Past and Present in Jorge Semprun’s L’écriture ou la vie Cover Image

« Passé et présent dans L’écriture ou la vie de Jorge Semprun »
Past and Present in Jorge Semprun’s L’écriture ou la vie

Author(s): Giulia Ferri
Subject(s): French Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej
Keywords: concentration camp ; autobiography ; memoir ; metatextuality ; trauma, deportation ; survival

Summary/Abstract: Being a survivor to the Buchenwald concentration camp may imply the inability to tell this tragic experience. Semprun tries to go beyond this difficulty by writing L'écriture ou la vie. His trauma and the camp’s omnipresence determine a noncoincidence between interior and exterior time and the fragmentation of the text. Chronological linearity makes way for a labyrinthic time caractherized by a continuous change of present into past tense and by several flash-backs and metatextual digressions. The latter are also the indication that the elaboration process is underway and this suggests that art in itself makes the evolution possible.

  • Issue Year: 40/2016
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 181-191
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: French