Bezczynność bohaterki drugoosobowej biografii
The Idleness of the Protagonist in the Second Person Biography

Author(s): Joanna Jeziorska-Haładyj
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, Polish Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: second-person narration; biography; Marguerite Yourcenar
Summary/Abstract: The article tackles the problem of the status of the protagonist in second person biography. I consider him to be an inactive subject, a silent addressee listening to the story of his own life, subordinated to the interpretative activity of the overactive narrator. My case study is Michèle Sarde’s "Vous, Marguerite Yourcenar", a biography of the author of Hadrian’s Memoirs. The consequent second person narrative feigns an intimate, empathetic dialogue with the protagonist, while presenting an arbitrary and definite reinterpretation of certain facts. The narrator, using psychoanalytical devices, puts forward a couple of strong theses concerning Yourcenar’s life and works. She claims that all the crucial experiences took place in her youth, before the emigration. The second person is accompanied by other mechanisms of beletrisation, shifting the biography in the direction of the biographical novel.

• Details
• Contents