Vanité : conversation dans les Alpes-Maritimes

by Michel Butor

Trois amis, réunis au cours d’une soirée, abordent un certain nombre de thèmes « funèbres ». Le mot « vanité » évoque ces natures mortes anciennes où, le plus souvent, figurait un crâne. Cet essai dialogué, on le voit, est une méditation sur la mort — et sur le crâne — qui est, pour Michel Butor, au fond de toute littérature. Faut-il le rappeler ? Le romancier de « La Modification », de « Passage de Milan », de l’admirable « Emploi du temps », de « Degrés », est aussi un prodigieux inventeur de formes sans cesse renouvelées et surprenantes.

Genres: Fiction

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul, a suburb of Lille. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Thessaloniki, the United States, and Geneva. He has won many literary awards for his work, including the Prix Apollo, the Prix Fénéon; and the Prix Renaudot.

Journalists and critics have associated his novels with the nouveau roman, but Butor himself long resisted that association. The main point of similarity is a very general one, not much beyond that; like exponents of the nouveau roman, he can be described as an experimental writer. His best-known novel, La Modification, for instance, is written entirely in the second person. In his 1967 La critique et l'invention, he famously said that even the most literal quotation is already a kind of parody because of its "trans-contextualization."

For decades, he chose to work in other forms, from essays to poetry to artist's books to unclassifiable works like Mobile. Literature, painting and travel are subjects particularly dear to Butor. Part of the fascination of his writing is the way it combines the rigorous symmetries that led Roland Barthes to praise him as an epitome of structuralism (exemplified, for instance, by the architectural scheme of Passage de Milan or the calendrical structure of L'emploi du temps) with a lyrical sensibility more akin to Baudelaire than to Robbe-Grillet.

Reviews

[Ozan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ölüm hakkında 3 arkadaş konuluyormuş gibi değil de sanki yazar kendi fikirlerini bilinç akışıyla anlatmış gibi hissettim. Karakterlerin karakterleri belli değildi, konuşma tarzları aynıydı ve derinlemesine işlenmemişti, sanırım sadece ölüm konusu üzerine konuştukları için bu çok da önemli değil ama konuşmaları da herhangi bir çatışma işlemiyordu. Fikirleri aynıydı? Birbirlerini tamamlıyordu. Çatışma olmasını isterdim o yandan beklentimle uyuşmadı, bazı yerler de kopuk geldi hissettim ya da ben koptum. Fakat çok fazla sanat tarihi göndermesi vardı. Bu beni mutlu etti.
Kısa, tek günde okunabilecek bir kitap, konusu da ilgi çekici ve içersinde ilgimi çeken kısımlar da yakaladım o yüzden 3 ideal bir puan bence.

[Michel Castagné · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short and enjoyable dialogue on death, leading to ruminations about Vanitas art and onwards to literature and life in general. The book is framed as a recording of a conversation between three friends, Scriptor ('writer'), Pictor ('painter') and Viator ('traveller').