Gide et le mythe grec. Suivi de fragments du ‘Traité des Dioscures’ et autres textes inédits ed. by Patrick Pollard

Abstract

MLR, .,   that mourning, like melancholia, might be an interminable process’ (p. ). is shi contributes to making Freud so central to the book’s reading of Proust, since Proustian mourning too, Elsner argues, is characterized by interminability. is is illustrated by the two main examples of the study (the narrator’s mourning over his grandmother and Albertine), both of which depict mourning as ‘an interminable process forever trapped between anticipation and belatedness’ (p. ). While the ‘distorted time-structure of mourning’ (p. ) is the subject of Chapter , Chapter  excavates the novel’s ‘topography of mourning’ (p. ). Drawing on Freud’s de- finition of the uncanny as ‘deriving from a shiing and thereby fluid distinction between imagination and reality’ (p. ), Elsner persuasively argues that when the seemingly familiar spaces of Balbec, Venice, and Paris are re-experienced in the wake of loss, they turn into uncanny ‘spaces of mourning as the narrator’s inner grief slowly invades the exterior reality in which [mourning] is experienced’ (p. ). e section on Paris centres on the wartime passage of Le Temps retrouvé, in which Proust explores mourning as a public and collective experience. In Elsner’s shrewd analysis of this passage, an examination of developments in mourning fashion during the First World War serves as a point of departure for discussing social and cultural aspects of mourning. e final chapter reads Proust’s drame du coucher as the primal scene of mourning in the novel and engages in dialogue with Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan in order to bring out the ethical dilemmas inherent to the narrator’s first and subsequent attempts to translate loss into writing. Its lucid and nuanced discussion of the Proustian ethics of creation is part of what makes this book a valuable addition to the field of Proust studies and a pleasure to read. U  B S Y A Gide et le mythe grec. Suivi de fragments du ‘Traité des Dioscures’ et autres textes inédits. Ed. by P P. (Bibliothèque Gidienne, ) Paris: Classiques Garnier. .  pp. €. ISBN ––––. At the beginning of Gide’s long career was Le Traité du Narcisse (), and towards its close he wrote ésée (), a first-person account by the mythical hero himself. In between was a tragedy Philoctète (), a sotie entitled Le Prométhée mal enchaîné (), a dramatic reworking of Œdipe (), and a partially complete Proserpine, which mutated into a mélodrame called Perséphone (). Patrick Pollard signals several other projects that were considered at length but never came to fruition: a Sylla, a Midas, an Ajax, to name but three. Add to these the Considérations sur la mythologie grecque (), consisting of fragments of a planned Traité des Dioscures, and a meditation on Greek mythology entitled Un esprit non prévenu (), both of which Pollard presents with important manuscript variants; reading these alongside numerous manuscript musings and notes rich in insights published here for the first time, one begins to understand why Gide noted in his diary on  February : ‘La culture grecque est entrée comme composante de ma nature’ (Journal II: –, ed. by Martine Sagaert (Paris: Pléiade, ), p. ). Pollard underlines Gide’s insistence on the rational, psychological character of  Reviews myth—which put the writer at odds with theoreticians who argued for symbolic, ritual, or sociological readings. Surveying the field of classical scholarship and the sources Gide had at his disposal, Pollard points to reference works and academic studies while stressing also the ancient texts which treat of—and embroider on—the figures and narratives of the Greek myths. Another important factor was the rivalry, evident in their correspondence, with Gide’s literary confrères such as Paul Valéry, Marcel Drouin, Henry de Régnier, and especially Pierre Louÿs, whose variations on Greek myth no doubt spurred Gide’s own creative reworkings. As for Gide’s understanding of the myths, Pollard takes us through a series of readings articulated around themes that resonate through his œuvre. Hence, under the heading ‘L’amour impossible’ feature the Dioscuri Castor and Pollux, Narcissus, and Orpheus and Eurydice; while the household of King Minos—Pasiphaë, Ariadne, Phaedra, Androgeos, the Minotaur, Daedalus, and Icarus—exemplifies ‘la famille’. e gods Dionysus...