This paper discusses a man’s obsession with the memories of his dead wife as represented in Georges Rodenbach’s novel Bruges‐la‐Morte. More precisely, Rodenbach draws a haunting picture of the woman’s hair, which is personified and acquires the dimension of a full‐fledged character in the novel. The Belgian author places Hugues Viane dead wife’s hair at the center of his particular vision of fictional space, vacillating between tangible and intangible (Boraczek 1999) as well as between sacred and demoniac. The woman’s gold braid is preserved in a glass case: by worshipping it, the widower makes a religion of his sorrow. Furthermore, the woman’s hair generates a dense web of analogies between Bruges, in which Bachelard (1942) sees the Ophelization of an entire city, Viane’s dead wife compared in the novel to a Virgin, and the actress Jane Scott, a femme fatale who seems to have the same blond hair as the dead woman. By doing so, Rodenbach places the woman’s figure at the crossroads between literature and visual arts.
This paper discusses the image of the city of Bruges, as represented in Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach’s novels Bruges-la-Morte (1892) and Le Carillonneur (1897). By acquiring the dimension of a full-fledged character, the city of Bruges participates in the mnemonic journeys of the two protagonists, the widower Hugues Viane and the young architect Joris Borluut who becomes the city’s bell ringer. It is a complex image within which the Flemish city first appears as a symbolic space that the novels’ main protagonists explore, appropriate, internalize and which never ceases to keep their individual memory awake. Bruges will then be evoked as a scene of conflict between the old and the new, in other words between, on the one hand, the pre-established and immutable order which manages the life of the two men, and, on the other hand, all the disruptive elements that seek to penetrate it in order to destabilize their affective balance. Finally, analyzed through the prism of memory, the Flemish city of Bruges will be defined as a highly feminized space whose main characteristics we will try to highlight in the last part of this paper.
FR
Cet article se propose de tracer l’image de la ville de Bruges, telle qu’elle se présente dans les deux romans de l’écrivain belge Georges Rodenbach Bruges-la-Morte (1892) et Le Carillonneur (1897). En revêtant l’aspect d’un personnage principal à part entière, la ville de Bruges participe aux parcours mnémoniques des deux protagonistes, le veuf Hugues Viane et le jeune architecte Joris Borluut, qui devient le carillonneur de la ville. Il s’agit d’une image complexe à l’intérieur de laquelle la cité flamande se manifeste d’abord comme un espace symbolique que les protagonistes explorent, s’approprient, intériorisent et qui ne cesse de tenir en éveil leur mémoire individuelle. Bruges sera ensuite évoquée comme une scène de conflit entre l’ancien et le nouveau, autrement dit entre, d’une part, l’ordre préétabli et immuable qui gère la vie des deux hommes, et, d’autre part, tous les éléments perturbateurs qui cherchent à s’y infiltrer pour déstabiliser leur équilibre affectif. Enfin, analysée à travers le prisme de la mémoire, la cité flamande sera définie comme un espace fortement féminisé dont les caractéristiques principales nous tenterons de mettre en évidence dans la dernière partie de cet article.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.