Abstract

Autobiographical writing belongs to a tradition rooted in a Western concept of individuality. In Le Labyrinthe du monde, Marguerite Yourcenar asserts herself against this tradition. She does not tell the story of her life, and she distances herself from confessional or psychoanalytic forms of self-portrayal. Like other twentieth century French autobiographers she is suspicious of the borderline between personal and collective memory, aware that her voice has been shaped by a multitude of voices. ;I put Yourcenar's autobiographical writing within the context of an evolving autobiographical tradition, and within the context of the autobiographical writing of her contemporaries Julien Green, Nathalie Sarraute and Suzanne Lilar. Yourcenar enters into implicit and explicit dialogues with some of her predecessors, especially Montaigne, Rousseau, and Chateaubriand, and she comments on her own writing, so these texts become a part of the collective memory at work in the text. Her Western humanist view has been transformed by the influence of Oriental philosophy: the human subject is no longer at the center, but remains the observer and transmitter of memories. ;Yourcenar writes from the perspective of a French exile living on an island off the East Coast of America. In order to elaborate the question of personal identity, she uses genealogy, the landscapes and cityscapes of her origins, the rhythms and rituals of daily life, the art, and the language that shaped her during her formative years. Reflecting on who she is in terms of her culture, she reflects on what is universal under a variety of appearances. Yourcenar is an exile who does not want to be known by that name. Dislocated from her culture, she is one of a growing number of exiles who create a self from disparate elements of the cultures with which they come into contact, instead of having their personal identity defined by national borders or the confines of a homogenous culture. Ultimately, her sense of self is constituted by the act of writing and by her ability to manipulate the French language in its classical form