DIFFERENTES FORMES DE RECITS DE VIE. FOCUS SUR ENFANCE BERLINOISE DE BENJAMIN WALTER
DIFFERENT FORMS OF LIFE STORIES. FOCUS ON BENJAMIN WALTER'S BERLIN CHILDHOOD

Summary/Abstract: The life story tells the story of a person, which can take various forms, such as biography, autobiography, diary, memoirs or letters. This kind of writing about someone’s life usually follows the character’s chronological course of life, from birth to death or until the time of writing. However, there are life stories that focus on a segment of a person's life or on a certain period, the most recurrent example of which is the childhood story (Colette, La Maison de Claudine, 1922), or which takes the form of a fiction novel and, in this specific case, we speak of auto-mytho-biographies, following the example of the writings of Marguerite Duras (L'Amant, 1984). Another example of writing in the first person, evoking the wanderings of a child in a clearly defined space-time framework is that of Benjamin Walter, who speaks in Enfance berlinoise of the wanderings of a child in a Berlin park, the Tiergarten. The theme exploited by the writer is that of the big modern city, an enigma that must be learned to decipher, because it is a somewhat hostile nature that must be explored, a labyrinth whose invitation to get lost in it means first learning to master its art.

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