Marguerite Yourcenar and the mythological dimension of the historical novel

Abstract

Century after century, the words uttered in the ast have been echoed in the present. It is the epic That mediates between past and present days. It is the poet who succeeds in carrying the ardor of past ages through to this generation. For him, History is an attempt to explain a genealogy. In the intellectual scenery of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the memory of the past is expressed as a mythical absorption. One wishes to meet the primeval facts which determined the evolution of the different societies — as well as the individual's role in this development. That explains why in the Greek mythology the goddess Mnemosene is the mother of the Muses. It is by her evocation that the poet gives shape and beauty to the "gests", being at the same time a messenger, who makes manifest to mankind the secret of its origin.