Le dépaysement ou quand tremble l'écriture de Jean Portante

Portante’s work develops a genuine poetics of space. On the one hand: the geo- graphical space, shaped by the back and forth between the Terres Rouges of Differdange, the host land, and the homeland of L’Aquila, the trembling land since the earthquake of 2009. On the other hand: the textual space thus generated, shaped by the symbolism of the in-between (French/Italian, fiction/non-fictionnal). The topoi of the earth and the (family) home, correlated to the matrices of the work, the mother tongue and family history, are constantly revisited by the author, and can therefore be re-read under the double prism of ecopoetics and material ecocriticism. The North/South tension (Luxembourg/Italy) can then be considered afresh for its poetic and narrative transformation. This article will thus try to formulate a hypothesis for an ecopoetic reading of Portante’s work centred on the pivot point that constitutes – for both writing and work – the L’Aquila earthquake, which engages the work in a new cycle. This trembling of the writing will then be addressed through the notion of “dépaysement”, in the polysemic richness that offers this term, or even motif: from a literal to a political and poetic meaning.