Archive COJAN Otilia Carmen
The Annals of Ovidius University Constanţa no.22 / 2011 vol.1
COJAN OTILIA CARMEN - La problematique de la mort dans l’oeuvre de Jacques Chessex (pag. 57-66)
Whether in philosophy, science of religion or literature, the issue of death is still a topic of interest nowadays for its depth and the multitude of meanings and interpretations attributed to it. Regarded as a fact of life, as a challenge of life or as an end envisaged since birth, death seems to hold that human existence is just a mere preamble to it. Philosophers and writers such as Confucius, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, John Milton, or painters like Paul Gauguin, Johann Heinrich Füssli, and Hieronymus Bosch have given many representations of death while showing different views regarding this issue. For the Swiss Romand writer Jacques Chessex (1934-2009) death represents the loss of the limits imposed by the existence, even a possibility of being out of time, out of regret, remembrance and memory, the end of an imperfect period which is life, the passage towards the Infinite. Death is seen as absence and according to an idea borrowed from Jankélévitch it represents the infinite void of eternity. But this absence is not the source of fear, but it rather brings the serenity of the mind / spirit. The pain in death is in fact the suffering of others, all who remain alive, must accept the loss of loved ones, becoming accustomed to the situation. There is also in Jacques Chessex’s works an attitude of rebellion, but it is quickly drowned out by the consciousness of the original sin that casts man into the arms of fate. A special case is that of suicide which in the vision of the writer constitutes the only moment when man has the possibility to control his life, even if only for a few seconds.