la grotte, celle du jardin natal notamment) le confirme. Il n'a cherche qu'a rejoindre son enfance, pas a ller vers les autres dont il minore, finalement, la diversite, concluant sur l'universel besoin de croire et d'aimer qu'il n'a pu lui-meme satisfaire. S'il n'est plus, au terme de ses periples, nulle part "chez lui", du moins a-t-il acquis, au milieu de toutes ces mises en scene, l'identite de l'ecrivain.