SCHOPENHAUER’S INTERTEXTUALITY IN JEAN GIONO’S NOVELS A KING WITHOUT DISTRACTION AND THE DESERTER

Abstract

This article analyses Arthur Schopenhauer’s intertextuality in two novels by Giono: A King Without Distraction and The Deserter. In the first novel, it is the philosopher’s metaphysics that we discover to be present in some of Giono’s motifs, as in the motif of a hieroglyphic scripture on the pig’s back, carved by a serial killer, M.V. – a motif which we identify as a variant of Schopenhauer’s recurrent scriptural metaphor. We have also discovered that the scène of Frederic II’s winding the mechanism of the clock with the figures of a shepherd and a young shepherdess on its front side has to do with Schopenhauer’s metaphor of men being puppets of the Will, propelled into motion by the Will. As for The Deserter, we have found out that the treatment of the hero by the narrator reveals the intertextuality of Schopenhauer’s ethics of compassion, just as the hero’s asceticism and his sainthood owe much to Schopenhauer’s reflections upon the way the man can liberate himself of the domination of the Will.