ABSTRACT
Pinget's novels L'Apocryphe and Theo ou Le Temps neuf exploit the Virgilian intertext in a similar manner, although memories of the Bucolics and Virgil's attendant Christianization qualify Simon's nihilism. This chapter indicates that Pinget has claimed to have sprinkled allusions to Virgil's Bucolics in all his later works, but it is in L'Apocryphe and his latest work Theo ou Le Temps neuf that he refers constantly to these poems. Pinget adopts Simon's device and makes of L'Apocryphe a circular work. In Dante's Commedia the poet Statius turns in reverence towards Virgil to claim that Virgil had been like one who holds a lantern behind his back, leading his followers toward a glory which he himself could not behold. Pinget's treatment of Virgil's Bucolics maintains this perception of Virgil, as the Bucolics becomes one of the stars which hope to guide to a safe arrival the ship which carries author, text and reader.
