Fratricidio e tratta degli schiavi nel Négrier di Édouard Corbière [Fratricide and Slave Trade in Édouard Corbière’s Le Négrier]

Le Négrier is an outstanding novel of maritime fiction genre published in 1832 and focused on the twins Léonard and Auguste as the main characters of the story. Their birth in a watery element [the hammock operates like a cradle] sketches a mythological background having an impact on the siblings’ symmetrical fate. Although they are brothers, both have different and even reverse features in complexion and morality exacerbating over the years coming. Léonard is part of the primary process, his brother Auguste, instead, represents the paternal function. They both prefer life at sea, but they experience it differently: the former follows his own inclinations, the latter determines his future according to his father’s dreams. The ambivalent feeling of love and hate that Léonard harbours for his brother until the final murder, will eventually assume a double value to him: on the one hand the fratricide will be experienced as liberating, on the other a destinal and tragic anagnorisis devouring his soul.