I obtained a baccalaureate in French literature at the end of the 1980s. Before undertaking this opinion piece, I plunged back into some of these monographs which had then destabilized me. Of The Immoralist of Gide, we obviously retain pedophilia. But how not to be also revolted by this passage where an eldest son tries to rape a young servant: “as she was struggling, the father intervening helped his son, and with his enormous hands restrained her. […] the youngest, witness of the drama, was amused. » Diving in The Children of the Sabbath by Anne Hébert, once again nausea seizes me imagining this scene where a man “took his swollen sex in his hand and forced it into the small sex of the little girl who was screaming in pain”. As for Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue de Sade, I’m still disgusted by this excerpt in which Thérèse, quite naked, recounts “that I’m tied to the tree by a rope that takes the length of my loins”. Then animals are released, “they all three rush on my unfortunate body, it seems that they share it so that none of its parts are exempt from their furious assaults”.
Despite my revulsion at these lines, I have no regrets in having discovered them. It allowed me to reflect on various aspects of existence. What will happen if we only read “washed-out works”, as the author and professor Patrick Moreau called them in his text on “The Disappearance of Literature”? Do you want to look like characters from The little life ?
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