| Titre | Étranges rencontres : Julius Zeyer et Marguerite Yourcenar [Strange Coincidences : Julius Zeyer and Marguerite Yourcenar] | |
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| Auteur | Hana Voisine-Jechová | |
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Revue | Revue des Etudes Slaves |
| Numéro | Vol. 82, no 3, 2011 Rêve et utopie dans la littérature tchèque | |
| Rubrique / Thématique | Articles |
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| Page | 435-446 | |
| Résumé anglais |
Strange Coincidences Marguerite Yourcenar and Julius Zeyer
The Oriental stories of Julius Zeyer (Evening Party by Idalia, 1892) and Marguerite Yourcenar (How Wang-Fô Was Saved, 1936) have similar plots : a picture becomes a new reality and enables the painter to escape from the world of vulgarity, cruelty and insensibility. In the Czech story, the painter commissioned to decorate the wall surroundig the emperor's garden rejets the praise of the dignitaries who find the highest value of art in its likeness to reality. The art that tends to discover what is unknown is superior to nature. The artist quits the society unable to understand him, disappears in the painting which vanishes before the dumbfounded public and the emperor's daughter who has faith in his art disappears with him. In Marguerite Yourcenar's story, an old painter, accused of lying, is sentenced to death : his pictures were more beautiful than reality. However he is ordered to finish one of his pictures deposited in the emporer's collections. He paints the sea with a boat, water inundates the hall, he goes on board, finds there his disciple, who had been beheaded but has been ressuscitated, and they both disappear in the painting. The picture vanishes before the dignitaries, the hall becomes dry again. In both cases art saves the heroes — in Zeyer's story from vulgarity, in Marguerite Yourcenar's, from death. But art gives not only blessedness and life, it also brings suffering and destruction. The wife of the painter's disciple commits suicide because her husband prefers her portraits to her living self, and in another of Zeyer's stories, the hero compares art with crime. The narrative fiction provides an introduction to aesthetic and philosophical reflections. Source : Éditeur (via Persée) |
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| Article en ligne | https://www.persee.fr/doc/slave_0080-2557_2011_num_82_3_8108 |
