La Beauté de la haine. Essais de misologie littéraire

Abstract

Jan Miernowski. La Beaute de haine. Essais de misologie litteraire. Geneva: Droz, 2014. Pp. 280. La Beaute de haine turns critical attention away from the causes of hatred towards the noyau dur de l'odieux, haine plus pure qui echappe a nos tentatives de rationalisation (9). Under study here is thus not the hatred addressed by, for example, the social sciences or politics, a hatred that can be analyzed and as if explained away, but a hatred that is defined by its autosuffisance, by being autotelique, and which becomes principe de creation esthetique (10) and a moteur du discours (11). Miernowski makes his focus clear by turning to Aristotle who distinguishes anger (which exists and can be negotiated in discourse) from hatred (which is irrecuperable [13]). The book's chapters thus set out to examine this passion that, in its seeming exclusion from rhetoric, ends up turning against itself and against the texts that express it, resulting in the opposite of philology, i.e. misologie ou art d'abhorrer litterature elle-meme (10). This is a wide-ranging study, chronologically and methodologically, ranging from Renaissance love poetry to the writings of contemporary authors such as Amelie Nothomb. The following summary surely cannot do it justice. The first chapter asks how the culture [...] erocentrique and the philo-logues of Renaissance France might also give voice to hatred. The initial proposal is expressed via a comparison: hatred haunts Renaissance harmonies like the anamorphic skull in Holbein's famous Ambassadors--La haine y constitue une dechirure qui met en question les proportions harmonieuses de cette civilisation de l'amour (23). Miernowski explores this hypothesis most notably in the period's love poetry (Eros, Anteros, Anti-Eros, etc.) and in the Wars of Religion. Chapter two turns attention to the seventeenth century and la haine tragique (75), offering close readings in particular of Corneille's Rodogune (whose Cleopatra Corneille himself calls tres mechante), Medee (Je ferai par haine), and Racine's Thebaide. Miernowski argues that le vrai heros [cornelien] is incapable d'assumer un pretendu devoir de haine, allowing him to revendiquer son identite ethique (91) and concludes that unlike Renaissance literature, seventeenth-century texts aim especially to donner du plaisir, un plaisir d'autant plus intense qu'il est nourri d'admiration et qu'il peut etre assaisonne d'une douce culpabilite (124). …