Pierre Bergounioux - Une chambre en Hollande, Paris, Verdier, 2009, 56 p.

« L’acte de naissance du sujet de la connaissance a été dressé par un Français. C’est le Discours de la méthode.
Mais c’est en Allemagne que Descartes l’a conçu, en rêve, et aux Pays-Bas qu’il l’a rédigé. Si le monde se ramène depuis lors, à deux substances, l’étendue et la pensée, leurs rapports ne vont pas sans complications ni sautes.
La vie même de Descartes en est l’illustration. »
(Quatrième de couverture)

HOLTER, Julie, « Le clair-obscur “extrême contemporain” : Pascal Quignard, Pierre Michon, Patrick Modiano et Pierre Bergounioux », thèse de doctorat, French Studies, University of Washington, 2013, 236 f. +++ Thèse de doctorat / mémoire de maîtrise

### Abstract
My project proposes that a chiaroscuro aesthetic and mode of thought underlie and unite the work of four well-known contemporary French writers, Pascal Quignard, Pierre Michon, Pierre Bergounioux, and Patrick Modiano. Their writing, which demonstrates a profound interest in the origins both of individuals and of the human species itself, oscillates, with varied amplitude, between revealing light and enigmatic darkness, in the context of a dialogue between light and shadow. It also contributes to the representation of the subject through chiaroscuro self-portrait. I argue that what I call chiaroscuro writing opens a passage between revealing and concealing, a door through which to glimpse origins. The interplay between light and shadow creates a mental image, deep and dynamic, that, just as in chiaroscuro painting, promises more than can be seen: it shows the invisible, it points to the unsaid in what has been said. I treat chiaroscuro as a visual metaphor (the form) that evokes the tension between sensitive reason and abstract, rational reason (the content), in which the latter loses ground because it does not take into account the strength of the former and does not integrate its force to temper its own totalitarian tendencies. A rich thematic (Chapter I), an aesthetics (Chapter II), a way of thinking (Chapter III), and a tool for analyzing specific works (Chapter IV), what I call contemporary chiaroscuro links an ancient art technique with a present-day search for a small light as a way of surviving in our violently overlit period of permanent liminality. One can therefore speak of chiaroscuro literature as one that embraces origins in organic, vitalistic and, paradoxically gapfilled continuity.

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* Contient une section entièrement consacrée à Une chambre en Hollande ###

DEMANZE, Laurent, « Pierre Bergounioux : la chambre du lettré », Littératures, n° 60, p. 123-134. +++ Article de revue