K onirickým motivům v díle Jeana Anouilhe

Author(s): Marie Voždová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 59/2019

The study deals with an analysis of the oniric themes in the works written by Jean Anouilh, one ofthe best-known French playwrights, whose plays are frequently appearing on stages in France aswell as the whole world. The oniric themes are represented by a variety of dreams, visions, somnambulism, nightmares and states when the spirit leaves the body during the sleeping hours. The analysis is performed on the plays Eurydice, Le Songe du Critique, Le Boulanger, la Boulangere et le Petit Mitronand L’Arrestation. Each time, the oniric theme is defined according to its distribution, function andthe role that it plays in the author’s creative strategy.

Raný Mallarmé v českých překladech

Author(s): Záviš Šuman,Catherine Ébert-Zeminová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 31/2019

This article consists in a thorough analysis of various Czech translations of the early poems ofFrench Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The main difficulties arise from Mallarmé’s omnipresence in Czech literary culture, together with a tendency to adapt his poetry to fit the mood of changing historical contexts and expectations. Many Czech poets — some of the most prominent — havedealt with Mallarmé’s poetry, and its influence cannot be limited to a simple matter of translation.Among other things, it has thoroughly permeated Czech poetry in a specifically political way, as wesee for example with Hrubín’s historic address to the Convention of Writers in 1956. The overall aimof this paper however is to present a detailed examination of two Parnassian poems by Mallarméas translated by F. Dohnal, E. Lešehrad, K. Čapek, V. Nezval, F. Hrubín, O. Nechutová, V. Mikeš andJ. Pokorný. Based on a series of observations that have mainly to do with semantics, prosody and thetranslators’ overarching strategies, the authors come to the conclusion that the early Czech translations depend too much (if not word-for-word) on the French originals, and on Parnassian poeticalprincipals. A sensible change comes with K. Čapek. It is, however, F. Hrubín, himself an acclaimedpoet, who offers the most convincing translation, at least if we take into consideration such traditional or conservative criteria as precision and accuracy.

Wyzewův Wagner: ideál jednoty a realita hranic

Author(s): Záviš Šuman,Catherine Ébert-Zeminová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 60/2019

The article deals with the legacy of Teodor de Wyzewa’s reflexions on Wagner/Wagnerism and theirsubstantial impact on French Symbolist writers. The requirement to actually overcome nationalboundaries and pertaining ideologies has been a major step in seeking to open up French literaturetowards major foreign influences. It has also contributed to shape and define modernism, albeit ina rather conservative and largely neo-classical fashion.

Politické myšlení Alberta Camuse v kontextu motivu lidské přirozenosti

Author(s): Michal Müller / Language(s): Czech Issue: 61/2020

This article points to the interdisciplinary overlap of literary and journalistic work by Albert Camus and political philosophy. Unfortunately, political thoughts that represent a significant aspect of his work are often overshadowed by the exaggerated appeal of many interprets and literary critics to the philosophy of absurdity and its existential dimension. The article proposes the interpretative framework of human nature as a unifying element between the concepts of absurd and revolt, and uses it to assess Camus’s moderate political position. The article concludes that Camus’s works can be useful in considering the necessary conditions for political discussion and interpersonal dialogue, and in highlighting the importance of literature within this dialogue.

„Věčnost“ Arthura Rimbauda a její české překlady

Author(s): Petr Kužel / Language(s): Czech Issue: 64/2021

The study focuses on the significance of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Eternity”. It presents a literal Czech translation and a detailed commentary of the poem and compares it with other Czech translations. In addition, it describes the cultural context in which the poem was created, and it attempts to prove a hypothesis — based on the analysis of the poem — that “Eternity” is partially based on specific philosophical concepts of temporality, the absolute, and the Self. Consequently, the study implicitly polemizes with the opinion of Vítězslav Nezval, who significantly influenced the reception of Rimbaud in Czechia. Nezval appreciates Rimbaud’s free imagination, but claims there is no logical intention or philosophical background behind the meaning of Rimbaud’s poems. To prove the opposite, the study uncovers and describes the logical order and philosophical implications of the poem. At the end of the study, the author’s own poetic translation of “Eternity” is presented.

Interrogations (para)littéraires sur l’art en tant que destruction

Author(s): Marika Piva / Language(s): French Issue: Special/2022

The Goncourt Prize novel of Michel Houellebecq focuses on the parable of a fictional artist, Jed Martin, whose production ranges from photos of road maps to videos on manufactured products’ degradation, via portraits of people representing jobs. The Map and the Territory (2010) ends with a representation of the total triumph of vegetation in a future world museifing the first industrial age. One of the great questionings of aesthetic evaluation criteria is linked to the rise of popular literature, that some intellectuals considerate as a form of the death of art and individual creativity substituted with industrial production. Playing with the codes of detective story, Houellebecq describes his own death and his body transformation in an imitation of a Pollock painting; the crime results to be an attempt to cover up the theft of Michel Houellebecq, Writer, the portrait of the novelist that Jed Martin created to replace another canvas, Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons sharing the Art Market, that he destroyed. The contribution analyses the novel of Houellebecq as a reflection on contemporary art and literature that mix ekphrasis, mise en abyme and intertextuality to blend creation and decomposition and to question the possibility of representation.

Avant-propos

Author(s): Anita Staroń,Laure LÉVÊQUE / Language(s): French Issue: 17/2022

« L’illusion du jardin décevant ». L’écriture de la crise dans les Jardins maures d’Aline Réveillaud de Lens

Author(s): Małgorzata Sokołowicz / Language(s): French Issue: 17/2022

The aim of this contribution is to answer the question of why in “Jardin maures” [“Moorish Gardens”], a collection of short stories written by a French writer and painter of the colonial era, Aline Réveillaud de Lens (1881-1925), the imaginary of the garden intervenes with that of the crisis. Are we simply dealing with the crisis of the garden understood as an Edenic place or are we faced in those short stories with other crises that the writer evokes by using this incongruous union of the garden and the crisis? To answer these questions, we have divided our paper into three parts. The first will briefly introduce the writer and the collection. The second will show that the crisis of the garden may denounce some crises of Muslim society and the third part will describe the crisis of the garden as the crisis of a certain dream.

Crier la crise, nier la crise : solitude et solidarité dans l’expérience poétique de Michel Houellebecq et de Colette Nys-Mazure

Author(s): Stanisław Jasionowicz / Language(s): French Issue: 17/2022

This article juxtaposes two strains of “the imagination of crisis” that manifest in the poetic practice of two contemporary francophone writers – the Michel Houellebecq (French) and the Colette Nys-Mazure (Belgian). Examination of several characteristic traits of their imaginary universes, such as for example the figure of the Father and of the Mother, invites reflection on the profound motivation that belies their artistic and existential standpoints. It would appear that the poetic strategies each adopts in the face of fundamental existential problems, correspond more or less directly to the Christian virtues (faith, hope, love), even though for Houellebecq (atheist or agnostic) the point of departure is the “dark side” of life, whilst Nys-Mazure (Christian, Catholic) chooses the “bright side”: both poets prefer to build rather than tear down. The intuition of a transcendence that emanates from their thirst for harmony in the chaotic modern world makes it possible to claim that poetry, which is capable of either “shouting the crisis from the rooftops” or refuting it, might possibly succeed in counteracting the “crise des vers”.

La crise des intellectuels et ses avatars dans "Les Mandarins" de Simone de Beauvoir

Author(s): Anna Ledwina / Language(s): French Issue: 17/2022

In the novel “The Mandarins”, Simone de Beauvoir shows the crisis of French intellectuals, namely writers facing ideological and political dilemmas after World War Two. Reflecting on the usefulness of their works, the main protagonists ask the fundamental question, namely why / for what to write and act. In the writer’s optics, two solutions are possible. On the one hand, the commitment, and the need for being aware of situations and actions. On the other hand, the idea of the autonomy of literature. This opposition seems to cause a failure of common expectations and hopes, conformism, collapse of values as well as love failures. The history of "broken illusions" of a known milieu allows the writer to make us realize the importance of morality, responsibility, and the presence of another human being. The meaning of the crisis in the novel is expressed by exposing what is most intimate, and by ascribing this state of affairs to the ills of the age, which become a political and ethical imperative.

L’Altérité à l’épreuve de l’interartialité dans Une Année dans le Sahel d’Eugène Fromentin

Author(s): Souhila Ramdane / Language(s): French Issue: 4/2021

A Year in the Sahel by Eugène Fromentin is a travelogue in which the representation of Otherness is based on a number of complex artistic images whose genesis is the Western imagination of women and the Orient in the nineteenth century. The Other is represented in a series of four portraits which constitute an interesting subject for study. To do this, we call on the concepts of Imagology and Interartiality in order to answer the following two questions: how the Other is represented by Eugène Fromentin? and what are the socio-historical issues of this representation?

René Maizeroy : tristes devis

Author(s): Jean de Palacio / Language(s): French Issue: 5/2022

This article studies the weak presence of René Maizeroy in the collective enterprise of Catulle Mendès. In the four short stories he proposed for Le Nouveau Décaméron – “Nini Rosalin,” “La Tentation de Saint Antoine,” “Les Montefiore”, and “Don Juan” – it is not the provocative writer we are dealing with, but rather a René Maizeroy guided by tragic inspiration. Three of the four characters presented – the great don-juanesque lord, the acrobat, and the young girl raised in the convent – die at the end, and the fourth, the exhausted Hungarian aristocrat Count Zzavody, is hardly any better off. Female figures are also presented quite negatively, and often as heartless women. By remembering Laclos and Les Liaisons dangereuses, Maizeroy seems to have become a historian of morals and to have wanted to redeem himself from his bad reputation. Finally, it should be said that Le Nouveau Décaméron does not really do justice to Maizeroy’s intentions.

DISSOLUTION DU SUJET ET SPECULARITE MINERALE DANS LA POETIQUE DE ROGER CAILLOIS

Author(s): François Moll / Language(s): French Issue: 3/2022

Dissolution of the Subject and Mineral Specularity in the Poetics of Roger Caillois. Heir to analogical thought – which is a scientific, philosophical and poetic thought of nature – Roger Caillois develops a demanding poetic ethics. Postulating, in his critical and poetic work, the necessary dissolution of the subject, Caillois only seeks to strengthen his presence, to ward off his fear of indistinction and to ensure, ultimately, his own scriptural legitimacy. In doing so, he chooses stone, which he opposes to the indecent volubility of the plant, as a literary model of sustainability, as the emblem of his poetics and as a lyrical mirror through which alone he agrees to appear in his own text.

Mizoandria. Wokół eseju Pauline Harmange Moi les hommes, je les déteste

Author(s): Krystyna Kłosińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 49/2021

The subject of the present article is Pauline Harmange’s infamous essay, I Hate Men (2020). The author starts by discussing the uproar it caused on the political scene and then seeks to situate the work on the French map of feminist and anti-feminist movements since the 1970s, asking about the place from which the young essayist speaks. She considers the central issue to be the misandrist discourse Harmange has activated, and around it she (re)construct a spectrum of issues that, in her view, illuminate it. She traces the “archaeology” of the word ‘misandry,’ which is not anchored in the everyday reality, including the academic one. She explores its function by juxtaposing two contradictory perspectives: Harmange’s feminist one and the anti-feminist one, whose activists proclaim misogynist and sexist slogans. The symmetrical or asymmetrical approaches to misandry and misogyny are also arranged at these poles. Harmange, while cultivating misandrist attitudes among women, consistently enumerates the benefits they should derive from misandry.

Un mot ancien au service des Lumières françaises : citoyen

Author(s): Adriana Lastičová / Language(s): French Issue: 10/2022

This paper aims to identify the thematic categories associated with the word and the figure of the citizen in several texts published in France in the 18th century before the Revolution of 1789. The author examines the main themes linked to the appearance of the word citoyen and classifies them in the hyperonymic categories, collected at the end of the paper in the “grappe de themes” and shows that under the pen of some great authors of the time the word and the figure of the citizen are associated with the great themes of the Enlightenment like happiness, morality, protection of human life and virtue.

Free verse as a graphic text – in translation: Reverdy and Pound

Author(s): Witold Sadowski / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2021

The free verse is taken here to be a graphic text, i.e. a technique operating the layout of signs on a page. The problem of translating thus understood versification into foreign languages is considered here on the basis of Reverdy’s and Pound’s poems. This article puts forward a hypothesis, that misunderstandings resulting from differences between the original structure and the one appearing in the translation are caused by culturally embedded beliefs about the melodic nature of a free verse. At the same time, considerations of the specific role of the translator of a graphic text lead to conclusions as to why that translator sometimes decides to verbalise the semantics of versification and translate the words of the original by means of the graphic layout.

Despre nemăsura divină şi măsura umană în "Apologia lui Raimond Sebond" de Montaigne

Author(s): Dorin Stefanescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 7-8/2022

Montaigne redactează Apologia lui Raimond Sebond în 1576, scriere care va constitui capitolul al 12-lea din cartea a doua a Eseurilor, publicată în 1580. Situat în centrul întregului corpus, este textul care pune cel mai bine în lumină gândirea religioasă a autorului, o gândire aflată la răspântia dintre umanismul renascentist, cu adânci rădăcini în antichitatea grecolatină, şi teologia (nu neapărat scolastică) a Evului Mediu.

Dubok život

Author(s): Jean Poncet / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 27/2022

Poetry by Jean Poncet ("Nouriya", "Otići ćeš", "Sjene i pepeo", "Proljeće s mrtvom majkom", "Sjećanje na mog oca", "Između dva ništavila", "Doba istinskog života", "Krhotine Palestine", "Pjesnici u Toledu", "Total Krakatoa", "Poezija")

Yasmine Chami, une écriture de l’intranquilité

Author(s): Fatema-Ezzahra Taznout / Language(s): French Issue: 43/2022

Yasmine Chami’s fictional work is made of the meticulous exploration of the sphere of the intimate in the manner of a caving of the consciousness of being in the world. A narrative motif in particular comes off for the systematic nature of its occurrences, that of abandonment (of the woman by her spouse). This leitmotiv strikingly crystallizes the fragility of couple bonds and inevitably induces a profound questioning of the relationships between women and men and the representations that underlie them. In order to shed new light on the life path of her heroines, the author mobilizes a multifaceted imagination. In the present study, the focus will be primarily on the ingenious use she makes of storytelling and mythology as major narrative springs which allow the work to unfold simultaneously on the intimate and the universal level.

L’antagonisme du féminin et du masculin dans Salammbô de Flaubert

Author(s): Hichem Ismaïl / Language(s): French Issue: 43/2022

In Salammbô by Flaubert, the representation of the ancient universe reveals a struggle between two opposing principles, masculine and feminine, which takes on a character that is both mythological and cosmological. While revealing the dangers of the encounter between these two poles, the story stages a fierce confrontation between these two imaginaries presenting themselves as mutually exclusive. This antithetical construction will give rise to a whirlwind of passion and cruelty that will consecrate the triumph of monstrosity over amorous emotions. In the Punic work, the language of violence prevails over that of love so much so that the deep energy that nourishes amorous desire is transformed into a veritable force of generalized annihilation. Flaubert’s nihilism strives to undermine the highest values of bourgeois culture, which disgusts it, and reaches its peak when it attacks the roles it assigns to the opposite sexes.