LA NUIT JUSTE AVANT LES FORÊTS : RACONTER POUR PARTAGER L'INCOMMUNICABLE
THE NIGHT JUST BEFORE THE FORESTS: TELLING TO SHARE THE INCOMMUNICAB

Summary/Abstract: Bernard-Marie Koltès' play The night just before the forests was written in 1977 and published in 1988 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It is a quasi-monologue, according to Anne Ubersfeld's definition, in which the protagonist vainly seeks to address an interlocutor who never appears. This uninterrupted "talk" which recounts 63 pages, does not succeed in fulfilling its desire for communication. This quest for a presence, for a contact with the other, is obsessive throughout the text, but what emerges is the need to tell, despite the impossibility of sharing. Our study will shed light on the different aspects that underline the incommunicability of this text. We will notice on the one hand conditions such as the precarious, marginal state of the hero, the themes of loneliness, the search for sociality and for love. On the other hand we will highlight narrative and linguistic techniques such as ''time zero'' of the narration, the absence of strong punctuation, the agrammaticality of the prose, the use of orality and the musicality of this profoundly poetic play.

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