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Document Details : Title: Mijn hand op dit blad, in het holst van de nacht Author(s): VERGOTE, Dorine Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 86 Issue: 1 Date: 2024 Pages: 93-106 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.86.1.3293625 Abstract : What is it, to write? According to Patricia de Martelaere, it is an act of thinking. She continues to fascinate and intrigue readers of her philosophical essays, novels, and poems. This article explores the relationship between literature and philosophy in her first novel Night Book of an Insomniac (1988) and her last novel The Unexpected Answer (2004). I argue that on the subject of style and the creation of a literary character — for example, Godfried H., the main character of The Unexpected Answer —, there is an affinity with Gilles Deleuze’s theory of style as the result of modulation of language (especially of the sentence). Rather than being present, the main character is the one who is absent. By creating an ungraspable character like Godfried H., de Martelaere shifts the reader’s focus to a space between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. The real being (what ‘is’) is in-between, as Eastern philosophy claims, and to enter this space requires a new way of seeing. This view is what de Martelaere initially explored in a philosophical way, but what she eventually splendidly brings to life in her last novel The Unexpected Answer. |
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