Le Tourment de Dieu dans l'œuvre autobiographique de Julien Green by Suzanne Toulet (review)

HUMANITIES 467 de leur ecriture, la perception plus ou moins figee que l'on pouvait avoir de l'reuvre de Camus. Ce n'est pas enfin Ie moindre merite de cet ouvrage que d'inviter au questionnement. Deux remarques donc qui sont des questions. Deux niveaux de fonctionnement se trouvant degages, celui du texte pour lui-meme et celui du texte pour Ie lecteur, quels mOdialeurs theoriques permettent des lors de negocier Ie passage entre une approche immanente du texte et une lecture de caractere hermeneutique? En deuxieme lieu, et la question est vaste certes, car elle ne saurait se limiter al'objet de la presente etude, comment concevoir la relation de l'autorepresentation ala representation, en l'occurrence comment s'articulent Ie positionnement d'un Camus romancier-temoin-du-monde et celui d'une ecriture livree asa propre ecoute? Faut-il fatalement conclure ala dualite/duplicite indepassable de I'reuvre, de toute reuvre? (R. LE HUENEN) Suzanne Tou1et. Le Tourment de Dieu dans l'ceuvre Qutobiographique de Julien Green Editions Naaman. 158 The words 'de Dieu' in the title of Sister Suzanne Toulet's book compose, of course, a subjective genitive. And the object of the Deity's torment is the distinguished yet controversial French Academician, Julien Green, whose novels are still better known than his plays, his candid Journal, or his even franker four-volume autobiography about his childhood and young adult life. Dividing her succinct study of this master of classical French prose into two equal parts, Suzanne Toulet has deferred to some appropriate classical symmetry. The first part traces Green's tortured struggle for spiritual purity in a world where the temptation of physical gratification confronts him at every turn. While there is little that is new here, the clarity and completeness of Toulet's synthesis must be admired. In the second more original part, she analyses tlle various functions of images of fire in Green's evolution. While she briefly pays Bachelard some inevitable attention, she proceeds by and large in her own unpretentious way to illuminate 'comment Ie feu evoquait l'expression du tourment chez Julien Green: feu noir du peche ... , feu clair de Ia purification ... , feu lumineux de I'amour ... ' ( p 142). Toule!'s modest introduction does not make clear whether her original thesis underwent any revisions before publication in this series which bears the general title of 'Theses ou recherches.' In any case, her method is that of a traditional thematic dissertation: to support her points by quoting generous examples from primary texts. Toulet iliereby reproduces more fully than one might expect some of the special 'magic 468 LEITERS IN CANADA 1982 realism' of Green's world. In fact, her quotations remind us of how often Green uses the word 'magique: Little wonder that many of his works seem to be crying out for an Alex Colville to illustrate them! In the course of her research, Toulet carried on a correspondence with Julien Green's sister, Anne, and interviewed Green himself on several occasions. The back cover of her book contains a letter from her author expressing both approval of her analysis and gratitude for her avoidance of psychoanalytical jargon. With such a laudatory document in print, one hesitates to add a few dissenting words. Yet the very title of her work seems misleading. Genre purists would insist that 'l'reuvre autobiographique' should be rigorously restricted to Green's four specifically autobiographical recits (Partir avant Ie jour, Mille chemins ouverts, Terre lointaine, and Ieunesse), and his multivolume Journal. But Toulet selects her evidence from works of fiction and theatre as well. Not even such personal-experience-based novels as Morra, it could be argued, rightly belong here. Furthermore, in her oneissue approach to the autobiographical recits, she submerges some of the principal literary interest of these works, namely, their distinctive suspenseful structure, and the delightful, self-mockery that Green rewardingly uses to leaven his narrative. Finally, one must deplore the fact that Toule!'s seven-page bibliography contains only one entry written in a language other than French. These are, in the long run, quibbling points. Rather, one should acknowledge like Green the merits of a painstaking study written in a style...