Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt et le « cycle de l’invisible » : pour une réhabitation poétique du monde
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt and the “cycle de l’invisible”: for a poetic re-inhabitation of the world

Summary/Abstract: Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt's “Cycle de l’invisible” is a series of eight novels published between 1997 and 2019. It is composed of short stories, each of which questions spirituality through the prism of an initiatory journey specific to each character. The characters then undertake to leave their layman status to acquire that of initiate: they leave the religious indifference or atheism that characterises them to acquire faith and adhere to the religion or spirituality with which they have been confronted. This article proposes to put this novelistic cycle in perspective with the notion of poetic habitation of the world as enunciated by Friedrich Hölderlin in "En Bleu adorable" and widely commented upon by Martin Heidegger. The challenge is to make plausible the hypothesis that Schmitt's “Cycle de l’invisible” is a call for a poetic re-inhabitation of the world in the sense given by Heidegger to this expression, that is to say an inhabitation of the world that cannot be envisaged without taking into account the existence of the divine. An existence in the world turned towards the spiritual life.

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