Michel Serres sur comment „relire le relie”

Author(s): Gabriela Rodica Chira / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2020

Relire le relié is the last book written by Michel Serres, philosopher and historian of science, member of the French Academy, who left us on June 1, 2019, the book representing “a few decades of efforts devoted to linking all operations of synthesis”, the author himself tells us on the back cover. A book which “varies on the two origins of the word religion, […]: reread and relate”. The book, dated “Agen 1945, Vincennes 2019”, is structured in three chapters: “Hot spots, summits of the network. Vertical binding”, “Connecting men, violence and love. False gods: violence and death. Horizontal binding” and “The problem of evil”. Exact sciences, humanities and religion are interconnected in a continuum that demands the sustained attention of the reader, whose curiosity is constantly rewarded. The continuum, goes back to a very distant past which lies at the origin of the composition and organization of the contemporary society threatened at this moment by a dissolution which, paradoxically, represents the binder for what is being prepared.

Corina Bozedean, un livre sur Henry Bauchau

Author(s): Crina Anghel / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2020

This review aims to bring to the public attention the book Henry Bauchau, une poétique du minéral written by Corina Bozedean. It constitutes a short analysis of the three complex and revelatory chapters which deal with the problem of the mineral imaginary in the work of the Belgian writer. It seems that the mineral universe of Bauchau is structured following the principles of the complementarity and reversibility. It doesn’t question the notion of unity and coherence, but participates to its accomplishement by creating a connection between the subject and the world in terms of cohesion, constancy and stability.

Comment dire la guerre? Le regard d’une génération infortunée

Author(s): Antonietta Sanna / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2019

This article deals with the great theme of history, which is the First World War, as described by several French authors in their writings published in the first part of the XXth century: Maurice Génevoix, Georges Duhamel, A. Gide, Paul Valéry. War is a paradox and especially World War I does not look like any other war in the history of mankind. The whole continent was “wounded” after the battles the authors speak about and this is why Europe is full of war cemeteries.

« Le suprême effort de la matière cherchant à s’alléger… » : l’art chrétien du Moyen Âge français dans La Cathédrale de J. K. Huysmans

Author(s): Elena-Brândușa Steiciuc / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2019

The Cathedral, novel published by the French author Joris-Karl Huysmans in 1898 is an important attempt to investigate the lost senses of the Christian symbols of mediaeval art, as seen by the author in the complex architecture of the Chartres Cathedral. Taking into account the rich information given in the sixteen chapters of the novel, this article aims at pointing out some of the most interesting aspects of a masterpiece of Christian art, seen through the eyes of Huysmans, well-known for his art criticism as well.

L’autobiographie et le palimpseste auctorial chez Agnès Desarthe

Author(s): Camelia Biholaru / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2020

The autobiography of a consecrated writer implicitly includes a redefinition of the complex relationships between reading and writing. The story of Agnès Desarthe, Comment j’ai appris à lire (2013) provides an unprecedented restitution and reconstitution of reading experiences, a topic that claims the identity of not liking reading. Our approach aims to identify the configurations of self-representation and self-reference, specific to a retrospective exploration approach made by the writer. The purpose of our analysis is to determine the specificity of the creation process and the conduct of the creating subject in the particular case of a paradoxical detour where writing is the necessary step in learning to read.

La mémoire du goulag roumain dans les écrits de Lena Constante

Author(s): Elena-Brândușa Steiciuc / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2018

One of the most interesting painters of the early forties in Romania, Lena Constante (1909-2005) is the author of the novel L’évasion silencieuse (The Silent Escape) written in French and published in the Western world. In this writing she makes extensive use of her fabulous memory, in order to tell the whole world about her gulag experience in Romania, during the first years of the communist regime, when lots of Romanian intellectuals were sentenced to death or to many years in prison simply for not agreeing to the new political order and leaders. In her book, Lena Constante tells how she was framed, simply for being close to Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu’s wife (a political figure who was going to be killed as well) and she narrates her long years in prison, as a witness to many atrocious crimes committed by the dictatorial leaders of that time.

L’auteur francophone Amin Maalouf et la restitution transculturelle/transtextuelledes écrits anciens

Author(s): Elena-Brânduşa STEICIUC / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

Member of the French Academy since 2011, Amin Maalouf was born in Lebanon in 1949. He left his country during the civil war in the late seventies and settled in France, where he started writing in the language of his new country, becoming a Francophone writer. His novels, as well as his essays – in which he deals with topics such as origin, identity, and cultural gap – brought him many awards, as he is one of the most outstanding writers of French expression. Two of them are particularly interesting from the point of view of transcultural and transtextual restitution of old writings, real or fictional: Léon l’Africain and Samarcande. This is why our article attempts to point out Amin Maalouf’s way of bringing to the present day such writings, more or less explored.

Marie-Claire Blais : vers une nouvelle image de la femme québécoise

Author(s): Alina-Daniela Haidău / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

L’objet de cet article est d’analyser la condition de la femme dans la société québécoise, telle qu’elle apparaît illustrée dans l’œuvre de Marie-Claire Blais. Les personnages blaisiens sont des femmes remarquables par leur sincérité, leur complexité et l’âpre quête d’elles-mêmes qu’elles entreprennent constamment. L’adolescente, la jeune fille, la femme adulte (la mère, la grand-mère, l’épouse), la sœur aînée, l’amie sont des personnages dont l’identité est définie par leurs croyances, leurs choix et leurs décisions. Les transformations de l’image de la femme dans la société québécoise pendant le XXe siècle concernent l’attitude de la femme vis-à-vis d’elle-même et vis-à-vis du monde, l’attitude du monde vis-à-vis de la femme, les relations sociales de la femme. Ces transformations sont révélées dans les romans blaisiens, car l’écrivaine propose différents types de femmes : la femme soumise aux structures patriarcales, l’artiste, la prostituée, la femme lesbienne.

Restituer la culture maghrébine à travers des romans français: Tahar Ben Jelloun, Yasmina Khadra

Author(s): Magda-Roxana Brumă-Maillebuau / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

In this article we aim to show how the Magrebian culture is restituted to the Francophone public through the novels of Tahar Ben Jelloun and Yasmina Khadra, after a period of deep acculturation, as a result of colonialism. We took under the magnifying glass two authors who wrote their novels in French, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Yasmina Khadra, that are notorious due to this desire to share with the whole world the elements of Islam-Arab-Berber culture from Algeria and Morocco. The analysis is based on the study of Magreb’s traditions and customs, which were revisited by the two authors in their novels: Au pays and La prière de l’absent (Tahar Ben Jelloun) and Ce que le jour doit à la nuit and Les Agneaux du Seigneur (Yasmina Khadra). The framework of the novels is the Magreb geographical area: Algeria and Morocco, in a turbulent historical context, which followed the period after French colonialism. In conclusion the two writers from Maghreb, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Yasmina Khadra insert in their novels Arab-Berber and Islamic cultural elements in order to restore, at least partially, their own culture to the universal literature and to make known the cultural and ethnic themes of national and religious specificity.

Przed prawem. Tekst (literacki) w świecie cyfrowym

Author(s): Łukasz Musiał / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

Musiał explores the main trends in today’s digitisation processes and their impact on the written word, on reading and writing practices, on literature, literary research and the humanities. Starting with an analysis of Derrida’s essay “Before the Law,” Musiał goes on to question the emerging “law of literature” which is determined by digitisation – a cultural development whose scale and significance are comparable to the changes brought about by Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century.

Naukowcy i antropos. Antropocen czy oligantropocen?

Author(s): Christophe Bonneuil,Jean-Baptiste Fressoz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

This is a translation of passages from the chapter “Le savant et l’antrophos: Anthropocène ou Oliganthropocène” from Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz’s book L’Événement Anthropocène: La Terre, l’histoire et nous, Paris: Seuil, 2016., pp. 83-118 (The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us in David Fernbach’s English translation). In their groundbreaking book The Shock of the Anthropocene, Bonneuil and Fressoz discuss the relationship between science as a modern institution of organising individual life in its biological and organic dimension and social life, which is subordinated to faith in technological progress and the paradigm of infinite capital accumulation. The authors propose that the anthropocene is not only the peak and negative point of the project of modernity – a different way of thinking about science and new scientistic practices will be more than utopian visions – above all, they will be ways to maintain the diversity of life and to reverse humankind’s separation from the world.

Kino-Apokalipsa

Author(s): Peter Szendy / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

This texts consists of two chapters from Szendy’s book on the (post)apocalyptical imagination. Szendy examines visions of the end of the world in several films, taking into account formal, social, philosophical and planetary aspects. He also explores these visions in terms of the different kinds of contemporary aesthetic politics. The other problem treated here is apocalyptic temporality, which focuses on the figure of the date and process of dating events.

Norwid, Baudelaire ireguły sztuki

Author(s): Magdalena Siwiec / Language(s): Polish Issue: 5/2020

Siwiec discusses Norwid and Baudelaire as writers on the cusp of modernity who are clearly aware of their participation in contemporary social and cultural transformations. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s The Rules of Art, a study of the formation of the new literary field in which both poets took part, Siwiec examines the two poets’ statements on art’s dependency on the laws of the market and on the field of power represented by various institutions. She also exposes the ambivalent – although largely critical – relationship to the transformations of modernity that marks both Norwid and Baudelaire, whom, borrowing Antoine Compagnon’s term, we may describe as “antimoderenes”.

UNE ÉTUDE AUTOFICTIONNELLE SUR LE PREMIER ROMAN DU GENRE D’AUTOFICTION : FILS DE SERGE DOUBROVSKY

Author(s): Ali Tilbe,Mathilde Coloane / Language(s): French Issue: 27/2020

Invented in Fils in 1977 by Serge Doubrovsky, the neologism of autofiction, "fiction, of events and strictly real facts", is still dominating the literary space both in France and in several other countries since the beginning of the postmodern era as a very controversial new literary genre. It should be said in advance that the different definitions of the latter are related to autobiography. Nonetheless, autofiction goes beyond the limits of the classic autobiography definition of Rousseau’s model and the strict autobiography theory of Philippe Lejeune, given that it is considered obsolete and canonical, following the invention of the unconscious by Freud. At this point, it is the aspect of functionality and the hybridity of the illusory autofiction that excites the interest among autofictionnistes like Alain Robbe-Grillet, Raymond Federman, Philippe Forest, Vincent Colonna and Serge Doubrovsky. Today, in literary space, we testify to the legitimacy and dominance of autofictionnal writing which serves as the spokesperson for contemporary postmodern society. In this work, after briefly discussing the link between autobiography and autofiction, we will consider studying, in Fils, the narrative processes, especially the identity of the narrator, the anachronies and the novel’s techniques that constitute the autofictionnal space.

Русо y чвору књижевног и економског

Author(s): Maja Solar / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 170/2020

This paper discusses Rousseau’s approach to the relationship between literature and economy. Since there was no literature or economy in the contemporary sense in the pre-revolutionary France of the 18th century, the links between the literary and the economic were less concealed. These fields were not strictly distinguished but made up a tight knot. Drawing upon the dialectical approach, I read Rousseau’s questioning of the literary-economic node on several levels: i.) the economic conditions of the literary practices in the context of French absolutism; ii.) the economic contents in literary works; iii.) the overlapping of the literary with economic forms, and iv.) the economy of literature that incites courage and calls for a change of the socio-economic reality.

Метафора у художньому світі М. Пруста: від буття мистецтва до мистецтва буття

Author(s): Natalia Astrakhan / Language(s): Ukrainian Issue: 101/2020

The article deals with the functions of metaphor in the artistic world of M. Proust. In the context of the novel sequence In Search of Lost Time, metaphor becomes a mechanism to implement involuntary memory, which allows to combine the present (impressions) and the past (memories). Metaphor, given by the associative connection between impressions and memories, becomes the main constructive law of the artistic model of reality created by the French writer.The multifunctionality of metaphor correlates with the three forms of the subject of consciousness that appears in the context of the artistic whole of the novel sequence as an author, a narrator and a character. The author organizes the work of involuntary memory, based on the metaphor; the narrator balances what has been fished out of the past against the present with the help of experience associations; the character experiences the impressions by going through discoveries and disappointments.Proust’s lyrical epos gives the subject the ability to move beyond the hellish circle of the present into timeless dimensions. The novels created by the author and the character, intersect creating the effect of full being, allowing the subject of creative consciousness to recover its identity by overcoming painful contradictions of individual existence in the artistic creativity as in the dialogical interaction with the other.By using the formal and the hermeneutical methods with the emphasis on the philosophy of dialogue, the article explores the peculiarities of metaphor functioning at the macro- and microlevels. The former allows to construct the experimental picture of the world at the intersection of different time-space spheres that correlate with each other due to the spiritual and intellectual efforts of the subject. The latter allows us to consider the artistic image based on metaphor the core of the modernist writer’s artistic style and the way to the new concept of artist and art.

Dit (s) et non-dit(s) du silence dans La Traversée de Mouloud Mammeri

Author(s): Fatima Boukhelou / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

Le présent article ambitionne de démontrer comment, dans La Traversée, publiée en 1982, trente ans après La Colline Oubliée (1952), le village appelé Tasga, jadis vibrant à l’unisson du Cosmos, est devenu trente années plus tard un village mouroir où ne prévaut que le silence. A la lumière d’une approche mythanalytique, nous évaluerons, dans un premier temps, les mutations survenues au sein du village à travers le regard du journaliste Mourad. Dans un deuxième temps, nous suivrons Mourad jusque dans le désert, pour assister à un cours dispensé par un maître d’école à des enfants Touareg. Tout au long de notre exposé, nous serons confrontée à des situations de communication assez insolites où ne prédomine que le silence dont nous essayerons d’analyser les dits et les non-dits.

Book Reviews

Author(s): Ioana Cistelecan,Magda Danciu,Floarea Mateoc,Marius Miheţ,Dorel-Aurel Mureșan,Giulia Suciu,Éva Székely,Anca Tomoioagă / Language(s): English,French Issue: 1/2020

Tristan en reverdie: l’arborescence mythique d’un corpus

Author(s): Brînduşa Grigoriu / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

In most of its European versions of the central Middle Ages, Tristan nurtures an arborescent dynamics in which human agents reveal a spectacular potential for vegetalization, from the living couple to its tombal avatars, from the French poems to the Norse and German adaptations of a greening narrative matter (Pastré 1999, Victorin 2009). While exploring the affinities between the romance’s modeling of human ethos and its stylization of sylvan, vegetal figures under the sign of the philter, the present article focuses on the metamorphosis of the love tree in Béroul’s, Marie de France’s, Eilhart von Oberg’s and Robert’s realms of Tristania. In Béroul’s version, the couple fuses into an Edenic matrix where sleeping becomes an ensavaging, liberating process excluding the possibility of corporeal fecundity. (Marchello-Nizia 1981). Marie de France takes the idea of a refuted genealogy one step further, via the symbiosis of the honeysuckle and the hazel tree; this vegetal self-sufficiency excludes God’s commandments by suppressing the mere possibility of achieving a living descendance. In Eilhart’s romance, death is the catalyzer of a revegetation of the consubstantial souls of the lovers, as they are transcendentally reunited by the philter. Robert’s Saga crowns the textual regeneration of the Tristanian matter by resignifying its distinctive sign of mythical arborescence.

Le dialogue culturel entre l’Orient et l’Occident dans “Les Sirènes de Bagdad” de Yasmina Khadra, une utopie ?

Author(s): Chihab Besra / Language(s): French Issue: 14/2018

In his novel The Sirens of Baghdad, Yasmina Khadra tries to explain how cultural misunderstandings and disparities are at the root of hatred and the tensions that characterize the relationship between East and West. Through the painting of the psychological features of the main character and his reactions in the midst of the atrocities of war, he invites the reader to closely follow this path likely to transform an ambitious and peaceful individual, born of an Eastern society, into a terrorist.