The Ideal of the Family in F. Mauriac’s Lyrical Cycle “Farewell to Adolescence”

The depiction of the bourgeois family occupies a prominent place in the work of F. Mauriac. This article explores the ideal image the author creates in his lyric cycle «Farewell to Adolescence». The article focuses on the depiction of the family as an idyllic microcosm that is shaped in the writer's early poetry and how this image is connected to key motifs of childhood, the painful experiences of adolescence, and religious quest. The goal of the research is to identify the specifics and evolution of the family ideal in the lyric cycle and in Mauriac's subsequent prose. The problem of the duality of the family is raised: on the one hand, it is a source of divine love and spiritual support, on the other hand, the captivity of tender childhood.

The analysis establishes a connection between the lyric cycle and the novel «The Frontenac Mystery». It demonstrates how «Farewell to Adolescence» develops a model of family based on selfless love, the key image of which is the figure of the mother. Despite the pain of parting with childhood, this ideal becomes the lyrical hero's moral foundation. «L’adieu à l’adolescence» is a semantic and figurative precursor to Mauriac's mature prose, where the themes of family, faith, and the preservation of spiritual purity in the bourgeois world are further developed.

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