Thinking Tradition

TRADITION

Tradition appears to me at this point as a dialectical enterprise and not necessarily as a solid grounding; a constantly shifting and fluctuating concept that, to exist, necessitates movement.  Furthermore, the positions, our positions face to tradition, are not stable.  It is important to see the instability of what we study.  We are attempting to freeze a movement, which is no doubt a necessary step if we are say anything, but it is essential to acknowledge this reality.  

 

Every time we have assumed a position we have adopted an arbitrary differentiation method to capture the movement.  The real constant is movement, yet we need to apply a solid method to understand this instability… or can we think of concepts that allow for this movement, without our methodological approach becoming a circular argument? 

 

The appreciation for movement that I have recognized in mapping formation of identities in literature appears as a constant across disciplines.  This may sound a bit cliché, but really recognizing the tendency to oversimplify and assign “labels” when the reality is much more complex and diverse that we are ready to accept.  Kocku von Stcuckard's approach to esoteric discourse illustrated for me this constant search for a subjectum – or grounding- in which we all engage and have probably engaged in the history of scholarship.  Probably that a more honest approach would be to speak of TRACES (something that a thinker that Derrida will do) we can only follow the movement of the different, track it, attempt to understand it, but any fixed version is destined to change. 

 

Our own limitations, namely the fact that we are dealing with writing, seems to put a blindfold that prevents us from understanding the oral component of most traditions.  We only see the part that has been transcribed into paper.  Notwithstanding, around the written word an entire universe of ideas has been mobilized.  We ought to acknowledge the importance of that universe and how the artifact we study, the written narrative, is only one aspect of a larger system of  relations that construct what we conceive as Tradition.  

 

What larger and bigger mythology is at work?

In short, we must understand tradition as twofold;  one is conservative, refusing change, and perceived as necessary for the maintenance of the unity of a community. At least, this is how it justifies itself: people submit themselves to it, with the hope of forming a larger, collective whole.  The other is progressive; open to an ongoing endless process, always changing, shifting and just as necessary for the unity of the whole as the conservative.  As critics, we must observe how these two elements are 

negotiated. 

 

I am interested in looking how Maryse Condé and René Depestre resist the conservative, how their hybrid writing pushes the progression of the written tradition of the French canon forward, combating the forces that seek to push it down (under the argument that it does not qualify as quality literature) and resisting exclusion from the Traditional canon.  

 

Death appears as one of the vehicles these writers have recourse to state their independence at the same time that they become part of the main discourse. 

Notes for "Un Arc-en-ciel pour l'Occident Chrétien" by Depestre

Published in 1967 and written in Cuba, this poem by Haitian poet René Depestre expresses his Marxist version of Négritude, a poetic rendering of his resistance and revolt against racism, colonialism and oppression of the black members of humanity.  It is much like Césaire's Cahier, an Orphean plunge in the depths of pain, destruction and death to re-emerge changed, revitalized and cleansed.  It becomes Depestre's way to reaffirm the beauty of the black race and its contribution to the rest of the world.  Much like the often-cited Cahier, it gives back the dignity of productions, beliefs and wisdom stemming from the black Americas:  It contains the stage of this poet's vision of négritude. 

In it, the Vodou pantheon takes center stage as a way of re-vitalizing a dying West.  Here the wisdom of Vodou serves as a rainbow, a new hope, for the battered West.

It is important to note that Vodou has had a very long history of mixing religion and politics in Haiti, the second nation in the Americas to become independent from European powers and the only successful slave rebellion in history.  From the Bois Caiman Ceremony at the eve of the Haitian revolution, to today, these two elements have fed from each in other. 

Idealism that seeks to transcend, via synthesis, the white/black dichotomy that plagues the world.
Love and revolution are two sides of the same coin in Depestre. Sometimes love takes the form of eroticism that cannot be confused with the moralistic overtones that eroticism takes on the West.  If sexual acts are described, they represent an act of liberation from rationality, and not aggression against women.

In the opening, Depestre renders tribute to the influences of Jacques Roumain (Marxism in Haiti via Cuba that sings the land), René Char (Image of the rainbow as hope, renewal of innocence, step ahead of those suffering), Louis Aragon (poetry that is politically engaged; the image of the rainbow), Quechua wisdom (rainbow as weapon of the oppressed), Vicente Huidobro (rainbow from old days of Pharaohs that has lost its coloring - Chilean creacionismo, politically motivated), Carl Sandburg (American poet, Pulitzer prize winner and children short story writer where he praised the local landscape to replace European kings and queens from children's stories), Guillaume Apollinaire (French avant-garde, inspiration for cubists and surrealists, against war), and Frantz Fanon (humanism in F).

The poem is divided in five main sections that address the healing task of the White World via the Wisdom of the Vodou pantheon.

1. Prélude:

1. Affirmation of self "Oui, je suis un nègre-tempête/Un nègre racine d'arc-en-ciel" as part of a larger unity, that of the planet.  It is a force that is being channeled to transform, through the use of destructive forces "La foudre sur vos toits, c'est moi!/Le vent qui brise tout, c'est moi!/Le virus que ne pardonne pas, c'est moi"/Les désastres à la Bourse, c'est moi".  And we can say he becomes one with the elements to tell the world of the crimes and hypocrisy at the hands of those so proud of their crown of thorns (IE the Christian West).

2. The poetic voice breaks his silence to compose a list of evils with the hope of reconstituting a new "géographie solaire", he drowns old beliefs in alcohol (as a form of cleansing ritual) and gathers all the forces from an earthy "négrerie" (is this a preparation for négritude?)

3. Amidst death and destruction by fire, he prepares for further cleansing by fire. 

4. We find ourselves in Alabama to face the American family-who represent all that is wrong with America. Religious and political hypocrisy (KKK, electric chair, atomic bomb) and the poetic voice, like Abraham is ready to inflict destruction to bring about consciousness.  The entire family becomes a sanctuary for his Vodou ceremony and ritual.

5. All will be silence, except the sound of destruction of the lies of the Alabama judge and his family and the poetic voice converted into a dog, a cat, tree, sea urchin, topaz, ant and turtle, he will show them real spirituality. Because real time never arrive in Haiti (does he mean that the promise of modernity never reached its shores?)

2. Epiphanies des dieux du vaudou - ironic use of Christian tradition

• 1. Atibon Legba presents himself complaining because his ritual scene (bagui) is not ready for him.  He is the Loa of the crossroads, of doors and all crossings.  He straddles two worlds: life and death.  He bodes farewell to white customs and clamors for his ritual objects.  He has his apostles, but they will not commit treason like Judas.
• 2. Ogou Ferraille arrives with his sword and fire, ready to use it to enlarge men, whom he knows so well
• 3. Damballah-Wedo, the serpent-rainbow Loa is here to possess the oldest daughter of the Alabama judge. Loa of fertility
• 4. Agoue-Taroyo, the water Loa of the ocean, has come no longer in a forgiving spirit, but to unsettle and rise the destructive forces of water by possessing the wife.  (aside story in South Africa, he who took the lynched black man by the hand across the sea)
• 5. Ogou-Badagris another warrior Loa of the sword, comes to express his thirst for sacrifice.  Sexual sacrifice of the Alabama judge's daughters. 
• 6. Guédé Nibo parody of the crown of thorns, overthrows by mocking christian tradition
• 7. Azaka-Mede Loa of agriculture - sexual connotations, repetition of "coniller"
• conilleur" that ought to emphasize the liberating force brought about by invoking this Loa.
• 8. Cousin Zaka Loa of agriculture juxtaposes the cutting that takes place during field planting to the cutting that takes place in America, in the military form of wars (West Point), that kills hope.  His battle is Marxism (Playa Giron - Cuba- Bay of Pigs - 1961).  America is in decline and will
• 9. Agassou guardian of tradition - sexual is source of metamorphosis (into a mermaid)
• 10. Cap'tain Zombi altered stated of perception (Makes one think of Baudelaire's correspondances) Incantation that is an outburst of energy.  The zombi, a fantasy that plays with all rational ideas of life/death dichotomy is a living contradiction.  He straddles two worlds:  living and dead.  He is present as the voice of the dead, those who cannot be forgotten and will be remembered after Captain Zombi's ritual.  This section is very close to Césaire's Cahier.  The scenes of destruction represent a way to bring back to life a past that has not been dealt with and that is very much alive.  His is a voice of prophecy, by traveling in time he becomes a fuller presence, an experience of oneness with nature
• 11. Baron Samedi  his white beard is the nest for wasps (like white world is a nest of pain?) he casts spells and curses on all the family members of this Alabama home.  He plunges in alcohol (new baptism) their destinies and transforms them in zombis - Complete overturning : they become the zombis.
• 12. Chango the orisha of fire, thunder and lighting enters into ceremonial ritual to cleanse with alcohol (water) and fire the hands -barren of life- of the white judge in Alabama.  He cleanses the wombs of the young women and prepares them by purifying their bodies to receive (via a ritualized sexual act) the light of a new day, a new life.   
• 13. Ti-Jean Sandor has the power to transform the sons of the Alabama judge into animals or objects (a dog, a boiler) and seeks to use his hatred for the hate of the white man, in conjunction with the destructive forces of nature (cyclone and earthquake) to swallow the bitter Southern world.  His hatred is a healing one, it allows him to baptize all the pain and lost world of the black cosmos that emerges with renewed wings.
• 14. Agaou a Loa that will hold fast to the flesh of the white man until the revolution is accomplished.  He is a master of binding prejudice and fantasies to humiliate the white judge from Alabama
• 15. Baron-La-Croix has the ability to make himself in the form of a dog, a black butterfly and transform the entire family into small crosses.
• 16. Loko the Loa of maps/cardinal points; but also the Loa of initiation: he is both mirror and key that will unleash the transformations.

3. Le Bain du petit matin

Depestre reappears as the ceremonial houngan who controls the 15 Loas present in the epiphanies.  The sea thus becomes a ritual bathtub that will cleanse and transmute the evils of the racist South.  Sea water becomes the catalyst for transformation, containing fluids from all sorts of origins.  Each Loa provides an offering.  It will undo madness, provide hope, stop destruction, humanize men, bring joy and deliver all men from pain.

4. La Cantate à sept voix 

These seven female Loas enter the stage to clarify what is going on.  They reiterate the departure of the male Loas across the ocean towards America (Alabama), which also has to be conceived in larger terms for what it represents (the epitome of racism in the white world) to possess the soul and body of Depestre/poet. These female vodou goddesses also discuss how they will cleanse the white hatred, to help the tidal wave that Depestre represents to be transformed into light, truth.  It represents an alchemical change "copper became gold".
They will each sing the praises of 7 pillars of innocence: Makandal (Haiti), Toussaint Louverture (Haiti), Dessalines (Haiti), Antonio Maceo (Cuba),  Charlemagne Peralte (Haiti), Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Malcolm X (US)

5. Les sept pilliers de l'innocence

Ode à Makandal

Ayizan (Atibon Legba's wife) Invokes him from the depths of the sea.  He who belongs to the vegetable and animal world more than to the human world. The first to attempt to cleanse the white hatred (through poisoning, fire, vodou) arrives to join in the overall cleanse.

Ode à Toussaint Louverture

Aida Wedo (wife of Damballah, goddess of the rainbow) memorializes the father of new beginnings to bring about the first bells of recovery.  To remind us that white oppressors are not insurmountable, that the ire of the black oppressed can be powerful. And that even while his destiny was tragic (died in the Jura prison in France, frozen amidst the snow) in his island, freedom had already taken root.

Ode à Dessalines

Erzili (beauty, love, luxury; often identified with Mary) invokes Dessalines to bring the destructive energy of fire (the same that was used in Haiti) to eradicate hate and dogmas of the White Alabama.

Ode à Antonio Maceo (el titano de bronze; revolucion independentista de Cuba, inspiration for Jose Marti, believed in Republican model of governing, refused American intervention )

Caridad del Cobre (virgin of the sea; twin to Erzili in Cuba) after lauding his size, origins and convictions (action and morals) praises him joined by other insurgent leaders of America (Fidel Castro, Marti, Toussaint, Bolivar, OHiggins, Juarez, San Martin, Lincoln, John Brown, Peralte) in an independent and free Cuba, a land that has overcome racial divisions. 

Ode à Charlemagne Peralte

Guede Maza l'Orage (androgynous Loa; grave digger) brings from the dead the story of the man who had the courage to stand up to the "Yankee law" in Haiti, who became a martyr in a cross, who had the last words of life and pride amidst a miasma of defeat and death.  In this ode we are surprised by the humility that asks to face their enemies like brothers, to welcome them and fight for liberty to the last drop of Haitian force.      

 Ode à Patrice Lumumba

Simbi, the goddess of water sings the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, deposed and killed with the collaboration of Belgian forces, recalling his collision against the capitalist interests of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga, the largest mining company in the Belgian Congo.  His innocence and pure intentions, which symbolize the decolonization movements from Algeria to South Africa, are met with not only the capitalists interests of Europe and US, but with those Africans who collaborate with and enrich themselves thanks to the West.  But his visionary ideas could not be realized.  It was too late, he was sold by traitors and his light could not shine over Africa. 

Ode à Malcolm X

Grande Brigitte (wife to Baron Samedi and Loa of the dead) sings to the black man from Harlem who hated corruption and received his wisdom from the earth.  A man who for a while hated the white man and then suddenly changed his views and allowed doubt to enter this hatred, and he was transformed by sadness and cleansed through his tears the evils committed by man.  Faith became a safe haven in his fight, not just his Islamic creed, but he also reached out to Christians to be islands of peace among pain.  And we are told that when he begins journey to recount how the white man has been spreading hatred on the earth, he was killed.  The Harlem-lamb who hated tears, chains and hatred is no more. 

Aphorismes et paraboles du nouveau monde

1-9 Denegation of history of racism and slavery - or a an attempt to rewrite a new edited history of the world?
10 -18 retelling the main axis of the dark history of abuse of men by men; the lines that divided one side from the other were clearly divided in the sand
19 and part of this abuse gave birth to creoles:  born of the encounter of white and black men and women
20 clandestine love
21- new brotherhood despite the rules separating one race from the other
22-23
24 dance and eroticism becomes an outlet for those kept as animals; it becomes a way of expression, of freedom
26-30 Overturning the ideas attached to black; ceases to be a lack and becomes source of creativity, clarity, joy

Pour un nouvel age du coeur humain (For a New Age of the Human Heart)

Les Dieux atomiques d'Omaha  (The Atomic Gods of Omaha)

This could be thought of as the moment when the poet and his vodou pantheon will put into practice the regenerative method Depestre has been singing about.  Here we are met with real events and the possibility of mechanistic annihilation of men and the planet.  The Atomic bomb becomes an ever-present menace that terrifies the poetic voice.

On the one hand those who seek to destroy it along with all its poetic and creative visions, while on the other rise the vodou gods, who this time appear terrified a the view of the latest dehumanized creation men.  A machine that has the ability to destroy beyond human dimensions because it is no longer bound to man.

Notre-dame des cendres
If Helen represents lust and greed, and she is on the side of those manufacturing the H-bomb, the pleas of the poetic voice to her to abandon that camp and return to the gods of vodou represents an attempt to redress order, bring back creativity for the good of humanity and abandon destructive drives.   

Romancero d'une petite lampe

The only way out of this destructive impasse is for man is to go back to its humanistic creative sources.  Depestre is calling for a new humanism, more generous, less violent.

His song is a small light, without grandiose claims, but seeking to calm the pain, and stand in its humanity, free, innocent like all men on earth.  And yet he does not abandon his subversive style in his last move.

The poetic voice expresses his fraternity with the Christian West in a final attempt towards undoing the Christian dogmatic system by transforming the canonical sign of the cross.
 In a modified benediction, he replaces

in the name of the father for Au nom de la révolte

of the son for et de la justice

of the holy spirit for et de la tendresse

and Amen for Ainsi soit-il

Jacques Roumain - fragmentary notes

Jacques Roumain – Les Gouverneurs de la Rosée (1946)

Political context for Haiti – return of the laborers (Main character Manuel , his mane being an allegory of the manual laborers returning from Cuba)  here we have another novel where errancy and exile are explored. 

Last chapter “La Fin et le Commencement” is the clear indication that the death of the main character was not a death, but a new beginning:

“Une mince lame d’argent s’avançait dans la plaine et les habitants l’accompagnaient en criant et en chantant.   Antoine marchait à leur tête et il battait son tambour avec orgueil.  

- Oh Manuel, Manuel, Manuel, pourquoi es-tu mort? Gémit Délira.

- Non, dit Anaise et elle souria et la pressa doucement contre son ventre où remuait la vie nouvelle” (192)

Stylistically, he is a huge influence for Depestre.  Roumain mixes landscapes, music and voodoo rituals.

Opening is also a reference to death: “Nous mourrons tous…” (11)

Cyrano de Bergerac or the non-classical 17th century writer/philosopher

Cyrano or the non-classical 17^th century writer/philosopher

My research has also taken me to the 17th century (1657) to the work of Cyrano de Bergerac.  The Other World : The States and Empires of the Moon and The States and Empire of the Sun.  In my goal to trace representations of death in the canon (although the canon has tried to forget Cyrano – but this is a matter for another time and place) I performed a close reading of this marvelous text that crosses over many genres and defies labeling.  On the surface science fiction (flying to the moon and the sun) yet really engaging many genres to create a utopian redefinition of society.  Through inversions, the author manages to attack, critique and show his disdain for religious, political and social orders.  Yet, we must admit that it is only science fiction on the surface because the secret thread that binds the two large sections of the text (voyage to the sun/voyage to the moon) is a complex philosophical discourse that at best could be described as an anti-system.  This is the book of inversions where the author refuses, following no doubt the footsteps of Montaigne, a tradition of instability: normative codes of gender, logic and narratology are turned on their heads.  And I say it is an Anti-system as it refuses to claim allegiance to a system of thought (or elaborating an eclectic new one?). In fact, the narrative voice (Je/Dyrcoma) advances that opposing views can coexist when Gassendi and Descartes (as philosophers/angels in the sun/heaven) have finally glossed over their differences (Descartes’ Universal doubt - something that Gassendi rejects - and Descartes refusal to accept the void -something that for Gassendi had to exist to explain movement)

 Characters change gender throughout the text; the narrator will be both first person singular (JE) and third person singular Dyrcona (a reorganization of the name Cyrano); his travels will be both an ascent and a descent since the sun and the moon will be both in the center of the earth and beyond it.  Je/Dyrcona will be constantly freed and imprisoned by supernatural beings that insist on putting “Man” on trial.   

I was particularly interested in following his treatment of death to link it to his  “opaque” or anti-systematic philosophy.  I am not sure I have been able to link the two, not sure if this is something I want to push forward…

Yet if we consider the sun as a utopian world that also represents the afterlife (after all that is where all souls go after their death and philosophers get to debate their systems in all freedom) does the text consider death as good?     

249 : « La mort, me dirent-ils (me mettant le bec à l’oreille), n’est pas sans doute un grand mal, puisque Nature notre bonne mère y assujettit tous ses enfants ; et ce ne doit pas être une affaire de grande conséquence, puisqu’elle arrive à tout moment, et pour si peu de chose ; car si la vie était si excellente, il ne serait pas en notre pouvoir de ne la point donner ; ou si la mort trainait après soi des suites de l’importance que tu fais accroire, il ne serait pas en notre pouvoir de la donner. »

Vodou as sacred theater - Notes

Vodoo as sacred theater

In Vodou a sacred theatre, Marie Jose Alcide Saint-Lo’s dissertation, she looks at how Voodoo can be better understood from the perspective of a sacred theatre. That is to look at Voodoo comparatively akin to the birth of Greek tragedy, European theatre (10-16^th) and Japanese drama (16^th).

In her study she claims that all the elements of theatre are found in voodoo ceremonies: 

Impersonation (possessions would be choreographed yet believed)- Stanislavski: “Truth on stage is whatever we can believe with sincerity… each and every moment must be saturated with a belief in truthfulness of the emotion felt, and the action carried out by the actor”

Mise en scene: The Houngan in role of director and creative mind conveys to his “cast” the movements and directs the pace of the music that will be part of the ceremony.

The audience feeds the spectacle, energizes the performance of the practionners, without them there would be no ceremony.  Participants and spectators interact and dialogue with each other through dance. 

Chorus: structural feature to the ceremony and element of spectacle.  The ritual is shaped around them.

Music is in a sense an integral part of the ceremony as the drumming dictates the rhythm of dance and the energy for the audience and participants.  Drum being sacred (it has a spirit and invokes the spirit Hounto) – Life being rhythmic, the drum recreates this rhythm of life. 

 Scenery: area reserved for the ceremony; preparations that take place in the Peristyle (beaten earth, covered with palm leaves or sheet iron and the pillar or Poto-Mitan) Sprinkling of flour and floor decorations vèvè (in line with cardinal points)

Costume: each loa or deity has a particular aesthetic aspect: color symbolisms. 

Plot:  panoramic plots

Characters

Diction

Finally, she claims that Voodoo has become entertainment for tourists and the curious alike.  Much like theater began as a sacred elements in Greek life and evolved into an art form for entertainment, Voodoo in Haiti also has undergone this transformation.

Death and French Writers - A Non-Comprehensive Chronological Survey

As preparation for the comprehensive exams I have gone through my notes, tried to rework my understanding of a few key texts that I will use to support my arguments during the exams, and have attempted to trace a secret line that will bind my story, after all as we are all well aware, we all need narratives to make sense.  I have purposefully looked at how authors have represented death, reacted to their own fears and constructed a way to confront the problems of being alive.

So at the risk of boring you a bit I will try to summarize in what will amount to an oversimplified version of how some texts, eclectically selected, treat and deal with the question of death across time in the French language.

During the middle ages I consider the Song of Roland, an anonymous epic poem that was conveniently used by the Capetian Kings to justify the unification of the kingdom under Charlemagne and was “re-discovered” in the 19^th century to ground a nationally-based literature looking for a precise point in time, an origin, a birth.  In fact this text was originally in Anglo Norman, but popular among Christian troops (many versions circulated in different dialects) as a rallying song for those heading into battle during the crusades.  Here death –the death of Roland- serves as a justification and rationalization for Charlemagne’s rule and the violence against the Muslims.  The gory details of his last battle and death serve as propaganda to advance religious and political needs. 

Then I look at a few Saints Lives, for instance at The Sequence of Saint Eulalie, a canticle (short rhythmic poem song during mass) that happens to be the oldest surviving text in Old French, where we are met with the life of a martyr who enacts Christian ideals of good vs. evil, withdrawal from earthly life in exchange for eternal life.  Her death is described as a victory over temptation.

Finally towards the end of the Middle Ages I look at Francois Villon and his testament (Ballade des Pendus) where death takes on a grotesque face and we are met with macabre humour.  In his poetry we find an ironic tone towards death that seeks to give shape to the tragic reality of men:  we all live with the spectre of our end.  Rabelais, Baudelaire and all the poète maudits will find in his work sources of inspiration.

Rabelais:  Death is intrinsically linked to laughter – both are creative engines – they liberate truth and incarnate a world upside down, in constant re-creation

De la Boétie: On Involuntary Servitude:  Why if man is born naturally free he chooses to serve others?  Vice? Cowardice? To be free all one has to do is to desire it so.  We serve because of habit although all men can imagine liberty thus they can be free at any moment.  Yet the institution of tyrants  (who have arrived at the top by election, or by force, or by succession) seeks to pacify men by making them stupid (via religion, entertainment or the stupidity of nationalisms).  Those who surround the tyrant are the farthest from their liberty.  The court is nothing but a crowd of fools; the tyrant is incapable of love, love is sacred and true friendship requires total equality.

Montaigne: Death is what drives man to confront himself. We have in this Renaissance man psychoanalysis before such concepts are even possible.  Birth of a genre (essay), birth of the concept of subjectivity in the world of French letters (all writers interested in these questions will go back to him) Ambivalence and undoes the myth of unity of self (“A chaque minute, il me semble que je m’echappe” – “Je suis autre moi-même”). Every act of reading is an act of translation (“car je ne vois le tout de rien”)

Du Bellay: Deffence and Illustration of the French Language (1549).  During King Francois I institution of French as official language of the court and legal matters. Birth of the city of French letters- invitation to stop translating from Greek and Latin:  create in the new language of the nation. Refusal of medieval values – recreation of the French identity based on classical archetypes.  Poems will become the monuments to the nation.

Descartes: We can prove the existence of God; in fact he will ground Truth. One point of view, one man (himself) will build a philosophical edifice.  Method of doubt.

Cyrano de Bergerac: Plurality of text: many genres, many voices: advocates incredulity and doubt in a century of Cartesian method.  Inversion of sexuality: world of dreams and ambiguity.  Liberty will be the recurrent theme in the world of the sun and the moon.  Place of irony as political, religious and social critique.  Once we die, we have a transformation of matter:  death does not exist: there is only transmutation.

Bossuet:  A direct look at death, in the direction of the limits of man is necessary to know the immortality of the soul and find the path to eternal life.  Faith can be grounded on fear.  Rhetorical strategies : the corpse and the grave serve as springboards to knowing God. 

Pascal:  “Les Hommes n’ayant pu guérir la mort, la misère, l’ignorance, ils se sont avisés pour se rendre heureux de n’y point penser” Man finds “divertissements” do distract from his angst face to death. 

Racine: Classical tragedy form in France (5 acts, alexandrine form) Man cannot escape his fate- he is driven by passions (deathly illness) sent from the gods.  There is no way out, the fall is inescapable and grace is uncertain (Jansenism)

Corneille:  Tragedy in the service of the king.  Under Carndinal Richelieu, Intervention of the King to resolve the intrigue (Le Cid, Horace). In the case of the cid, we have the first time the French Academy has to decide on aesthetic questions.  Institution of national codes for art – to sustain the regime.  Man is great and his passions ought to guide his moral.  It is through the choice of his heroes that Corneille lauds man.  Man possesses self-control and his moral dilemmas are a way to know himself better.

Molière: elevate comedy to the heights of tragedy to decry hypocrisy and falsity.  Theatre is a public mirror (psychological analysis of typologies).  Ridicule is the best tool for moralists.  Stupidity of science and doctors (they are only driven by greed and true knowing only resides in common sense)

Voltaire: Man is morally superior to the gods, Victory of Humanism of the enlightment. In his early tragedies (like Oedipus) we have an accusation of divine order that traps men into impossible situations.  Denunciation of religious order (metaphysical and concrete) Refusal of philosophical systems, only man alone (Candide in his garden) can create his own way of life.  Neither an Utopian world (Panglos/Leibnitz) nor pessimistic (Martin/Pierre Bayle)

Marquis de Sade: Philosophy in the Boudoir  7 dialogues, no narrator ( theatrical nature of the work, almost stage directions) Sexually explicit text is weaved with political discourse.  Death is again like with Cyrano the transmutation of matter.  Deeply anti-religious: Republic form of government and Religion do not coexist.  The fervour once directed towards god and the church will we channelled to the nation-state.  Man (who he views negatively: continuously seeking slavery) needs to believe in something greater than him.  Men are led by their desires and even behind noble endeavours hides less honourable drives.  If La Boétie shows us the voluntary servitude, Sade shows us voluntary illusions (we desire because we imagine). 

Diderot: Natural religion:  pleasure of doing the good and the horror of evil – Intelligence vs. Instinct is the conflict that would remain irresolute.  In Jacques le fataliste the master is free and believes in freedom yet remains fearful and inert while Jacques does not believe in freedom (everything is written in a long roll in the sky) yet exercises his power. Trip to nowhere, constantly interrupted narratives of Jacques love awakening to exasperate the reader.  8 days where very little happens, there is no philosophical system: the only constant is the ambiguity

Rousseau: Discourse on Science and Letters (1750) surprising claim for a philosopher in the 18^th century; progress in science and the arts is the source of unhappiness.  Man is good and happy in nature (natural religion) it is civilisation that renders him unhappy (Pre-Romantic).  Virtue depends on man’s conscience not on science (he does not believe in material progress). Progress is born out of vice (pride), art is nothing but desire for luxury. The more man separates himself from nature, the clearer the picture of his own death will become thus the more unhappy he becomes

 Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) man is born free, yet submits to laws created man who concieved the idea of property.  Those who sought to possess conceived the most well thought out pan to subject others to their will.  Law of property is against the natural law.  Against Hobbes since passions are not found in nature, but in society. 

Laclos:  Dangerous Liaisons denunciation of a society where women cannot possibly be the equals of men due to structural factors.  He is a feminist in the 18^th century.  Women who are educated are trapped in a world that forces them to hide their intellect and to have recourse to vile strategies to disguise who they truly are (Merteuil); piety is decried as well as it keeps women powerless and perfect victims to men (like Valmont) who understand their fragile psychology (Tourvel).  He is not a moralist in the usual sense; he is extremely progressive in the sense that women are labelled as slaves that need a revolution to claim their equal stake in society.  Without equality of the sexes, society will be perverse. 

Simone de Beauvoir: All her works are situated in relation to what I would call an intellectual autobiography.  She seeks to reveal her coming into consciousness that uncovers myths that hide a social reality - a social reality driven by bourgeois ideals.  “Auto criticism” is her intellectual journey.  The experience of nothingness (néant) among human action is never overcome despite the will to deny it. 

Albert Camus:  Absurdity of man’s condition was to be worked out in four creative stages:  Cycle of the absurd (The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus), the cycle of revolt (The Rebel), the cycle of measure (The First Man), the cycle of love: never accomplished – died too young.  In the modern world, l’absurde is the impasse that man’s thinking meets when he is faced with his  desire for the eternal, in a mortal form.  Conscious of his own death, man must accept joyously this condition, as this is his only route to liberty and happiness.  Joy resides in the acceptance of the present, a life built on the belief that all is absurd, yet worth living.  “Je me revolte, donc nous sommes”  

Nathalie Sarraute: the total collapse of the old conceptions of the novel; Le Nouveau Roman:  we are immersed in the world of sensation; the construction of characters in the old sense does not make any sense for the writer- a self-conscious act of creation.  “Sous-Conversations” (under-conversations) what she terms the

André Malraux: The Human Condition. Meditation in the form of tragic historical novel to show that man is in prison (pascalian line), he is not the key to the cosmos.  Set in 1927 at the turn of the Chinese communist revolt, it is a feverish inquiry where exceptional circumstances (China) of exemplary human beings seek to find the meaning of their existence to break (undo) their feeling of loneliness.  The human condition is one where we seek to escape reality (gambling, sex, power, drugs, ideologies) The desire to escape a tragic condition is closely tied to fear of death.  Malraux’s solution is found in Art, a contemplative form of art inspired by his encounters with the Orient (Tentation de l’Occident). “L’art c’est le chant de la metamorphose- les esthétiques, les rêves et même les religions ne sont plus que les livrets d’une inépuisable musique” (Imaginary Museum).  A work of art is a voice, a presence that survives life.