Vivre et écrire : le cas spécifique du récit de deuil chez Simone de Beauvoir et Peter Handke

Abstract

The purpose of this reflection is to focus on the issue of self-transformation that the experience of mourning deals with (from a literary initiative). From the astonishment that is brought out by some narratives of mourning – especially Une mort très douce (“A Very Easy Death”) by Simone de Beauvoir or Wunschloses Unglück (“A Sorrow Beyond Dreams”) by Peter Handke –, we investigate the need to write as an initiative towards approaching the experience of mourning, to understanding it, if not to “resolving” it. From this perspective, writing about mourning, as unique and specific as it is, falls under action, having its methods, its own dynamics and biographical effects. The focus is, therefore, on examining and pointing out the limits of the open theoretical framework through the notion of identity narrative from Paul Ricœur, in the specific case of the dynamics involved in the literary response to mourning and the creative impulse it sees. Indeed, literature helps to create its own order of knowledge or its own approach to mourning as it builds it up as a “topic”. Taking this literary agenda seriously, which we have yet to qualify, we propose examining the notion of literary creativity – what are the resources specific to literature that allow us to account for the dynamics at work in the task of “rebuilding” the subject?

Keywords

• experience of mourning
• narrative of mourning
• literature
• narrative identity narrative
• literary experimentation
• philosophy