How (Henri Bosco’s) Gatzo and Pascalet discover their Mediterranean friendship’s otherness, with Ananke and Hydra of Lerna showing just beneath the surface

Abstract

‘How (Henri Bosco’s) Gatzo and Pascalet discover their Mediterranean friendship’s other-ness, with Ananke and Hydra of Lerna showing just beneath the surface’ proposes to follow the ‘poet from Provence’, Henri Bosco, to the sometimes disturbing aquatic charms of Southern French landscapes. These appear in his narratives as initiatory spaces, and at the same time, related as they are to the most theriomorphic aspects, they represent a crea-tive source for the author. In L’enfant et la rivière, Ananke is the occult force that allows sur-vival at all costs: the two heroes inevitably discover friendship when precisely they daringly visit the marshes – the place where centuries-old legends of Hydra of Lerna can still be found. From Heracles’ Greece to Pascalet and Gatzo’s Provence, the Mediterranean marshes seem to preserve their mysteries while serving the emotional (re)constructions of identities and alterities.