Littérature et écologie chez Romain Gary ou l’urgence d’écrire pour le temps long
Literature and ecology by Romain Gary or the urgency of writing for the long term

Author(s): Larisa Botnari
Subject(s): Aesthetics, French Literature, Human Ecology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Editura Junimea
Keywords: ecology; humanism; aesthetics; ecopoetics; evolution; slowness;
Summary/Abstract: Through its plot articulated around the hero Morel – defender of elephants threatened with extinction – Romain Gary's The Roots of Heaven could be read as a critique of modern society and its relentless race towards economic expansion. Prix Goncourt 1956, this "first ecological novel" would thus join the current discourses of the movement for degrowth, by promoting a different rhythm (slow and peaceful like that of elephants) and more generally by praising spiritual and cultural values considered outdated and cumbersome, as likely to slow down the acceleration of progress. Among the latter, literature and the writer – another “monstrous survivor of a bygone geological era” – whose role and usefulness should be considered by placing them in the long time of the evolution of the human species, as a horizon still rich in possibilities, in which Gary's work invites us all to continue to believe.

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