Sophie Guermès

This article demonstrates the importance of the Sea in the life and the works of Henri Michaux. The representation of the Sea is subject to the “dictatorship of the Imagination”. According to his will, Michaux changes seascapes, personifies fishes and oisters, allows the soul to swim. The sea also inspires a lot of metaphors, particularly developed in the mescalinian texts. Drug becomes Ocean; the poet becomes a castaway, a drowned, then resurrected man sailing on a purified water.

The pandemic affecting our world in 2020 leads us to question a centuries-old socio-cultural practice, namely the wearing of masks, and to rethink their use in light of the current context. Depending on the civilizations and eras, masks have had various functions: religious, social and artistic. None of these functions corresponds, however, to the recent use of masks. Henri Michaux, Jean Starobinski, Michel Butor and Yves Bonnefoy will help us to answer these questions: How the wearing of masks does change our relation to identity? our relationship with others? Does not seeing the whole face make it possible to see others better?

Naturalism is based on the sense of Reality. But Zola broke this one in the second part of his novel La Faute de l’abbé Mouret, by the description of the garden named « Paradou ». As usual, he used numerous documents and he inserted lists of names (flowers, plants, trees) into his novel ; but the result is not the same as in the other novels containing lists of names of foodstuffs (Le Ventre de Paris) or clothes (Au Bonheur des dames). The reference vanishes because Zola often accumulates names of plants unknown although existing ; besides, he multiplies metaphors, so that it is impossible to visualize Paradou, which is a strange creation. The description of the garden distorts and even destroys reality but builds a poetic object.