Le noble, le serf et le révizor: Daniel Beauvois w Bibliotece „Kultury”

Author(s): Anna M. Brzezińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2020

This article presents the person of Daniel Beavois – a distinguished student of the Polish-Russian-Ukrainian relations in the post-partitioned era – and his contacts with the editors of the Paris ‘Kultura’. The author’s concern is also with the question of how Beavois’ work on the Polish nobility in Ukraine in the years 1831–63 was received among Polish post-war exiles, and with Beavois’ postcolonial diagnosis that emerged on the margins of his research and concerned the tensions to which Polish national identity was subject in Poland’s old eastern borderland (the so-called Kresy).

Edukacja społeczna w pisarstwie François Mauriaca na podstawie powieści Le Noeud de vipères i Le Sagouin

Author(s): Beata Kędzia-Klebeko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2020

Upbringing within the family and the family itself are of crucial importance for the proper functioning of communities and entire nations. The reproduction of negative behavioural patterns perpetuates a perception of reality acquired over generations. This can lead to the destruction of the entity and communities. The aim of this article is to present the thoughts of F. Mauriac, a French Catholic writer of the post-war period. In his novels, Mauriac revealed threats to the individual that come from rejecting friendship towards the world and people. In the pages of many of his novels, Mauriac traces the fates of French families. He shows their dramatic entanglements, stemming from concentration on illusions of their own beliefs about happiness. The subject of analysis in this article are two selected novels, Le Noeud de vipères, known to the Polish reader as The Viper’s Den, and Le Sagouin, which is not yet translated into Polish. The first part of the article presents the relationships between literature and social life as seen from the socio-literary perspective, while the second presents Mauriac’s understanding of his literary commitments and his commitment to Catholic culture. It aims to show readers the barrenness of existence of anyone who disregards the concept of love in interpersonal relations. The following parts present the problems of institutional and family education raised by Mauriac and highlight his understanding of the responsibility incumbent upon parents and teachers for the fate of the younger generation. This generation, in the long run, determines the fate of social civilisation in the broad sense of the term. Responsibility for the other, in the spirit of empathy, turns out to be the key slogan for everyone’s actions.

Traduire la peur: une étude contrastive

Author(s): Effrosyni Lamprou,Freiderikos Valetopoulos / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

In this paper, we examine the question of the verbalization of fear and its translation from Modern Greek into French. The target texts of our analysis are of two types: translations of experienced translators and translations of Cypriot learners. We study data from the analysis of our translation corpus and we question the conceptualisation of the emotion of fear.

Фатима Риза-Заде (Сайях), исследовательница Достоевского

Author(s): Zeinab Sadeghi Sahlabad,Oksana A. Kravchenko,Alina A. Shuldishova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 4/2021

The article is devoted to the biography of the Soviet-Iranian researcher F. Riza-Zade, also known as F. Sayyah, and her studies of Dostoevsky’s literary heritage. A number of archival materials that reflect the professional and friendly relations of F. Riza-Zade in 1929–1930s have been introduced into scientific circulation. A review of the articles “Dostoevsky and Modern French Literature (On the Influence of Dostoevsky)” and “Dostoevsky in Western Criticism,” as well as the preface to the Persian translation of Dostoevsky’s novel White Nights, published in Tehran, has been carried out. It is noted that the researcher’s works have laid the foundations of Soviet and Iranian comparative studies: Dostoevsky’s work was interpreted in the broad context of French literature, German philosophical and aesthetic tradition and Iranian cultural symbols of good and evil. The key methodological principles of F. Riza-Zade are analyzed: the focus on sociological criticism of the Pereverzev school, a cultural and aesthetic approach to the analysis of genre problems, tendency towards self-sufficiency in literary research and rejection of philosophical speculation. The conclusion is made about the importance of the works of F. Riza-Zade in the study and popularization of Dostoevsky’s work and in the fostering of Russian-Iranian cultural ties.

Два доктора: Осип Дымов и Шарль Бовари (Интертекстуальная структура рассказа Чехова «Попрыгунья»)

Author(s): Sergey A. Kibalnik / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2021

A. P. Chekhov’s short story The Fidget (1892) is an abridged hypertext of G. Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary (1856). The article undertakes a detailed comparison of the characters who occupy a similar place in the narrative and figurative system of these two works: Osip Dymov and Charles Bovary. Both of them are doctors, but Chekhov’s character seems to realize the untapped potential that was laid down in the character penned by Flaubert. He is no longer a failed doctor, but a talented one, with all the qualities required to become an excellent medical scientist. Thus, Chekhov does not merely stand up for the medical community, which he is no stranger to. Thanks to this, the story of the Russian writer transforms into a polemical interpretation of the classic French novel. In Flaubert’s Emma’s imaginary search for the meaning of life, which explains her two adulteries in Madame Bovary, Chekhov seems rather inclined to see the selfishness and lack of responsibility that destroy her family and lead to her own death. It is not by chance that Dymov, rather than Olga Ivanovna dies as a result of her own similar behavior in Chekhov’s short story. At the same time, Chekhov’s text is also a polemical interpretation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1873–1877), which was created as an explicit hypertext of Flaubert’s novel. In the short story, Chekhov’s critical reinterpretation of these two works is clearly based on a kind of “folk” morality of the Ant from the canonical Krylov fable The Dragonfly and the Ant (1808), which is clearly referenced in the title and text of the story. The intertextual structure of Chekhov’s story is examined in the article primarily as a system of its pretexts, some of which relate to it in unison, and others-dissonantly. At the same time, the former are the object of polemical interpretation, while the latter are the subject of stylization and value orientation.

La trop fragile utopie de L’Astrée : une variation du pot de terre contre le pot de fer

Author(s): Pauline Philipps / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

When in the 16th century multiple texts present utopian societies, Urfé adapts this theme for a pastoral universe in L’Astrée. However, instead of proving its superiority, he demonstrates the inherent weakness of every utopian project: what could any utopia be good for if it is incapable of long withstanding the assaults of reality? The ideal society presented at the beginning of the novel grows weaker with every new chapter, and is finally destroyed. Between denunciation of utopia as a genre and a paternal consideration of the characters doomed to suffer as a result of meeting the outside world, L’Astrée shows how the most beautiful of the earthen pots inevitably crashes against the iron pot of reality. The novel depicts the beauty of this crash.

Émile Souvestre’s Le monde tel qu’il sera en l’an 3000: a reflection of the fears raised by industrial capitalism

Author(s): Nicolas Mary / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

Le monde tel qu’il sera en l’an 3000, written by Émile Souvestre in 1845, is known as the first French dystopian novel. To give his fellow citizens a warning, the author projects into the future, an exacerbated contemporary situation. This journey through time is part of a vast debate that opposes not only utopias and dystopias, but also the social and political sciences. Le monde tel qu’il sera... can thus be understood as a refutation of the ideological constructions which are based on an unshakeable faith in the future. Influenced by Saint-Simon, Souvestre considers that technical progress can lead to the ideal city only if it is combined with moral progress, to which he aims to contribute by demonstrating to his contemporaries the appalling consequences of the providentialism that dominates the mid-19th century.

Deux visions du bonheur selon la nature chez Camille Lemonnier et Georges Eekhoud

Author(s): Philippe Chavasse / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

In the last years of the 19th century, the Belgian writer Camille Lemonnier published three novels, L'ÎleVierge, Adam et Ève, and Au cœur frais de la forêt, which conveyed the dream of seeing humanity freed from the shackles imposed by society that enslaves men and women and distorts their instincts. The Belgian Georges Eekhoud published in 1912 Les Libertins d'Anvers, which traces the history of Christian heresies in Antwerp from the 12th century until their repression by the Protestant reform and the Catholic counter-reform. Inspired by the same identity concerns, Lemonnier and Eekhoud offer models of utopian communities that draw inspiration from both paganism and Christian evangelism. The two writers praise charity, and respect for others and for nature. However, they differ in the interest they place in the couple and the family as a social foundation, Lemonnier applying the lessons of naturism, while Eekhoud is more in line with anarchist thinkers such as Charles Fourier, Raoul Vaneigem and Michel Onfray.

Les anticipations courtes dans la presse française du XIXe siècle

Author(s): Laurent Portes / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

The 19th-century French press abounded in short stories of a utopian nature. On examination, these "short utopias", with authors often unknown or anonymous (at times due to famous journalists using pen names, turn out to be witnesses of the political thought of the moment: sometimes reflecting major utopian currents, sometimes extravagant, sometimes at odds with the political situation imposed by authoritarian regimes. Their diversity forces one to ask questions.Their frequent presence in popular almanacs, their publication in entertainment and satirical press (Le Charivari, Le journal amusant, and Le journal pour rire contain them in great numbers), their frequent juxtaposition to amusing illustrations without political aim, or on the contrary their presence even in the daily political press, legitimately make them enter what has been called "the civilization of the newspaper".

Une « Babel » moderne dans les cimes : cité sanatoriale et utopie thérapeutique dans Les « Heures de silence » de Robert de Traz et dans Siloé de Paul Gadenne

Author(s): Claire Augereau / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

Often perceived as the result of empirical speculation, the sanatorium, intended for the treatment of tuberculosis patients in the first half of the 20th century, was at first sight a therapeutic utopia originating in the medical profession. In this enclosed space, it is the doctor that exercises the authority and their recommendations have the value of injunctions. However, a reversal of this order is depicted in two 20th-century novels: Les “Heures de silence” by the Swiss writer Robert de Traz (1884-1951), and Siloé by Paul Gadenne (1907-1956), a French author who was himself a regular visitor to such care institutions. In these works, the unity of place - the sanatorium - becomes a convenient device for questioning the world of the healthy on three levels: the ego, the relationship to others and the relationship to natural space. Because the "tubercular condition" neutralises the differences between individuals, it questions the primacy of health and paradoxically outlines a balanced lifestyle based on the idiorhythmic alternation between solitude, social life and immanence.

Paradis perdu et champs verdoyants : figures de l’utopie dans la pensée de Léopold Sédar Senghor

Author(s): Sébastien Heiniger / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

Léopold Sédar Senghor was a thinker and poet of Négritude, and also a politician, a member of the French National Assembly in the context where decolonization was inevitable. With the theoretical support of Paul Ricœur, this article explores Senghor's utopia in order to reflect on the function of these unreal places in his thought and to restore his vision of the future. Both the Kingdom of the Sine and Confederate France - the figures of his eutopia - were presented as harmonious communities by which to imagine the future. If Senghor does not challenge colonial ideology with a conservative utopia, where the Kingdom of the Sine would regain its ancient form, but with that of a federal thus decolonized France, where equality of political, civic and social rights between members of a plurinational state would obtain, the question of knowing if he was a utopian remains.

Le voyage en Chine de Sollers (1974) : Chine rêvée versus Chine théâtralisée ou le piège de l’utopie

Author(s): Qingya Meng / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

Having adopted a pro-Maoist position during the 1970s, Philippe Sollers went to China for three weeks in 1974 to witness the great success of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). According to the writer, director of the magazine Tel Quel, the revolution must be achieved through writing and theory. Nevertheless, the China he discovered during his stay seemed to be far from the China he had dreamt of before his departure... Based on articles published by Tel Quel, the paper seeks to show how Mao's China, idealized in ideological discourse, is transformed into a dramatized reality that the Chinese people are obliged to stage in front of the tourists allowed to visit China.

Du principe de complémentarité : l’ambiguïté de l’écriture utopique chez Michel Houellebecq

Author(s): Xinyi Liu / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

The principle of complementarity, which comes from quantum physics, is close to the reciprocity between the clinical approach and its dramatic counterpart in Michel Houellebecq’s writing. As for the utopian questioning, this principle can be used as a pivot to study the ambiguity of the author's utopian writing. Taking this physical principle as a starting point, we will first try to analyze the various utopian or dystopian universes in Houellebecq's works, especially through the relationship between the individual and society. Then, by penetrating the Houellebecqian space, we will study the representation of non-places and traditionally utopian spaces in his work, according to the dichotomy between the clinical and dramatic components. Finally, in a narrative sense, we will consider the coexistence of an ideological and utopian narrative in Houellebecq's work, with the boundaries between the author's voice, the narrator's voice and the characters' voice blurred. The sphere of fiction and realism overlap.

Les anti-utopies insulaires de Michel Houellebecq et Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Author(s): Clémentin Rachet / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

The characters created by Michel Houellebecq and Jean-Philippe Toussaint end up by extracting themselves from our social and geographical world whose rules and limits are too difficult to bear. In this context, retreating to existing islands appears to be a legitimate solution. If, at first glance, they seem to be alternatives to the throes of the metropolis, Lanzarote and the island of Elba do not represent utopias as ideal societies but as non-places in the etymological sense of the term: the place of nowhere or which is in no place. The two authors do not cease playing with the codes of the island utopia, while depriving them of the history and the literary references which are usually associated with the concept. The article aims to analyze the effects and manifestations of Houellebecq’s and Toussaint’s anti-utopian islands, in a world whose limits and finitude of resources have been measured.

L’écriture dystopique boudjedrienne à l’aune de la théorie postcoloniale

Author(s): Loubna Achheb / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

This article examines the relationship between Rachid Boudjedra's dystopian writing and postcolonial theory exploited in his novel L’Escargot entêté ("Stubborn snail”). This particular work represents postcolonial Algerian literature and therefore stands as an emblem of hybrid aesthetics. The hybridity employed by the author - which is nothing but a utopian concept of postcolonial theory - ends up shattered in the text, thereby generating a dystopian work. To achieve this effect, the writer mixes realistic and fantastic genres, only to create a split between them, to perpetuate the image of dystopia. He uses misinformation to form cracks in the novel's intertextuality, imploding the hybridity of the writing from within. Finally, he tries to liberate Algerian literature, to separate it from French literature, creating a breach between "the periphery" and "the center".

Violence et effondrement dans la fiction insulaire francophone contemporaine : l’île comme dystopie ? (Alfred Alexandre, Les Villes assassines ; Nathacha Appanah, Tropique de la violence)

Author(s): Jessy Neau / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

Western imagination has often portrayed islands as heavenly places, or even utopias. However, contemporary island narratives often put violence, social inequalities, as well as climate issues and topics of exile at the heart of their narrative. The districts of "Gaza" and "West Eden" in Alfred Alexandre’s novel Les Villes assassines (2011) and in Nathacha Appanah’s Tropique de la violence (2015) are indeed depicted as zones of extreme precarity. This article examines the relevance of the conceptual category of “dystopia” for addressing certain tropes of French-speaking island literature. The link between dystopia and the popular notion of “collapse” shall lead us to examine new modes of representation of contemporary islands in these two novels, particularly when discussing the prevalent topics of slums and undocumented immigrants.

Habiter les interstices et leurs possibilités : les discours utopiques et méta-utopiques dans Les Furtifs, « C@PTCH@ » et « Hyphe…? » d’Alain Damasio

Author(s): Christophe Duret / Language(s): French Issue: 11/2021

This paper offers an analysis of the utopian discourse in the novel Les Furtifs and the short stories “C@PTCH@” and “Hyphe…?”, all coming from the French science fiction writer Alain Damasio, from the perspective of the issue of inhabitation. We will see that the three dystopias do not content themselves with taking a critical look at the current situation or offering an alternative vision of what inhabiting the world must - or could - signify. To the contrary, they also question the limits of a classical utopia conceived as a program, in order to propose, by means of meta-utopian discourse, a concept of utopia as an aspiration and "a game on the possibilities lateral to reality".

РАСКРСНИЦЕ СУСРЕТАЊА И СЕЋАЊА: ПАРИЗ–БЕОГРАД–БЕРЛИН

Author(s): Katarina V. Melić,Milena R. Nešić Pavković / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 75/2021

Модерният психологически роман от междувоенния период

Author(s): Rumiana Stanceva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2014

L’article traite tout d’abord le terme ‘roman psychologique moderne’ dans ses diverses utilisations. Les accents mis différemment par la critique dans chaque littérature présentée ici ne mènent pas cependant jusqu'à la méfiance quand à l’essence du terme. Tout au contraire, la connaissance des distinctions permet à être trouvés des exemples similaires pris dans les trois littératures européennes de l’entre-deux guerres, notamment la littérature roumaine, la littérature bulgare et la littérature française. Un nouveau moment pour le roman psychologique de cette période est souligné, à savoir, l’anxiété éveillée (par la psychanalyse) devant l'inconscient et son utilisation comme élément constructive de l’intrigue romanesque. Les exemples sont tirés des romans de Camil Petrescu, Boris Chivatchev et Marcel Proust.

Ема – това съм аз (Вазов и Флобер)

Author(s): Julian Zhiliev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2022

The article aims to answer a few questions related to the autobiographical and literary basis of Vazov’s short story Emma, its hidden correlation and opposition to Flaubert’s Emma from the novel Madame Bovary, as well as to trace some “bovarystic” plots in the prose of the antibovaryst Vazov.