Achilles’ Fires and Marguerite Yourcenar
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34624/fb.v0i19.34702Keywords:
Achilles, Patroclus, Marguerite Yourcenar, Fires, homoerotism, comparative literatureAbstract
Marguerite Yourcenar wrote Fires (Feux, 1936) when she was thirty-two. This work is the result of a passionate crisis and the feelings experienced by the author are expressed through nine prose poetries, separated by aphorisms and sentences that Yourcenar defined as “a certain notion of love”. Achilles is the main character of two of these stories: “Achilles or the lie” (“Achille ou le mensonge”) and “Patroclus or the destiny” (“Patrocle ou le destin”). The first story recreates the hero’s stay at the court of Lycomedes, when he hid there to avoid going to the Trojan War. The second is located precisely in that war and focuses on the hero after Patroclus’ death.
In this work we will analyze these two stories, especially the mythical innovations that Yourcenar carries out, as well as the aphorisms and sentences that she includes before and after them. Thus, all these texts are related to the general context in which they were created; this context allows us to link Achilles’ love feelings with those of the author herself.
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