Dans et au-delà des frontières : Adieu, vive clarté… de Jorge Semprun

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the real and symbolic implications of the border in Jorge Semprun’s Adieu, vive clarté… Experience of exile is in the origin of the symbolic power of border in his life and in his writings. Adieu, vive clarté… reveals the progressive initiation of the teenager who progressively learns to transgress the borders which separate him from otherness: geographical borders, but also social, linguistic and erotic ones. In this initiation Semprun is accompanied by great French authors, and specially by Baudelaire. This book appears so as a polyphonic one, Semprun’s voice alternating constantly with those of the authors who impressed him during these first years in exile.