L'Extase matérielle

'L'Extase matérielle' is an essay written by French Nobel laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio. The book's title means Material Ecstasy in English. This essay may be advising that we should pay the utmost attention to what there is around us, not to what there might be or ought to be. According to a review of 'L'Extase matérielle' the reasoning behind the essay is to accept that "what there is is all there is"(and to demand more is ludicrous)^[1]

L'Extase matérielle

1967 edition
Author	J. M. G. Le Clézio
Original title	L'Extase matérielle
Language	French
Genre	Essay
Publisher	Gallimard, Paris and Imprint from colophon by Mayenne : Impr. Floch, 1993.
Publication date	1967
Publication place	France
Pages	221
ISBN	978-2-07-032745-4
OCLC	150450422

Writing style

This essay consists of personal deliberations, discursively written, which are (probably) intended more to provoke his readers than to comfort them. Le Clézio seems to have been motivated to write this essay not just taking ideas from other writers, but also to explain his own research and also to relate his very own perspective on life. The essay is emotionally written.^[2]

Principles

This is a collection of essays which explicitly theorize many of the principles Le Clézio himself wrote in Terra Amata. Le Clezio expresses his fondness for small things in these essays.^[3]

Themes in L'extase materielle

• Le Clézio meditates about his bedroom
• Le Clézio writes about the woman
  • (and about the woman's body)
• Le Clézio writes of love,
  • (even of a fly or a spider)
• Le Clézio discourses on writing
• Le Clézio`writes about death
• Le Clézio gives some ideas of what he thinks "an absolute" (of anything) could be

Publication history

First French Edition

• Le Clézio, J M G (1967). L'extase matérielle (in French). Paris: Gallimard. p. 229. ISBN 978-2-07-032745-4.Re-Printed 1971OCLC 82053973

Second French Edition

• Le Clézio, J M G (1993). L'extase matérielle : essai (in French). Mayenne: Impr. Floch. p. 313. ISBN 978-2-07-023824-8.

Third French Edition

• Le Clézio, J M G (2008). L'Extase Materielle (Nobel Prize Literature 2008) (in French). Mayenne: Impr. Floch. p. 221. ISBN 978-0-7859-2838-6.

References

1. Sturrock, John (1967-06-22). "L'extase materielle". London,UK: From The Times Literary Supplement. Archived from the original on June 16, 2011. Retrieved 2008-11-18. (Second paragraph)There are sections in it where the paradoxes are so thick on the ground that the mind can make little headway and it is a great relief when movement is finally restored by a lucid axiom about bow we should try to live. What M. le Clezio proposes above all is that we should pay the utmost attention to what there is around us, not to what there might be or ought to be.
2. "L'extase matérielle de J.M.G. Le Clézio[Littérature française XXe]" (in French). evene.fr. Retrieved 2009-02-13.
3. "J.M.G. Le Clezio's Terra Amata: A micro-fictional affection for the real". Racevskis, Roland. Romanic Review. 1999-05-01. Retrieved 2009-02-14. second paragraph/first page ^{[dead link]}