Marguerite Yourcenar et Eugène Ionesco - l’éternité de l’instant. Une lecture bipolaire
Marguerite Yourcenar and Eugène Ionesco – the eternity of the moment. A bipolar reading

Summary/Abstract: Apparently Marguerite Yourcenar and Eugène Ionesco did not have anything in common. On the other hand, most of the writers approach the matter of time in their writings. It is known, that, with Proust, the matter of time became a subjective one. Living the moment or failing to do so depends on the individual’s own relation to time. There are several texts in Marguerite Yourcenar’s volume “Le tour de la prison” that reveal the value of the so-called eternity of the moment. The representative character of this type of living is Bashô, the Japanese poet from the 17th century. Marguerite Yourcenar evinces the submission attitude of the traveler poet towards the events. This is the attitude she cultivates in her own life. For Marguerite Yourcenar, the journey is the most appropriate way of living the moment. Her most famous characters, Hadrien and Zénon, were also travelers. During their journeys they managed to take advantage of the eternity of the moment, as the journey is also seen as an inner one. Without being against the world and accepting the events and the accidents, Bashô usefully walks around the world and inside his inner being. Things are different in Eugène Ionesco`s “Solitaire” : we meet a sedentary person who is aware of the prison in which he is confined – the one of the daily routine - his feeling of failure comes from the incapacity of avoiding spiritual death. The prison metaphor makes the two writers, Marguerite Yourcenar and Eugène Ionesco, either rescue or condemn their characters according to their relation with time. If Marguerite Yourcenar succeeds to observe the eternity of the moment through the character (characters) that benefits of it, Eugène Ionesco is not so generous with his “Solitaire”. He makes his character recognize his own incapacity of joining existence and human being, through the feeling of unreality and inconsistency. This feeling leads to his certainty of failing his happiness, of his being near it and not inside it. So, to fail one’s happiness means to be synonymous with failing the moment in its eternity.

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