When ‘I’ Is Another: On Une belle matinée by Marguerite Yourcenar

Abstract

When analyzing the character of young Lazare in Marguerite Yourcenar’s short story Une belle matinée, we encounter an idea that is dear to the author: Unus et multi in me (“One and many in me”). Indeed, the child’s identity, as he begins to become aware of it, is shaped and realized through a diversity of characters. He lives his own life by living all lives.It is these close connections between identity and otherness that I will attempt to analyze in Yourcenar’s major novels, and more specifically in this final fictional text.