L'Asile de la Pureté

L'Asile de la Pureté is a play written in 1953 by Quebec artist Claude Gauvreau.

“L'Asile de la pureté”, written in 1952, is a comic-tragic epic in five acts.
Donatien Marcassilar, a young poet who has fallen from grace following the death of his beloved, embarks on a fast that he intends to continue until death.
Through the protagonist's journey, the play reflects on convictions, cowardice, integrity, following one's ideals to the end without deviating, and change and transformation.

In a society shaped by the gaze of others, where standards are imposed with increasing ease, Donatien communicates the need to stand out, to have one's own identity as an individual, to speak out, to exist, to express oneself and, above all, to be.
More than 50 years after the author's death, we still feel his desire to enrich the language, to offer poetry that is as literary as it is concrete and comprehensible, in order to destroy the prejudices surrounding Quebecois French.
To tackle the creation of a work by Claude Gauvreau is also to look at Quebec culture, the Refus global, the Quiet Revolution, and the foundations of our cultural identity.

“L'Asile de la Pureté” presents a poignant journey into the heart of a corrupt world, full of hypocrisies, a world filled with misunderstandings and great discoveries, a world where, as Leszwick aptly puts it:
“We respect only monetary force and the brutal power to trample on what is delicate or wonderful”.


And yet, through the twists and turns of our human nature, the author reveals an ardent desire to survive in the face of conformism, to turn things around by assuming what might be described as audacious or uncompromising.
As Donatien pursues his quest, a veritable ode to singularity unfolds, questioning our own quest as individuals.

What do we still dream of, what do we want to preserve at all costs, and what are we prepared to sacrifice to preserve this ideal?