Abstract EN:

"Cette sentence que pas un Français n’ignore", such is Larbaud’s comment on Serotorius’ words in Corneille’s tragedy: "Rome n’est plus dans Rome, elle est toute où je suis". This occurrence radiates at the very heart of complex network of legacies and affiliations, of imitations, of pastiches, of analogies permeating the whole field of European culture. Wereas upstream Corneille, Erasmus, Du Bellay, as well aq Hildebert de Lavardin, or Janus Vitalis, or Quevedo, or Spencer, or Szarzynski, prepared the way for the triumph of these few words, downstream, Metastasio, Delacroix or Marguerite Youcenar ear diverse testimonies to this exceptional fortune. So great a success is indeed largely due to the "concetto-like" consistency of the expression: its vital force must be attributed to the verbal art of particular period that was skilled in concealing intricate mechanisms within mysteriously rought drawers of ivory. But far from entering into logic of art for art’s sake, this paradoxical phrasing takes on its full meaning by summoning up a power of historical significance. "Rome n’est plus dans Rome" is first a formula for the "translation imperii", for the transfer of legitimacy, itineration, or ruin of the Empire. And so our investigation hinges upon two decisive axes: on the one hand, a research of philological nature that consists in reconstructing the pre-history (from the 5th to the 15th century) of a formula in European literature and discourse (both political and religious); on the other hand, an endeavor to trace back the history of an idea (the loss or displacement of the absolute centre that Rome might represent) by using precisely the occurrences of the formula as so many signposts along the way. Thus the idea becomes form, and, history a poem: the events seem, in fact, not only describes, but also contained in, and as it were, programmed by the maxims. We are reaching here the shores of a Poetics of History. To be fully read, the formula calls up a large set of representation, of historical figures, of allegories, of "exempla", that the reader must retain in his memory. And so such words as express a form of eclipse or of catastrophe find themselves re-located at the heart of the European tradition: they simply require an image – a woman in mourning wailing over the tombs, or embarked upon a vessel in the tempest of History – to become the consummate emblem of a culture of melancholy.