Masquer et démasquer la langue. "L’Écriture ou la vie" de Jorge Semprun

Jorge Semprun’s works bring together the scattered elements of an existence marked by tragic events, where manifold geographical, cultural and linguistic spaces intersect. Exile and deportation, which constitute the centres of his journey both as a man and as a writer, leave a specific mark on his relationship with the world and with life. Through his novels, which express the anguish of uprooting, the author gives us the image of a subject prey to a feeling of estrangement that influences several domains at once. Semprun writes mostly in French. The use of a language which is not his mother tongue and is also characterised by its very nature by a high degree of precision, conciseness and transparency, allows him to distance himself from the difficulties of a narrative in which he is intimately involved. It should be noted, however, that in the «perforated» French of L’Écriture ou la vie, lexical or phraseological elements in Spanish or German are inserted, paradoxically participating in a movement of identity reconstruction. Our paper attempts to show to what extent the presence of Spanish and German contributes to removing the mask of the language he chooses as a writing instrument and to bringing to light that «unconscious of the text» which hides the core of an almost unspeakable experience.