Passeurs de douleurs chez Sylvie Germain

ABSTRACT

When asked about the genesis of her texts, Sylvie Germain states that when an image, a vision, a dream haunt and obsess her so, they become literary matter—namely tales. Similarly, autonomous forms and figures impose themselves and inhabit her works, shape-shifting into free-floating characters. Hence the strange and poetic nature of her fiction, even when her stories allude to horrific events or tragic situations. La Pleurante des rues de Prague (1992), a superb allegory of the incommensurable dolor suffered by humankind, is such a text. The giant figure who roams Germain's pages, carrying in the folds of her frock every tear, every lament, every torment born of human suffering, bears an implacable testimony to the facility with which man forgets and repeats the abominable evils of History. She mirrors Czech artist Anna Chromý’s formidable sculpture “The Cloak of Conscience,” an empty garment carved out of a block of Carrara marble to form a chapel of sorts in which to meditate on God's silence as regards the world's mystery and mankind's misery.

KEYWORDS:

• Germain
• Pleurante
• allegory
• dolor
• memory
• Chromý

Notes

1. « […] le seul avantage qu'un psychanalyste ait le droit de prendre de sa position, lui fût-elle donc reconnue comme telle, c'est de se rappeler avec Freud qu'en sa matière, l'artiste toujours le précède et qu'il n'a donc pas à faire le psychologue là où l'artiste lui fraie la voie » (Lacan 9).

2. Les informations s'agissant des œuvres de Chromý proviennent du site http://www.annachromy.com/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laurence Enjolras

Laurence Enjolras is an Associate Professor of French at the College of the Holy Cross. A twentieth and twenty-first century scholar, she pursues research on contemporary novels with a keen interest in works by women writers. She has published on a variety of topics pertaining to literature, culture, and film, and has authored Femmes écrites (Anma Libri, 1990).