MUTUAL INFLUENCES OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF NATURE IN THE FIRST GARDEN BY ANNE HÉBERT

Abstract

The entire work of the famous Quebec novelist Anne Hébert has nature as its hallmark. In herbooks, she recalls memories of Kamouraska, the land of her ancestors, a Quebec province and thegrand river Saint Laurent, or depicts her other homeland France, with its capital situated on theSeine, its blossoming Côte d’Azur as well as its castles in the valley of the river Loire.Faithful to her inspiration, in The First Garden, the novelist enlivens the landscape of her past,rivers, forest and parks which are transformed with seasons. The main character is an actress whois getting older and is following the path of nature, remembering important events in her privateand professional life. The house of her childhood, a cottage rented in the countryside of theTouraine Province, or the one on the Mediterranean coast, are the starting points of differentperiods of her life, and the famous actress, who has chosen an artistic name Flora Fontanges,revives her past with a feeling of being “an animal in the circus” under the stage limelight whenshe lends her body, one after another, to Célimène, Ophelia or Phèdre.The aim of this paper is to analyze the basic dichotomies and similarities of nature andculture, between the flow of water and the flow of time in the life of every human being. AnneHébert, herself, underlines her close encounters by giving her heroine the artistic name Flora andputs her here and there between her past and the present life on the doorstep of old age and futureplans in the theatre.