Gilles and Jeanne

Gilles and Jeanne is an account of Michel Tournier, published in 1983 with the Gallimard Editions. (deposit in the collection Folio, n° 1707, in 1985; 152 pages)

Summary

Chinon, the February 25th 1429: in the name of the “King of the Sky”, an young girl, with the silhouette androgyne, request to speak with the Dolphin. Jeanne of Domrémy comes to seek Charles to lead it to Rheims where according to the divine will, it will be crowned. In the content of the throne room, Gilles de Rais understands that this person, “girl-boy”, radiant of a celestial light, represent until it waits. Gilles and Jeanne become comrades in arms, inseparable until the first defeats. The military beginnings of Jeanne against the English occupant are successes: Orleans is released, the English are crushed with Patay; several cities are joined the Dolphin. The July 17th 1429, the sacring of the king takes place in our-Lady-of-Rheims cathedral. However, Jeanne is wounded in front of Paris and the troops of Charles VII beat a retreat. Lastly, it is the drama of Compiegne and the end of the adventure. The May 30th 1431, Jeanne dies on roughing-hew it with Rouen.

When Gilles learns the arrest from the Virgin, it tries, in vain, a takeover by force on Rouen and can only penetrate in the city in order to read the sixteen counts of indictment retained against Jeanne. He intends it to shout three times “Jesus! ” when the flames reach it. Upset, Gilles regains his grounds; after a three years retirement, “it is an infernal angel which will spread its wings”. He will discover the absolute evil and will build his legend, that of the Ogre of Tiffauges, robber, rapist and assassin of children.

The rumors, in the region, grow bigger and a man starts to quiver: Eustace Strainer, the confessor of the Gilles lord. One day when the odor of carbonized flesh empeste the atmosphere of Tiffauges, Blanchet finds Gilles agitated, reviving the death of Jeanne, wondering about the sky and the hell. The priest ends up accepting the mission that Gilles entrusts to him: to leave to Florence where, one says, a “new golden age” prepares, and to find there something or somebody which can light it.

Strainer enters the Toscane of the Quattrocento , brilliant of gold and beauty. It meets, in the low districts of Florence, clerk a twenty year old, Francesco Prelati, which studies poetry, the Géomancie and the Alchimie. In his company and under the “reappearing” sun, the Vendean priest discovers “the modern art”, that is to say the study of the prospect in painting and that for the anatomy in the sculpture. Frightened, dazzled, Blanchet speaks to the Florentin about dark the the Vendée and the sulfurous heart about Gilles de Rais. Could Prélati give again with the lord of Tiffauges “the vertical direction” which would lead it darkness towards the light? In front of the ocean, Prelati with the intuition of the direction of its mission: to raise of “the horizontality” “grouillement of the snakes the Gothic ones”, it will use the Alchimie florentine: it will save Gilles by fire. Arrived to the Vendée, the alchemist installs in the attic of the castle a laboratory with a forging mill and all the arsenal of slow cooking. Prelati explains to its host why Jeanne itself was saved by “the malignant inversion”: washed by fire on roughing-hew it of the witches, it joined the Sky. The fire is the tool, the hinge of the transmutation. Thus, Gilles must pass the test, go down in hell to go up towards the divine light. Consequently, its acts, directed or approved by the Florentin, do not have any more limits. However, the visit of the future king Louis XI, puts an end, the December 12th 1439, with the experiments of the alchemist.

A little later Gilles makes the act which will accelerate its arrest. He enters a church and tries to strangle the priest officiating who has misfortune to be the brother of Geoffroy Féron, debtor of a debt towards Gilles. The September 14th 1440, the lord of Tiffauges must be constituted captive and answer “of triple inculpation of sorcery, sodomy and assassination”. The lawsuit is completed with Nantes the October 26th. Gilles is condemned to roughing-hew. He dies “as a Christian” by fear especially of excommunication and when the flames reach it, he shouts three times “Jeanne! ”. Gilles “is not saved” and Prelati failed because:

“Each degree of being able a certain degree of knowledge must answer. What is frightening indeed, it is the unlimited capacity ordered by a limited spirit. It is not of violence nor of crime which one should not fear with vigorous hands to the service of a weak head” (Folio, page 91)

Comment

This account is a fiction which, without betraying the facts, “fills the white” left by the Histoire. The interpretation of Tournier becomes a philosophical analysis then and symbolic system, built on oppositions which correspond to the central theme and recurring of “the inversion”.

Gilles and Jeanne

The first opposition is in the meeting of the two sufficiently known first names to suggest from the start the meeting of the Monster and the Holy one. The originality of Tournier consists in, precisely, showing how these opposites will meet.

  • the point of view of Gilles
Before the arrival of the Virgin, Gilles de Rais carried out the ordinary existence and lout of a small landed proprietor without culture nor intelligence. No document makes it possible to suppose that the control of the teenager lets foresee that of the adult. Good undoubtedly believing in this time when the faith is exaltée, the Gilles young person needs an ideal; the Virgin will fill this lack. It starts to believe in her, like this one as a God, with same “fire”, same passion, same fanaticism. It will follow it everywhere, says him it, “with the Sky or in Hell”. After his death on roughing-hew it, Gilles seeks it under the features of the young boys of the Vendée and until in the odor of the bodies which it burns. The counts of indictment retained against Jeanne turn in her weak head: “pernicious”, “cruel”, it is with the eyes of the world a “monster in the shape of woman”. Only from now on and without hope, it will become monstrous “to follow it”.

  • the point of view of Prelati

Francesco Prelati is a Florentin conquered by the Renaissance. The character, however, is complex: clerk, attache at the house of the bishop of Mondovi, it studies alchemy. Glorifiant the capacity of the money, it is poor. Believing, he interprets the Écritures until the blasphemy. He will refer to it to give a direction to the acts of Gilles. Thus, he, Jesus say is descended in hell before gaining the Sky; Lucifer is the Carrier of Light before being the Fallen angel of darkness, it is the intercessor which the man needs to join God. And it is this same role that Prelati wants to play at Gilles. He will encourage it in the evil while suggesting to him offering in sacrifice children to “Barron”, so that bottom of the burning pit, Gilles can go up towards the Sky and join Jeanne. Art esoteric underlies the reasoning of Prelati: fire contains a fundamental ambiguity since it is “life and died, purity and passion, holiness and damnation”. The opposites are never as distant as it is believed: the intense cold burns and hatred is the roof of the love. The alchemist is “pilgrim of the Sky”, passing from one pole to another by the phenomenon of “the inversion”.

Random links:Saint-Yan | Antarctic peninsula | Sporting federation of Greenland | Paléotethys | Bay of Antongil