L’amour l’automne, roman marin. Une lecture de la dernière Eglogue de Renaud Camus

Résumé Fr En

L’Amour l’Automne s’appuie sur deux ouvrages de Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse et The Waves. Ces références fournissent le thème marin qui anime tout le livre, thème identifiable par la sphère sémantique utilisée, et thème que Renaud Camus s’est plu à reprendre dans la forme des sept chapitres: chacun illustre une forme maritime différente, parfois évidente, parfois plus secrète. Ainsi, la forme s’éclaire et prend tout son sens, résonance discrète tant qu’elle n’est pas identifiée, éclatante dès qu’elle est nommée. Le roman tout entier semble vouloir illustrer, dans sa forme et par le fond, ces quelques mots de To the Lighthouse: “how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach” (Woolf, 1927: I-chap. 9).

L’Amour l’Automne looks back to two novels by Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse and The Waves. Just like his predecessor, Camus gives pride of place to the theme of the sea. This theme not only dictates his choice of vocabulary but also the shape of the seven chapters. The references to the sea are sometimes obvious, in other cases more oblique. Whether hidden or displayed in full view, form therefore plays a major role in this novel. Both through its form and through its content, this novel seems to illustrate the following words from To the Lighthouse: “how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach” (Woolf, 1927: I-chap. 9).