Mourning the Loss of the Land in Le Clézio’s “Villa Aurore” and “Orlamonde”

Abstract

The popularity of Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens’ best-seller Comment tout peut s’effrondrer (2015) undoubtedly speaks to our anxiety about fragile and interrelated economic, political, and environmental systems. By positing the inevitability of certain forms of collapse, la collapsologie shifts our approach from uniquely finding ways of understanding and preventing environmentally induced changes to also responding to them. This article will contribute to this discussion by examining how fiction might help us to confront changes brought about by the devastation of the land. Through its analysis of two short stories by J.M.G. Le Clézio, “Villa Aurore” and “Orlamonde,” it will discuss the therapeutic potential of fiction that engages with the psychological impact of environmental destruction on individuals. By using ruins and gardens to represent the landscape as a place of memory, dreams, and escape, Le Clézio shows us that environmental loss generates a profound re-evaluation of the self. However, this re-evaluation positively impacts the main characters by allowing them to move beyond anger and nostalgia towards acceptance, thereby constituting an exemplary model for the reader who identifies with their situation of loss.

Keywords:

• J.M.G Le Clézio
• collapsology
• the environmental crisis
• ecocriticism
• mourning
• identity

Notes

1 One notable example is Isabelle Stenger’s Au temps des catastrophes (Paris, La Découverte, 2008), which asserts the instability of capitalism and the inevitability of environmental catastrophes.

2 For critiques of la collapsologie, see Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s “Simplismes de l’écologie catastrophiste” (AOC, 22 Oct. 2019, https://aoc.media/opinion/2019/10/21/simplismes-de-lecologie-catastrophiste. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020) and Chloé Leprince’s overview on France Culture “Théorie de l’effondrement: la ‘collapsologie’ est-elle juste une théorie sans fondement?” (26 March 2019, https://www.franceculture.fr/ecologie-et-environnement/theorie-de-leffondrement-la-collapsologie-est-elle-juste-une-fantaisie-sans-fondement. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020). In terms of theoretical alternatives, Timothy Morton’s Hyberobjects (U of Minnesota P, 2013) argues that apocalyptic narratives are problematic because they ignore the “very real object”—global warming—that is already here by considering collapse a part of some hypothetical future (104). He claims instead that “the end of the world has already occurred” in order to incite action (Morton 7).

3 For more on the role of the environment in Le Clézio’s writing, see Bronwen Martin’s “The Ecological Vision of Jean-Marie Le Clézio” (The Modern Language Review, vol. 113, no. 3, July 2018, pp. 506–526), Keith Moser’s “The Eco-philosophy of Michel Serres and J.M.G. Le Clézio: Launching a Battle Cry to Save the Imperiled Earth” (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 21, no. 2, Spring 2014, pp. 413–440), and Oana Panaïté’s chapter “Landscape as Vocation” in The Colonial Fortune in Contemporary Fiction in French (Liverpool UP, 2017).

4 See how this critique of capitalism fits into the author’s postcolonial thought in Bronwen Martin’s The Fiction of J.M.G Le Clézio. A Postcolonial Reading (Peter Lang, 2012).

5 Indeed, we should not underestimate the importance of childhood in Le Clézio’s story, as highlighted by the author’s admission that “everything [he] write[s] is marked by that period” in an interview with Sarah Beckett, but rather consider the additional layer that an ecological reading provides (see Sarah Beckett, “The Child: A Privileged Reader in the Eyes of Henri Bosco and J.M.G. Le Clézio,” L’Esprit Créateur, vol. 45, no. 4, Winter 2005, pp. 48–59).

6 See for example the article from la Repubblica explaining the rise in sales of La Peste in Italy when the rate of COVID-19 hospitalizations was intensifying in early 2020: Raffaella de Santis, “Libri, effetto coronavirus: in classifica tornano ‘La peste’ e ‘Cecità,’” 27 February 2020, https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/02/27/news/libri_coronavirus_peste_camus_cecita_saramago-249694071/. Accessed 25 Nov. 2020.

7 Less urgent for some, but it should be noted that communities in the most environmentally sensitive areas are already experiencing climate-related grief. See Ossie Michelin, “‘Solastalgia’: Arctic inhabitants overwhelmed by new form of climate grief,” The Guardian, 15 Oct. 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/arctic-solastalgia-climate-crisis-inuit-indigenous. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amanda Vredenburgh

Amanda Vredenburgh is Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Davidson College. Specialist in contemporary French and Francophone fiction, her current project rethinks the fantastic genre through its examination of environmental, political, and social issues in the novels of Marie Darrieussecq, Marie NDiaye, and Antoine Volodine. Recent publications include “Rethinking the Environmental Crisis through Marie Darrieussecq’s Fantastic Fiction” (Contemporary French and Francophone Studies: SITES, vol. 24, no. 5, 2020) and “Un discours ‘de majesté’: Le sublime royal dans les expressions de l’absolutisme sous Louis XIV” (Romanic Review, no. 111.2, 2020).