英文摘要 |
Is A Coin in Nine Handsthe most political novel in Marguerite Yourcenar’s fiction? According to the author’s own account, it’s a “half-realistic, half-symbolic” narrative. This work proposes to explore precisely the symbolic, even philosophical pendant of A Coin in Nine Hands. The book contains a series of vignettes of life of differentcharacters, whose destinies are too much complicated with one another to know everything about them. The present contribution will focus on the quote from Montaigne underlined in A Coin in Nine Hands, emphasizing the very strong link between these two remote-in-time but close-in-spirit texts. What are the affinities between these two writers? An absolute melancholy, pessimism, the sentiment of vanity of things in this world, the painting of human insanity… The first part of this research analyzes some of the recounted individual journeys in A Coin in Nine Hands, including the history of the political attempt in assassination. The second part endeavors to demonstrate that fundamentally, Marguerite Yourcenar, far from sticking to particular existences of her characters, actually seeks to depict the archetype of human life in a symbolic and atemporal way. With a melancholic and nihilist sentiment, we derive from A Coin in Nine Handsa universal insanity that no one and nothing can remedy. |