First Love: Benjamin Constant's Recollection of Madame Johannot in Le Cahier rouge

A textual analysis of an important episode of Benjamin Constant's Le Cahier rouge reveals that the form of the recollection of this first love affair is as important as the information confessed. The prominent use of discours in a hitherto narrative text shifts the focus of attention from the past of the character to the present of the narrator-I The psychological perturbation of the narrator at the moment when he remembers this episode of his youth manifests itself at the level of the text by means of linguistic, syntactic and structural features that point to a fundamental attitude of ambivalence. (DJT)