The poetics of (post)memory in a (post)migratory novel. A reading of Les Mots de Russie by Isabelle Bielecki Cover Image

La poétique de la (post)mémoire dans un roman (post)migratoire. Une lecture des Mots de Russie d’Isabelle Bielecki
The poetics of (post)memory in a (post)migratory novel. A reading of Les Mots de Russie by Isabelle Bielecki

Author(s): Przemysław Szczur
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Studies of Literature, Comparative Study of Literature, French Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Instytut Filologii Romańskiej & Wydawnictwo Werset
Keywords: Belgian literature in French; migration; memory; postmemory; Isabelle Bielecki

Summary/Abstract: The article constitutes an analysis of Les Mots de Russie, an autobiographical novel by Isabelle Bielecki, a contemporary Belgian writer of Russian-Polish origin. The theoretical framework of the study is provided by two key concepts: Jean-François Perrin’s novelistic poetics of memory and Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory. The author analyses the composition of the text, based on a problematic (post) memory. Two plots coexist there: one that corresponds to the story of the return of memories and its circumstances; and the other which is made up of the content of these memories. The phenomenon of post-memory, the result of a historical trauma, modifies the novelistic poetics of memory by introducing a discontinuous structure, uncertainty about what happened, an ambiguous moral aspect of the figures of direct victims of the trauma, the story of the physical sufferings of its indirect victims, but also the possibility of overcoming the traumatic legacy through writing. (Post)memory is thus presented as a powerful creative stimulus.

  • Issue Year: 2022
  • Issue No: 12
  • Page Range: 174-184
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: English, French