L’appel du néant substantiel : Claude Simon et la mort tellurique

Résumé

THE CALL OF NOTHINGNESS : CLAUDE SIMON AND A TELLURIC TYPE OF DEATH

The article proposes the analysis of different types of agony suffered by living beings as a re­sult of contact with the element of Earth. The study is based on a corpus composed of seven novels by Claude Simon written after 1957, in a period of his fascination with formal experiments, and pu­blished by the Éditions de Minuit. The paper focuses on the representation of human body exposed to an evil influence of the Earth as element. Earth is considered as an anti-maternal force and a major destructive agent in Simon’s universe. The reflections on the telluric character of death are inspired, among others, by Gaston Bachelard’s thematic criticism and his conception of the four elements.