Attente et décor dans la fiction gracquienne
Waiting and setting in Gracquian fiction

Author(s): Cristina Poede
Subject(s): French Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Editura Junimea
Keywords: expectation; slowness; quest; time; thematic network; scenery;
Summary/Abstract: Beside Dino Buzzati, Beckett, Kafka or more recently Alessandro Baricco, Julien Gracq will be remembered in the history of Letters as one of the great masters of an essential theme of the twentieth century: expectation. Slowness and waiting could be paradoxical, if we think of the phrenetic rhythms of this period; not only literature but also the iconic arts showed a preference for the images of slowness: from Dali to De Chirico, from Last Year at Marienbad by Resnais to Rendezvous à Bray by Delvaux, the characters evolve in unchangeable landscapes, surprised by their mysterious geometry. The theme of waiting is inscribed in the Graquian chronotope: the flat calm of the Farghestan sea, the unknown volumes of the Ardennes forest which make time weightless, the beach of the Hôtel des Vagues with its imperceptible modifications, the dark villa of Nueil plunged in the forests waving in the wind. The paper aims to identify the linguistic and narrative structures by which Julien Gracq manages to infuse the feeling of expectation in the reader, while impressing an unmistakable tempo on the fiction.

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