Myth

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani approaches myth mainly through Wagner and through what legendary tales say about desire. For him, the Tristan myth, taken up by Clouscard in the Traité de l'amour fou, shows that the content of human desire comes from history and the symbolic field as much as from nature. Racine's Phèdre points the same way: the daughters of Minos loved Theseus through his legend alone12. In the Ring, he makes Freya, beauty, a figure of freedom, and Alberich as much a victim as a villain. He likens the fall of Valhalla to Antigone as Hegel reads it. He also uses Siegfried's vulnerable spot to speak of capitalism's weak point3. He follows the Grail quest from Chrétien de Troyes to Wagner's Parsifal and compares it to Plato's sun. Against Nietzsche, he follows Gracq, who sees in it an "infernal" search. Finally, he brings this quest back to the Hegelian reading of the Fall: the hand that wounds is also the hand that heals4.

1. 1D comme Désir17 Dec 2014
2. 2La PHILO avec PAGANI : D comme DÉSIR29 May 2023
3. 39 #14 Comment des sciences de l'histoire peuvent-elles être réelles?5 Feb 2021
4. 4La quête du Graal, bondieuserie ou sacrilège ?1 Apr 2024

Introduction produced automatically from the 4 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.