Abstract

Before developing the argument relating to the theme I must treat, I often check, in the dictionary, the generally acknowledged meaning of the keywords relating to it. I did that for the word ‘grace’ and I have been surprised by the number of significations which correspond to this word. They range from the most physical to the most meta-physical, passing through the political and the social. If the word ‘grace’ seems at first to allude to an intervention of God himself, it also expresses the enchantment caused by physical forms or movements, thus by that which from nature, in particular that of the woman, appeals to us and arouses in us, including at a carnal level: her sweetness has grace, her gestures are graceful as is her youthful abandon. It is not only a question of nice forms, something more plays a part in meaning which moves us differently. So we already went from the favours that God sometimes accords to us to the awakening of desire that the charm of a body, in particular of a feminine body, can arouse, a desire that we could receive as a sort of grace to help us carry on our path and not as a temptation aiming at our shirking the divine grace.