The Eye is listening The figure of the hanged man in Aloysius Bertrand

This article analyzes « Le Gibet », one of the additional texts at the end of Bertrand’s collection of prose poems Gaspard de la nuit. This particular poem can be situated in a long tradition of depiction of a hanged man at the gallows. What makes Bertrand’s treatment so particular is the metonymic approach and also the auditive apprehension of this motif. Both modes of representation can be seen as strategies to attenuate the horror of death, which nonetheless enhance it in the final part of the text.