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Articles

Volume 18, Number 2 (1993)

Water Imagery in the Novels of Jacques Poulin

  • Paul G. Socken
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1993-06-06

Abstract

Water imagery is prevalent in Jacques Poulin's seven novels. Gaston Bachelard's study of water imagery reveals that it is "un être total" and that "l'eau doit suggérer au poète une obligation nouvelle: l'unité d'élément." Poulin's writing is a search for unity, both within the self and beyond, and the omnipresent water imagery expresses that search. Water imagery is a vehicle for transforming reality; it is associated with dreams, a life-force, healer, a purifier, but also potentially threatening. All of Poulin's novels are about a protagonist's quest for the authentic inner self; all are studies of frustrated writers attempted to express themselves; all express searches for a world of peace and harmony which eludes the characters. The unity Poulin seeks for the world and for the self, the search for meaning in life and in death, the place of writing and the role of the writer, are all fundamentally and intricately linked to water imagery.