De l'absence au chant. Sur les Lettres à Guibert de Madame de Lespinasse

Jacques Dupont : Julie de lespinasse's letters to guibert. Julie de Lespinasse's letters are here studied as examples of amorous passion. Their existence, based on an impossibility to communicate with the object of her passion, betrays an excess of subjectivity. The feeling of alienation in the presence of the loved one leads to solitude and a withdrawal into oneself. From this there arises a particular awareness of duration ; emprisoned in the present, she is aware of herself as a violent passivity, a battlefield of contrasting moods, with no other solution than death. Thus these letters are not the story of a passion, for everything is decided from the outset. They are witness, in a reputedly frivolous age, to a tragic awareness of existence and passion.