Creative morphology (cont.)

Abstract

In the third part of this study the author analyzes, thematically, the novelistic space of the novel Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain - Fournier, with the starting premise that creating novelisitic spatiality is basically the question of a successful process of aesthetic exteriorization of the personal, spiritual space of the creator. The centre of the space is the poetic image to the same extent as the centre of the personal myth is the dominant theme. In this case it is the image of a woman inspiring the theme of search, its space and sense. That passive image — character will give the space, by a special procédé of metaphoric proliferation, its attrtibutes. The space will turn into the landscape corresponding with the landscapes of the souls of the main characters, especially of the narrator. The author declines some claims of ithe biographical and idealistic criticism according to which such a quality of space is achieved because the central image — character is a real psychological conception of memories, a result of the personal perception of the writer. He thinks it of sesondary importance; the image is created by ¡the landscape, the world of recollections from childhood and various aesthetic experiences. It is just a «-recognition« and an opportunity for the definition of the appearance of the portrait of the main heroine. According to the second chapter of the present situdy the main image is constituted as a metaphor of euchronia and eutopia, i. e. of the world that, owing to the irreversibility of time, becomes uchronia and utoplia. The author gives them a joint name — novelistic utopia. Its main topos — the castle, discovered by the main hero where he stays for three days, contains all the elements of the utopian search, such as confused itinerary, distance insularity, ideal order of things, rule by the innocent, the feeling of eternity, festivity of the pastoral type (found in Rousseau). The figure of the Virgin Mother is in the centre. The main hero’s demand to return again to that space is revealed to the reader as a search for the Absolute. Since the space and the time are relative, the image is separated from the idea; it becomes existential, i .e. relative. It is represented as an image of home, warmth, wife, sister, mother .. . The third chatper analyzes the physical appearence of space in its three elements: dimension, light and temperature. The space depends on that of utopia and of the maJin image. It is a negative of the novelistic utopia. The author draws this conclusion from tha type of the spatial metaphoricalness bound up with the being and identify of the heroine. As an obstacle to, and a boundary of, the profane space the dimension is connected with the problem of orientation and with the incompleteness of itinerary which, being caused by darkness and dream, becomes the basic reason ofr the failure of search. The light, being very pale, but carefully disposed and iconized, plays an aesthetic and epiphanic role as well. The fourth chapter is entitled «Signs«. lit deals with the perception of space, especially of colour, smell and sound. The colour is exclusively connected with passing of time (green, yellow, red) and the quality of weather (gray shades). Blue is a sign for spatial and temporary vastness, eternity. Green connotes eutopia and euchronia. festivity and the strength of youth. Red is destructive. Yellow is the most widespread colour and associates past, forgetfulness, wasted time, supporting the theme of death as an all-pervasive one in symbolistic poetics. It is accompanied by the smell of staleness, «the taste of earth and death«. The sound, whether musical or natural, is muffled and interruped. The silence is often evoked in relation wiith Death and the Absolute. The last, fifth chapter, entitled »Meanings«, sums up metaphoric values of the death of the heroine. They contain the aesthetics of symbolism, psychoaesthetics of the hero, and the existential problems of the novelist as a member of one generation.