Les aspects modernes du magique dans Le Roi pêcheur de Julien Gracq

Abstract

The authors set out to show through their study of Le Roi pêcheur by Julien Gracq, born in 1910, that in this play written in 1942, the magical aspect appears in various forms and figures, through the fabulous quest of the Graal. Presented as a magnetizing force, arousing both adhesion and repulsion, it induces in the protagonists a feeling of exaltation and despair. Such a relation to the magical object in the way that it is in the centre of the imaginary universe of a contemporary author, in the way that it is the expression of surrealist modernity, is none the less the expression, in ambivalence, of postulations and aspirations of a society. Le Roi pêcheur thus becomes a myth expressing through its dramaturgy, the condition of man who, confronted with the tragic aspect of his destiny, is led into secreting for himself, the magic element without which but also with which, he cannot live.The magic element then appears as a human production taking its source in the different requests of man. Thus we must not be surprised if our contemporary society, which is all the more fascinated by the magicelement as it is confronted to the scientific truth that reveals its limits, has come to develop in such an intensive way, words and attitudes, putting forth quasi-theatrical presentations of the magic element in which is found perpetuated the double postulation identifiable in Le Roi pêcheur, fascination and repulsion.Thus, we can observe in Julien Gracq’s play a prefiguration of the end of our century.