Marguerite Yourcenar`s A Coin in Nine Hands: The Lives Carried by the Wind = « Denier du rêve » de Marguerite Yourcenar: des vies au gré du vent

Abstract

《九隻手中的一枚硬幣》是否為尤瑟娜眾多小說中政治色彩最濃厚的一部呢？根據作者的自述，該小說是「半寫實、半象徵」的敘事，而此研究試圖探索《九隻手中的一枚硬幣》中具象徵性及其哲學意涵的面相。書中包含了許多不同人物的「人生片段」，其命運隨著書本頁面增加而相互交織，儘管如此，我們卻無法從中透澈瞭解任何一位人物。這份研究將聚焦在《九隻手中的一枚硬幣》一書中引用蒙田的部分，尤瑟娜與蒙田兩人在時空上相隔遙遠，其思想卻十分相近，這兩份文本的相似處有那些呢？無可規避的憂鬱、絕對悲觀主義、對世界感到空泛虛無、人性瘋狂的刻畫等；這份研究的第一部分將分析《九隻手中的一枚硬幣》中部分人物的詳細人生經歷，其中也包含了對義大利法西斯獨裁者的政治暗殺。而第二部分將嘗試證明瑪格莉特尤瑟娜並非全然專注於書中特定角色的生命存在形式，而是旨在利用象徵手法且跳脫時間框架來描繪所有人類的生命原型，我們可以帶著虛無且憂鬱的態度從《九隻手中的一枚硬幣》得出無論任何人事物皆無法改變這普世瘋狂。

Is A Coin in Nine Hands the most political novel in Marguerite Yourcenar’s fiction? According to the author’s own account, it’s a “half-realistic, half-symbolic” narrative. This work proposes to explore precisely the symbolic, even philosophical pendant of A Coin in Nine Hands. The book contains a series of vignettes of life of different characters, whose destinies are too much complicated with one another to know everything about them. The present contribution will focus on the quote from Montaigne underlined in A Coin in Nine Hands, emphasizing the very strong link between these two remote-in-time but close-in-spirit texts. What are the affinities between these two writers? An absolute melancholy, pessimism, the sentiment of vanity of things in this world, the painting of human insanity… The first part of this research analyzes some of the recounted individual journeys in A Coin in Nine Hands, including the history of the political attempt in assassination. The second part endeavors to demonstrate that fundamentally, Marguerite Yourcenar, far from sticking to particular existences of her characters, actually seeks to depict the archetype of human life in a symbolic and atemporal way. With a melancholic and nihilist sentiment, we derive from A Coin in Nine Hands a universal insanity that no one and nothing can remedy.