Abstract

By following the use made by playwrights and writers around 1900 of a famous biblical sentence (John XX, 16-17), this essay hopes to outline some major features of the decadent imagination and poetics in Europe. From Balzac onwards, Jesus' sentence to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection ("Do not touch me") is used on stage (Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Lorrain, Sardou, D'Annunzio) or by novelists (Rachilde) in the context of an encounter between the living and the dead. The famous sentenceis now very often pronounced by women on the stage - and thus reflects the threatening aggression of men, in the context of violence between the sexes. Far from conveying the Bible's message of hope and resurrection, the considered texts lead it astray on the paths of pessimism and despair. Yet their issue is not only philosophical. They also reveal the poetics of Decadence: pronounced only once in the Bible, the phrase becomes almost a leitmotif in the productions of 1900 and reveals a deep mistrust in the power of language. Profanation of the holy message, distortion of the Word, stammering pronunciation - some of Decadence's poetics and aesthetics are illuminated through the uses (and misuses) of this one single, but famous, sentence.

Highlights

  • Summary By following the use made by playwrights and writers around 1900 of a famous biblical sentence (John XX, 16-17), this essay hopes to outline some major features of the decadent imagination and poetics in Europe

  • They reveal the poetics of Decadence: pronounced only once in the Bible, the phrase becomes almost a leitmotif in the productions of 1900 and reveals a deep mistrust in the power of language

  • Il n’est pas sans doute jusqu’au geste même de traduire la formule biblique qui ne doive, de ce point de vue, retenir l’attention: loin de sa lettre séculaire, grecque ou latine, l’interdit subit désormais la contingence des langues multiples – il résonne en français, en norvégien, en chant d’opéra et, par son babélisme même, sort de l’unité évangélique

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Summary

Introduction

Et il va sans dire que le sexe de celui qui parle – c’est une femme, et non un homme, qui s’exclame “Ne me touchez pas!” – est largement responsable de cette terreur. On notera au passage que la puissance dramatique et fantastique de cette rencontre avec l’au-delà, présente dès l’épisode biblique mais teintée de terreur chez un Ibsen, n’échappa point au plus célèbre dramaturge français de l’époque, maître du suspens et de la peur au théâtre: Victorien Sardou qui, dans son drame de 1903, Dante, semble réutiliser à son tour la formule du noli me tangere dans le cadre d’un épisode de résurrection, qu’il rend terrifiant.

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