Héraclès

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani returns regularly to Heracles, whom he almost always pairs with Theseus: he is the demigod who purges the earth of monsters so that man can dwell on it1. He reads the twelve labours as the image of arranging a space fit for man2, which makes Heracles a tutelary figure, shared by Sparta, Thebes and Athens. One episode comes up often: Heracles smothers Antaeus by lifting him off the maternal earth3. He also finds him in Racine, where Theseus appears as Alcides' successor and Phaedra judges that "Hercules was less costly to disarm than Hippolytus"4. In Hölderlin, he points to the golden apples of the garden of the Hesperides, the legend of a Heracles who strayed towards the sources of the Danube, and the pain of struggling with God as Heracles did5. In music, he notes that in the Baroque period the role was sung by a castrato voice, and he sees in Wagner's Siegfried something of Heracles' "first-degree" quality6.

1. 1Hegel Plage 2/51 Feb 2016 · 48:18
2. 2L'idéologie naturaliste / Réponses aux questions - Dominique Pagani25 Jul 2025 · 1:03:52
3. 3#8 • Les Attelé(e)s de la confinitude17 May 2020 · 1:16:58
4. 4#10 UKRAINE : Du problème des "Bords" au déchaînement de la guerre24 Feb 2022 · 10:40
5. 5Racines ou migration ? De la rêverie analytique à l'actualité, de Hölderlin à la guerre17 Feb 2023 · 58:16
6. 69 #18 Le Crépuscule des dieux ou de la répétition à la libération3 Apr 2021 · 1:43:53

Summary produced automatically from 32 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.