« COMPOSER SON RIEN AVEC UN MORCEAU DE TOUT » : À PROPOS DES ROMANS LES ÂMES GRISES ET LE RAPPORT DE BRODECK DE PHILIPPE CLAUDEL.

The paper deals with the representation of History in the works of the contemporary French writer Philippe Claudel (*1962) – in his novels Gray Souls (Les âmes grises, 2003) and Brodeck (Le rapport de Brodeck, 2007), to be specific. The author uses, according to his own words, mentions of History to create parallels with the present. In Gray Souls he evokes the First World War, in Brodeck the Second World War. In both cases, narration is the matter of insignificant, marginal narrators, who are, however, touched by the events, deciding to tell their story in order to deal with history, bad memories and reproofs. Analyses show the way Claudel’s novels treat the question of memory, individual as well as collective, of the relation between History and individual destinies, of the role of testimony, memory and oblivion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]