L'omniprésence de l'image dans nos sociétés contemporaines, massivement régies par les médias visuels, - photographie, cinéma, télévision, internet - a bouleversé notre culture, longtemps fondée sur le primat de l'écrit. Cette révolution renoue cependant avec les assises les plus anciennes de notre culture où l'image, prise en charge par la peinture, le théâtre et les arts oratoires, était porteuse de savoir et d'émotion esthétique. Ce pouvoir de création et de communication de l'image a fait très tôt l'objet d'un examen critique (...) soucieux d'en dénoncer les dangers : force et forme d'attraction paroxystique, la fascination désigne assez bien ce péril et ces pièges. Platon, le premier, en instruit le procès tandis qu'Aristote s'efforce d'arrimer au logos la puissance imageante du théâtre. A l'âge classique, les Etats modernes établissent leur pouvoir par un contrôle croissant de l'image : J-M Apostolidès et L Marin ont rendu compte, pour la France, de la machinerie fascinatrice du "grand Roi", qui traverse les arts et l'imaginaire classiques. La littérature contemporaine inclut dans sa démarche réflexive cette méditation sur le pouvoir fascinant de l'image : l'oeuvre de Pascal Quignard en reprend et repense ainsi les figures paradigmatiques - Narcisse, Méduse, Médée. Examinant ce phénomène dans la peinture, la littérature et les arts du spectacle, cet ouvrage, transhistorique et pluridisciplinaire, est l'occasion d'un dialogue entre philosophes, littéraires, esthéticiens et historiens qui interrogent ici collectivement, en toute liberté critique, la fascination des images dans son ambivalence, rayonnante et aliénante. (shrink)

The _fascinus_, or phallus, was at the heart of classical Roman art and life. No god was more represented in ancient Rome than the phallic deity Priapus, and the _fescennine_ verses, one of the earliest forms of Roman poetry, accompanied the celebrations of Priapus, the harvest, and fertility. But with this emphasis on virility also came an emphasis on power and ideas of possession and protection. In _Sex and Terror_, Pascal Quignard looks closely at this delicate interplay of celebration and (...) terror. In startling and original readings of myths, satires, memoirs, and works of ancient philosophy and visual art, Quignard locates moments of both playful, aesthetic commemoration and outward cruelty. Through these examples, he describes a colossal cultural shift within Western civilization that occurred two millennia ago, as Augustus shaped the Roman world into an empire and the joyous, precise eroticism of the Greeks turned into a terror-stricken melancholy. The details of this revolution in thinking are revealed through Quignard’s astute analysis of classical literary sources and Roman art. This powerful transformation from celebration to fear is a change whose consequences, Quignard argues, we are still dealing with today, making _Sex and Terror_ an intriguing reconsideration of ancient Rome that transcends its history. (shrink)

_How does a man who once adored music beyond measure come to revile it as a form of tyranny?_ Throughout Pascal Quignard’s distinguished literary career, music has been a recurring obsession. As a musician he organized the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theatre at Versailles in the early 1990s, and thus was instrumental in the rediscovery of much forgotten classical music. Yet in 1994 he abruptly renounced all musical activities. _The Hatred of Music_ is Quignard’s masterful exploration of the (...) power of music and what history reveals about the dangers it poses. From prehistoric chants to challenging contemporary compositions, Quignard reflects on music of all kinds and eras. He draws on vast cultural knowledge—the Bible, Greek mythology, early modern history, modern philosophy, the Holocaust, and more—to develop ten accessible treatises on music. In each of these small masterpieces the author exposes music’s potential to manipulate, to mesmerize, to domesticate. Especially disturbing is his scrutiny of the role music played in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Quignard’s provocative book takes on particular relevance today, as we find ourselves surrounded by music as never before in history. (shrink)

A prolific essayist, novelist, translator, philosopher, and a critic of rare elegance, Pascal Quignard returns anew to the major questions of existence in The Silent Crossing, a haunting homage to life and liberty, to society and solitude, and to the binding and unbinding that constitute the weft of our lives. Drawing on materials from across many cultures, Quignard makes an effort to establish shared human values as the breeding ground for a modern Enlightenment. Considering atheism as a spiritual liberation, suicide (...) as a free act, and the rejection of society as a free choice, the author explores philosophical themes that have run through human civilizations—most often as heresies—from our earliest days. In his search for freedom, Quignard questions the binding dependency of religion, querying how, in a world where all forms of society presuppose that someone is looking over our shoulders, we can be free. These reflections, he implies, are the essential spiritual exercise for our times. Few voices in contemporary French literature are more distinct than that of Quignard. By reading this fragmentary, episodic assemblage of intimate experiences and borrowed tales, we open up a space of liberty, creating for the reader space for meditation and, perhaps, liberation. “Pascal Quignard is undoubtedly the most iconoclastic of contemporary French authors.”—Catherine Argand, Lire “Quignard has redefined historical fiction as both hoax and enigma.”—Burning Deck on Wooden Tablets: Apronenia Avitia. (shrink)