Le Clézio. The proces-verbal of an exemplary failure
The study aims at a brief and synthetic overall image of J.M.G. Le Clézio’s work, from its beginning (with the novel Proces-verbal, awarded in 1963 the Renaudot prize) to the present (represented by such novela as The Gold Fish). Le Clézio appears thus as a formal upholder of the experimental poetics of the French „nouveau roman” and of OULIPO’s, but his characters are not dis-humanized and reified as required by the respective dogmas. Thus, Le Clézio proves to be, in his first novels, a humanist dissimulating his traditional values under formal experimental (anti-humanist) pretences. In his last novels, the humanist artist is replaced by a sheer apologist of political correctness, all the formal experiments being left aside and ignored – the artist being superceded by the ideologist. Le Clézio’s evolution may be understood as the proces-verbal of an exemplary failure, proving once more that the ideologist, if given the initiative, always removes the artist.
1. Michel Butor, Cercetări asupra tehnicii romanului, în Romul Munteanu, Noul roman francez, Bucureşti, ELU, 1968, p. 211.
2. idem, p. 219.
3. Alain Robbe-Grillet, O cale pentru un nou roman, în Romul Munteanu, op. cit.,p. 170.
4. idem, p. 172.
5. Nathalie Sarraute, Vremea suspiciunii, în Romul Munteanu, op. cit., p. 202.
6. v. Magazine litteraire, n. 362, p. 30.
7. Donald Morrison, In Search of Lost Time. The Death of French Culture, în Time, 21 noiembrie 2007, accesabil la adresa http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article- /0,9171,1686532,00.html.
8. Mircea Mihăieş, Cine a distrus cultura franceză?, în România literară, 10/2009, p. 2.
9. Nathalie Sarraute, Vremea suspiciunii, în Romul Munteanu, op. cit., p. 198.
Michel Butor, Cercetări asupra tehnicii romanului / Researches on the technique of the novel, in Romul Munteanu, Noul roman francez / The French „nouveau roman”, Bucureşti, ELU, 1968.
Mircea Mihăieş, Cine a distrus cultura franceză? / Who destroyed French culture?, in România literară, 10/2009.
Donald Morrison, In Search of Lost Time. The Death of French Culture, in Time, 21 noiembrie 2007 (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171 , 1686532,00.html).
Alain Robbe-Grillet, O cale pentru un nou roman / A path for a new novel, in Romul Munteanu, Noul roman francez / The French „nouveau roman”, Bucureşti, ELU, 1968.
Nathalie Sarraute, Vremea suspiciunii / The time of suspicion, in Romul Munteanu, Noul roman francez / The French „nouveau roman”, Bucureşti, ELU, 1968.
