Alquimia de la carne. La pasión según Yourcenar

Abstract

This paper develops the analysis of the analogical relation between the alchemy and the emotion-passion that occurs implicitly in Feux and Les charités d’Alcippe, by Marguerite Yourcenar. The double raw material of alchemy –physical and spiritual– allows it to become a model of that commotion of living matter that also manifests itself as a psychic phenomenon and as a thought. Emotion-passion takes place –according to its most recent theories– between pre-consciousness and cognition, and opus nigrum is the phase whose description suits that indecisive zone. The alchemy of the flesh and the alchemy of the verb –by Rimbaud– demand the same anchoring in the body: hence poetry is recognized as a natural language by those pre-conscious or hermetic knowledges that are reluctant to conceptual language.

Keywords

• Marguerite Yourcenar
• Alchemy
• Theory of emotions
• Passion
• Poetics