100

It is in questioning the notions of “intended meaning” and of intention (ality) as they are analyzed by E. Benveniste that we approach the corrections carried out in the manuscript of Génetrix by Mauriac. The observation of these modifications moves toward a dramatic intensification of the novel, and this dramatization translates, from our point of view, an “intention to say” (Fr. vouloir dire) in the work in the ensemble of the modifications that one may observe in the manuscript. As much as at the macro-structural level (especially in the elimination of digressions) as at the micro-structural level (types of naming, stylistic devices, syntactical configurations, punctuation), the analysis reveals a semantic direction, which allows us to perceive, at the critical points of the revision, the genesis of a text and the intention to say of the author in a space of translinguistic dynamics.