L’artiste est un mouton qui se sépare du troupeau:le motif de séparation dans l’oeuvre dramatique de Paul Willems

Abstract

Defined by his childhood in Missembourg, a family property with a paradise garden, Paul Willems, a Belgian French-speaking writer, a literary « wizard » and « magician » remains inherently attached to this land from which he does not want to separate. Next to the declaration of love, garden, reflections, water and time, just to mention the most recurring, the union and the separation are the concepts that haunt the Willems’ imagination. This article focuses on different forms of the motif of separation found/ identified in the theater plays of Paul Willems. After introducing the notion of separation and its different meanings, the study discusses its diverse configurations: original, diegetic (spatial and temporal), social, linguistic, sentimental, internal and final (death).