%0 Journal Article
%T From the tree to grass to the tree – Still life and living life in literature
%A Settimini, Marco
%J Cahiers ERTA
%V 2014
%R 10.4467/23538953CE.14.012.3419
%N Numéro  6 Nature morte
%P 37-55
%K modernity, literature, Deleuze (Gilles), Miller (Henry), Proust (Marcel)
%@ 2300-4681
%D 2014
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/cahiers-erta/article/de-larbre-a-lherbe-a-larbre-nature-morte-et-nature-vivante-en-litterature
%X According to Spengler the experience of modernity is marked by the struggle of organic nature against inorganic minerality, and of blood’s supremacy against money’s abstraction. The city is the matterly and symbolic place of this era, where inorganic economy wins over cosmic order, and avant-garde over traditions. Trees disappear as physical presence and as metaphysical symbol of transcendence. According to Deleuze literature offer the signs of a plant imagery made of trees, leaves, flowers, musk, rhizomes, grass and algae. The book can be like a tree, the image of an organic order, or Whitman’s grass growing in any place, or the inorganic rhizomatic structure of Joyce and Proust’s chaos, fragmentation and decomposition. Opposite stands Henry Miller’s interpretation of D. H. Lawrence’s works and life as symbol of the cosmic tree standing like De l’arbre à l’herbe à l’arbre : nature morte et nature vivante en littérature 55 Christ’s cross in the middle of the petrified forest. The desert or wasted land of modernity.