Etoile errante de J.M.G. Le Clézio: une écriture spéculaire sur fond de guerre

Abstract

Le Clézio’s novel Étoile errante is set within the framework of historical events surrounding World War II and the Holocaust. The narrative structure of the novel is conceived of as a mirror, and its subject matter, likewise specular, places its characters and situations face to face, causing them to evolve within an atmosphere of endless flight. Le Clézio highlights both the structure and the subject matter by a masterly exercise in verbal architecture, thus making Ëtoile errante a multi-faceted novel, which can be read and interpreted on several different levels. The analysis offered in this paper offers one possible reading, centred on the study of a text which forms a mesh of evocative images, an isotopic network, in order to describe the reality of the War and the Exodus, the search for both individual and collective peace. The cruelty of war is tempered through the use of sensory language charged with poetic nuances, which both echoes and exceeds the human word, thus establishing a specular, communicative duality, which is also evident on other levels of Le Clézio’s writing such as the narrative structure or the spatio-temporal framework