The Water Mirror:Quest Of Human Achievement In Nouvelles Orientales Of Marguerite Yourcenar

Water is a vital element in the daily life of the human being. It plays an important role in the works of the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar and is often associated with the theme life/death. This trend continues in her collection of stories Nouvelles orientales (Oriental Tales) published in 1938. Therefore, in the present work, we seek to analyze the writing of Marguerite Yourcenar and her thoughts on the existence and destiny of the human being, relying in particular on the thought of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard.We start by analyzing the forms, the main actions and meanings of water in all the stories, in order to highlight the characteristics of this "paysage" defined by the thematicien Jean-Pierre Richard by applying his method called "microlecture". We also analyze the relationship between this imaginary space and the characters of Nouvelles orientales. According to the first chapter, we see that the pattern of mirror is integrated to the imagination of the water through the myth of Narcissus. Each character pursues his quest to the ultimate fulfillment as a human being in the way of Narcissus. In the vision of Yourcenar, death and life are not opposed:death becomes the highest form of life and lead characters to their renaissance.The characteristics of the water and the mirror also affect Yourcenar’s writing. A pull-out structure appears in the narration, which suggests a mouvement that goes from "reflection" to "circle":thanks to the virtues of water givens by the Eastern and Western cultures, the contradictions are finally reconciled. Yourcenar’s ideology is syncretic, which turns her writing to a bridge between East and West, and between the past and the present. Hence, our work could propose a new perspective to understand all the work of Marguerite Yourcenar, which goes from History to Eternity.