Épaves de Julien Green : une acédie moderne

Julien Green immerses the reader in some oppressive boredom‐filled atmosphere, he also experienced. He was used to boredom, turning into acedia, taedium vitae, melancholy, nostalgia, overpowering neurasthenia, all this linked with his mother’s early death, the flesh/mind conflict or, even the exarcerbated awareness of a void existence. Acedia – a genuine individual experience – leaves the Greenian character facing an empty, pointless existence. Acedia spreads its invisible tentacles around the character who feels how empty life without God is. Apathetic, lazy, idle and weak, he flees all inner life, causing his immutable loneliness. This aridity is seen in an empty town and the immutable life he sinks into. The fatal row he witnessed, reveals his cowardice and creates a gap in his consciousness : the image of a strong, respectable man cracks turning acedia into an ordeal condemning him to painfully cohabitate with himself thus annihilating all ambition and selftranscendence.