Summary
Dominique Pagani first approaches madness through a triangle taken from Merleau-Ponty: the self, the true and others. Madness is the combination from which the self is absent. With Nerval, Pascal, Baudelaire and King Lear, he suggests that the madman may carry reason when the collective loses it. He then deals with it mainly through Nerval. He describes Nerval's madness as a psychosis, but he sets aside the pathological reading: the preface to Dumas shows a lucid writer, analysis must take precedence over interpretation, and the Nerval case amplifies structures common to everyone1. He contrasts the quest for the mother, which ends in disappointment and leads to madness, with the path towards Rousseau's tomb, which turns towards collective emancipation. He makes the vertical dimension, that of the drowning and of Les Chimères, an instance of madness that Nerval is right to set aside2. Finally, with Nietzsche, Nerval and Hölderlin, "three madmen", he links madness to night, to intoxication and to the flight from a truth whose knowledge remains irreversible3.
- 1#4.2 Angélique (by Nerval)12 Nov 2017
- 2#4.5 Angélique (by Nerval)12 Feb 2018
- 3#5 Harnessed to confinitude18 Apr 2020
Introduction produced automatically from the 7 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.
The 7 videos
Cycle 12Saving the saviour? Redemption, the end of the cycle or its new beginning?
21 Apr 2024What does the final formula of Parsifal, "Redemption to the redeemer," mean: does redemption close the cycle or set it going again?
Analytical Reveries#4 Nomad and sedentary: the case of Nerval
4 Oct 2021Does the apparent randomness of Nerval's wanderings in Promenades et souvenirs conceal a necessity, that of mourning the mother and returning to origins?
Cycle 7#5 Harnessed to confinitude
18 Apr 2020If access to truth is irreversible, why does modern consciousness seek to flee it?
Cycle 4#4.5 Angélique (by Nerval)
12 Feb 2018Does Nerval's itinerary in Angélique owe anything to chance, and what is meant by chance?
Cycle 4#4.2 Angélique (by Nerval)
12 Nov 2017Is Angélique a disjointed text, or does it obey, beneath its digressions, a logic that is that of the dream?
Cycle 4#4.1 Angélique (by Nerval)
18 Oct 2017Why read Nerval's Angélique, and how does this disjointed narrative, written in the middle of the century, lead from the mother's tomb to Rousseau's tomb?
Cycle 2#2.1 Between crisis and war: philosophising?
15 Feb 2016Is it philosophical critique that provokes the crisis of the city, or is it because the city is in crisis that philosophizing is needed more than ever?