Des vocations en échec ? Le destin de l’écrivain et de la littérature dans Un coco de génie de Louis Dumur

Résumé

The article presents the profile of Louis Dumur, a French writer of Swiss origin, one of the founders and indefatigable editor of new Mercure de France. Although Dumur was an average poet and playwright and author of nationalist texts, he wrote a novel Un coco de génie (1902), in which he addresses the issue of the writer’s vocation and the mission of literature. The story of a seedman’s son, who suddenly discovers his literary talent and faces reluctance from the uncultivated local community, is a satire on the petty bourgeoisie society. It is all the more virulent because the young creator turns out to be a somnambulist who recreates masterpieces of world literature. This unconscious rewriting leads the first-person narrator of the novel to reflect on the process of creating itself. Thus Dumur anticipates the appearance of the concept of intertextuality and the text being a mosaic of quotations.