La solitude
Énoncé
Évaluation de fin de premièreÉpreuve écrite
Durée : 2 heures
Le sujet porte sur la thématique « Rencontres ».
Prenez connaissance des documents A, B et C et traitez le sujet suivant en anglais :
Write a short commentary on the three documents (minimum 300 words): taking into account the specificities of each document, analyse how the three artists explore the theme of loneliness and use it as a source of inspiration.
Prenez connaissance des documents A, B et C et traitez le sujet suivant en anglais :
Write a short commentary on the three documents (minimum 300 words): taking into account the specificities of each document, analyse how the three artists explore the theme of loneliness and use it as a source of inspiration.
Document A
In New York City, when he first went there to live and before he became confused and disconcerted by the facts of life, Enoch went about a good deal with young men. He got into a group of other young artists, both men and women, and in the evenings they sometimes came to visit him in his room. Once he got drunk and was taken to a police station where a police magistrate frightened him horribly, and once he tried to have an affair with a woman of the 5 town met on the sidewalk before his lodging house. The woman and Enoch walked together three blocks and then the young man grew afraid and ran away. The woman had been drinking and the incident amused her. She leaned against the wall of a building and laughed so heartily that another man stopped and laughed with her. The two went away together, still laughing, and Enoch 10 crept off to his room trembling and vexed.The room in which young Robinson lived in New York faced Washington Square and was long and narrow like a hallway. It is important to get that fixed in your mind. The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room almost more than it is the story of a man.
15 And so into the room in the evening came young Enoch's friends. There was nothing particularly striking about them except that they were artists of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately, almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They think it 20 matters much more than it does.
And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and talked and Enoch Robinson, the boy from the farm near Winesburg, was there. He stayed in a corner and for the most part said nothing. How his big blue childlike eyes stared about! On the walls were pictures he had made, crude things, half finished. His friends talked of these. Leaning back in their chairs, they talked and talked with their heads rocking from side to side. Words were said about line and values and composition, lots of words, such as are always being said.
Enoch wanted to talk too but he didn't know how. He was too excited to talk coherently. When he tried he sputtered and stammered and his voice sounded strange and squeaky to him. That made him stop talking. He knew what he wanted to say, but he knew also that he could never by any possibility say it.
Sherwood Anderson, "Loneliness", Winesburg, Ohio, 1919
Document B
![]() Edward Hopper, Automat, 1927 |
Document C
About me young careless feetLinger along the garish(1) street;
Above, a hundred shouting signs
Shed down their bright fantastic glow
Upon the merry crowd and lines
Of moving carriages below.
Oh wonderful is Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.
Desire naked, linked with Passion,
Goes strutting(2) by in brazen(3) fashion;
From playhouse, cabaret and inn
The rainbow lights of Broadway blaze
All gay without, all glad within;
As in a dream I stand and gaze
At Broadway, shining Broadway — only
My heart, my heart is lonely.
Claude McKay, "On Broadway", Harlem Shadows, 1922
Annexes
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