French Writer Research Articles

Между сентиментализмом и Аппокалипсисом: пейзаж в романах М. Ульбека

The article analyzes landscape images and motifs of four of the most "visual" novels by the modern French writer Michel Houellebecq. It is clarified that the works under study realize the traditional type of hero for the author (an alienated person) and the plot organization, a "sentimental journey" to the countryside. Rural landscapes are idyllic, made in a classic sentimental-romantic manner, contain traditional attributes of nature, urban are aggressive, monochrome, recreated with the participation of minimalism techniques. In the process of analyzing landscapes in novels, a complex of allusions to modern visual practices and painting of the XIX century is revealed. It is concluded that the inability of Houellebecq’s character to unite with nature expresses the extreme degree of alienation of modern man.

«Твои письма сердечны, как дружеское рукопожатие» (Переписка Андре Жида с Федором Розенбергом)

St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences stores a correspondence between a famous French writer André Gide and a renowned soviet Orientalist scholar, member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Fyodor Rosenberg (1867–1934). Part of the correspondence is kept in the Parisian library Jacques Doucet. In 1921, the University of Lyon published the epistolary in French (in total 338 letters). The correspondence covers a long period from 1896 to the date of death of the Russian academic. This letters allow to contemplate the spiritual world of two outstanding cultural figures of the fin de siècle, as well as to see once again how the revolution in Russia influenced the mindset and the way of life of academic life. The fact that the epistolary lacks a number of letters is mainly explained by the 1917 Revolution. Only a short collection of letters dates back to the 1920s (when Rosenberg was a senior research curator at the Asiatic Museum, now the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences), while the early 20th century is broadly represented in the correspondence. Social and political reality becomes more and more catastrophic as it invades that highly estheticized, sometimes explicitly Pre-Raphaelite-like universe into which Rosenberg, a refined expert in both Eastern and Western-European cultural traditions, would like to withdraw. “Beautiful Italy” occupies a significant place in the letters. Rosenberg’s deep emotions connected with his being a homosexual are also an important part of the epistolary. The edition is prepared by Nikol Dziub, professor at the University of Upper Alsace (UHA). The introductory note and an extensive pageby- page commentary provide a comprehensive view of the reality, cultural landmarks, and personalities that appear in the correspondence.

Pandemic and Resilience— An Analysis of Love in the time of Cholera and the Plague

The article proposes to provide an insight into Pandemic Literature revealing the impact of pandemic on society as well as the remarkable human resilience. Human history has witnessed a number of pandemics like cholera, plague, and the current covid-19. The word ‘pandemic’ is derived from the Greek words ‘pan’ and ‘demos’. Pan means all and demos means people or crowd. Pandemic is an infectious disease widespread over a large part of the world. Resilience is the human ability to recover quickly from adverse circumstances. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a classic piece of pandemic literature. The author says that lovesickness is a literal illness. The story takes place in the backdrop of a cholera outbreak. The marked effect of cholera on people’s life and the remarkable human resilience are highlighted in the article. The protagonist’s outburst in the end of the novel shows the surge of resilience. The analysis of The Plague by Albert Camus, the noted French writer throws light on helpless human beings unable to change their destinies. The writer’s absurdist point of view is revealed. The novel begins with the onslaught of plague in the Algerian city of Oran. Besides the sufferings of people, the change of human attitudes and the trait of resilience are also depicted by the author.

The concept of crime: linguo-cultural representation and features of its translation (Maigret’s Failure by Georges Simenon case study)

Features of conceptualisation of behavioral responses and interaction of individual and collective consciousness become a subject of study in various fields of knowledge. The concept of crime refers to those fundamental and universal categories that reveal cognitive mechanisms at the level of relevant interaction with multiple concepts, national features of worldviews, cultural specifics, individual psychological experiences, and behavioral adaptation. The paper studies the linguo-cultural concept of crime in the Francophone detective novel “Maigret’s Failure” by the famous French writer of Belgian origin, Georges Simenon. The study aims to analyse the linguo-cultural representation, functional role, and verbal representation of the concept of crime in the detective novel “Maigret’s Failure” (French “Un échec de Maigret”) by Georges Simenon in the original text and translation. In order to achieve this, the article analyses the structural and genre features of a Francophone detective novel, specifies socio- cultural and lexical-semantic functions of the dominant concept of crime and defines the frame structure of the concept of crime. The translation of Mykola Meshcheriak was used for comparative translation analysis. The paper examines the functional representation of the concept of crime in a fictional narrative detective story and its translation equivalence. Frame analysis is used for this purpose. It makes it possible to investigate the relationship between lexical-semantic, stylistic, and cognitive components that reflect speakers’ worldviews. Four basic conceptual frames as crime, mystery, investigation, and punishment are identified in the study in order to examine the development of semantic components of the concept of crime in the fictional narrative. Each of them has segment slots. It is claimed that the feature of a detective novel depends on the conceptual frame the author prioritises and with what slots he completes it. For example, in accordance with the legal aspect, the dominant process may be crime – punishment; in the moral aspect, crime – motive. The lexical and stylistic elements of the concept of crime are not the only presented distinctive feature of the linguo-cultural connotation in the works of Georges Simenon. It is also the addition of various markers, distinguished by the author’s ironic and philosophical manner of portraying the main idea and therefore depicting the way of living and living conditions of the French burghers of that time. Commissioner Maigret’s arrogant and confident behavior involves all participants of the investigation process in interaction and assures of the inevitability of solving the crime. The development of the conflict, attention to detail, motives for behaviour, the silence of witnesses, empathy, and not just condemnation indicate the importance of understanding the cause-and-effect relationships of the commission of a crime rather than punishment. Comparative analysis of the original text and translation makes it possible to interpret legal relationships and extralinguistic information in the French and Ukrainian worldviews. Various features used to describe the concept of crime depend on the translation style rather than the ambiguity of interpretation. The stylistic elements of the concept are somewhat neutralised in compliance with the juridical nomination in the Ukrainian translation.

Путевые записки «Россия и русские» Виктора Тиссо в контексте русско-французских отношений на рубеже XIX-XX вв.

For the first time in the national literary studies, the article examines the book of travel notes Russia and Russians (1882) by the French writer Victor Tissot (1845-1917). Tissot’s travel notes on Russia are considered in the context of Russian-French relations at the turn of the 20th century, Russia’s growing interest in France on the eve of the conclusion of the Russian-French alliance. The article proves that the basic opposition constructing the image of Russia in Tissot’s book is the opposition of Russia and Ukraine. Tissot poetizes the image of Little Russia (which is understood not without the influence of ideas of Adam Miczkevich and Cyprien Robert) as the custodian of the original “Slavicness.” Despite the poetization of Ukraine, Tissot considered Moscow the true center of the Russian Empire, the city expressing the spirit of the country. The influence on Tissot’s travel notes about Russia by Theophile Gautier, impressionism, the traditions of Germaine de Stael is shown. Tissot sought to contrast the tradition of Gautier’s “aestheticized” discourse about about Russia with a more “realistic” image of Moscow and Russia by expanding the scope of the depicted, by describing not only the ceremonial, but also the shadow life of Moscow and Russia. The characteristic feature of Tissot’s poetics is the combination of aesthetics with macabre and gothic elements in the structure of the image of Russia. The article concludes that Tissot made a significant contribution to the destruction of the myth of Russia’s closedness, created by Custine and the Paris press, and to the generation of a generally positive image of Russia on the eve of the conclusion of the Russian-French alliance. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

О «модном» писателе 1820-х годов (Ш. В. д’Арленкур)

This article discusses the extraordinary literary popularity of a rather mediocre French writer — Ch. V. dʼArlincourt (1789—1856). DʼArlincourt was an author of adventure novels. In the 1820s, his writings were bestsellers both in France and in Russia. Pushkin mentions this in his poem “Count Nulin”, comparing his name with the name of the poet Lamartine, whose poems also enjoyed great success at this time. Although dʼArlincourtʼs novels received scathing criticism, they ultimately prevailed over Lamartineʼs poetry in their readership.

Dondog and the Post-Exotic After All

Dondog and the Post-Exotic After All Églantine Colon (bio) Nearly twenty years after SubStance devoted a special issue to the contemporary French writer (and translator) we know as Antoine Volodine, we are thoroughly pleased to be publishing in this issue the opening of Dondog, a novel that Ben Streeter has translated with inspired exactitude and brilliant tonal precision. In English or in French, entering Dondog is not unlike entering any other "post-exotic" text (I will come back to this label shortly). One has to learn how to orient oneself to the ruination of Modernity, within the dysfunctional memories of post-traumatic subjects, between dark humor and luminous despair, in the liminal space between life and death, between humanity and animality, and, in the odd beauty of a language that gives transmissible form to the experience of our contemporary hellscape. Post-Exoticism has a soft spot for odd numbers, especially palindromes, and it was fitting that, in 2003, SubStance devoted its Issue 101 to Volodine. At the time, his highly singular literature was barely known in the United States. In France, the "happy few" who had discovered Volodine through his early Science Fictional trilogy in the mid-1980s had grown into a solid general readership. Volodine had theorized his fictional literary movement in 1998 and he started publishing post-exotic texts in the name of his three heteronyms, Ellie Kronaeur, Manuela Draeger, and Lutz Bassman, becoming the object of significant, albeit dispersed, academic curiosity. In 1999 and 2000, Post-Exoticism gained clear critical recognition when his Des anges mineurs (later translated as Minor Angels) was awarded a couple of important awards (the Prix Wepler and the Prix du livre Inter). In the U.S., though, the post-exotic readership was limited to a few Francophones in the know, and to the lucky readers who had stumbled upon Volodine's Naming the Jungle, the only post-exotic novel [End Page 90] then translated into English. With its Issue 101, SubStance was therefore introducing Volodine's literature to an American, if not an international, academic audience, thus increasing the need for the translation into English of this massively compelling literary project. To some extent, this special issue also participated in constituting Post-Exoticism as an academic object—not that no one had written on Volodine before, but an edited volume had yet to take shape in a major academic journal, including in France. Since then, twenty-seven texts have been added to the post-exotic archive, winning a few more awards—the prestigious Medicis Prize for Terminus Radieux and the Prix Albertine for Bardo or not Bardo, among others—and a dozen books signed Volodine, Draeger, and Bassman are now available in English.1 According to Volodine, Post-Exoticism will find its point of achievement when the magical number 49 is reached: 49, seven squared, is symbolic of rebirth in the Buddhist tradition, putting a twist to the very idea of an ending. Within an ultimate opus titled, Retour au goudron (literally, "back to the tar"), the very last sentence of Post-Exoticism will be: "Maintenant, je me tais" ("Let me shut up now"). The extreme care with which Volodine is constructing his literary universe makes Post-Exoticism an ideal academic object, even though it has already been theorized by the author himself and contains the critique of its critics. In France, Volodine is one of very few living authors to whom several monographs and edited volumes have been devoted.2 Here in the U.S., giving proof that Post-Exoticism speaks to the archaeologies of our times, there has been much variation in the angles from which it has been academically approached. These variations may correspond to changing trends in the humanities, from theories of the novel and narrativity, to world literature, philosophy, political theory, care studies, new materialisms, and, increasingly, sexual violence and ecocriticism.3 But they all bear witness to the richness of the analysis that goes, book after book, into the composition of Post-Exoticism as an allegorical distortion of our precarious present. The critical traction generated by Post-Exoticism can also be explained by the fact that it presents academic discourse with an uncanny version of...

«Великая могила»: Мавзолей В.И. Ленина во французском травелоге 1920–1930-х гг.

The article deals with the image of the Lenin’s Mausoleum and the cult of the leader associated with it in the travelogues of French writers and journalists in the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s. The Mausoleum is the constant place of pilgrimage for both the Soviet people and foreign guests. For French travelers it is of interest as a Moscow sight reflecting the ideology of the Soviet system, a means of propaganda, a place for planting new cults and religions, which seemed strange in Moscow that proclaimed atheism. The authors note the Asian character of this cult, which demonstrates the impenetrability of the Western and Eastern mentalities. Arguing with Soviet propaganda, which is effective in a country where the vast majority of the population is illiterate, they come to the conclusion that it is impossible to create a myth about the leader’s immortality in civilized countries with a long democratic tradition. Based on the stereotypes that have entered in the minds of the French since the time of Marquis de Custine and creating new ones, the authors try to comprehend the Mausoleum as a cultural phenomenon. The detailed ekphrastic descriptions and sketches from crowd standing in line at the Mausoleum are overland with philosophical reflections and journalistic pathos. The counter arguments to Soviet propaganda is the metaphor of a dead man masqueraded in a living person, extended not only to the image of Lenin, but also to the dominant ideology of the state he has built. The Appendix contains Russian translations of excerpts from travelogues by French authors.

Stylistical expressiveness in the translation of the french writer amin maalouf's work“ samarkand or seeking for the light left in the dark…”

Stylistical expressiveness in the translation of the french writer amin maalouf's work“ samarkand or seeking for the light left in the dark…”

정원과 사막: 프랑스인들이 그린 미국의 문화 지도

This essay aims to genealogically map the historical changes of cultural landscapes drawn (written) by French writers from the early America to postmodern America. The essay first of all critically reviews J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur’ Letters from an American Farmer in which Crevecoeur, who delineates in the book how he became an American cultivating a small farm after emigration from France before American independence. He regarded America as a God’s garden where Americans as new men created a pastoral utopia; yet, he also depicted dark side of American life upbraiding for massacre of American Indians and condemning slavery even though his perspectives were European-centered. In turn, the essay takes on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in which Tocqueville, though praising America as a model of democracy founded on equality, also critiques inhumane treatment of the American slavery system and institutional violence of the majority over the social minorities. Extending the scope of research into modern America, the essay analyzes Simone de Beauvoir’s America Day by Day, a travelogue where Beauvoir, though praising American culture and economic affluence, accurately described modern America where highly developed society was saturated by parochialism, racism, anti-intellectualism, etc. In the final analysis, the essay unfolds how Jean Baudrillard poetically and prophetically analyzed American postmodern culture definding America a desert overwhelmed by simulation and hyperreality.

O naprawczej mocy literatury w eseju Alexandre’a Gefena Réparer le monde. La littérature française face au XXIe siècle [Naprawianie świata. Literatura francuska wobec XXI wieku

On the Restorative Power of Literature in Alexandre Gefen’s Essay Réparer le monde. La littérature française face au XXIe siècle [Repairing the World. French Literature Facing the 21st Century] The aim of this paper is to discuss Alexandre Gefen’s essay published in 2017 in which the researcher presents the panorama of latest French prose in the perspective of responsibility for the world and fixing it. The author notes that Gefen also discusses texts from the two last decades of the 20th century, which shows that it was in that period that French writers started to take interest in the human identity and relationship with the world. One of the important genres analyzed by Gefen is autobiography, well-established in the French literary tradition. Another significant matter is the current transformation of literary practices, of the position of the writer and the reader, and of the publishing market, which Gefen also analyzes from the perspective of restoration and therapeutic literature that should care for the readers and heal them. Gefen’s essay is presented as a text encouraging its reader to reflect deeply on the condition of the contemporary world.

Proust i zmiana. O konwersyjnych aspektach biografii pisarza

Proust and Change. On Conversion Aspects in the Writer’s Biography Starting with the structuralist and post-structuralist readings of In Search of Lost Time, which perpetuated a certain Proustian myth built around the belief that his life was converted into Text (Roland Barthes, René Girard, Julia Kristeva), the article examines the contemporary discussion on Proust’s biography in relation to an essay by French writer Claude Arnaud. His criticism of the above mentioned myth allows not only to look at the relationship between the life and work of the author of In Search in a new way, but also, above all, it opens new interpretative possibilities that break with the sacralizing view on the writer’s biography and are in line with the contemporary postulates of both the writer’s and the literature’s return to society.

A Journey toward Self-knowledge in Patrick Modiano’s Novel Voyage de Noces

In this paper, based of a geocritical approach, a journey as some path leading toward self-knowledge in the novel of Patrick Modiano, French writer and Nobel Prize winner, Voyage de noces (1990), has been analyzed. A journey is understood as a path that leads toward self-knowledge because the characters of the novel undergo changes depending on the place they find themselves in. This journey gains several forms: it can simply be a journey from one point to another, also can have the aspect of escapism and finally be understood as deportation. In all these cases the nature of the journey changes depending on how the characters perceive themselves. The narrator admits that his aim is to write the autobiography of Ingrida, the character of the novel. Thus he sets out on a journey through her inner world, that naturally will last longer than the one from one point to another. The places are generally depicted as central and peripheral, the capital of the country and its outskirts or the capital and the regions of the country. The narrator tries to understand changes in Ingrida’s life and her faith, at the same time changes in the author’s self-knowledge happen: he becomes a writer.

Paul Groussac’s Void: The French Writer and the Argentine Tradition

The French-Argentine Paul Groussac embodied a wide range of writerly functions and cultural-political positions within the Argentine cultural field between the 1880s and the 1920s: writer, playwright, chronicler, traveler, literary, art, and music critic, historian, educator, editor, and director of the National Library during 44 years. This essay considers his place in the history of Argentine literature looking at two of the many ways in which he inscribed himself in it. The first takes up the production and reproduction of the ontological privilege of French identity as a form of legitimization for his public—and often polemic—interventions, through which he sought to establish scholarly-disciplinary practices, protocols, and conventions that would articulate an entire critical field around his own authority. The second proposes to think his alternatively weak and strong inscriptions in the literary tradition through his own narrative production: his fiction and dramaturgy, travelogues, and biographical sketches. In other words, this essay situates Groussac in an Argentine literary tradition (conceived as an organic and institutionally sanctioned textual corpus) he believed to have founded and established, a selfrepresentation that led Borges to say that Groussac saw himself as “a missionary of Voltaire among the mulattage.”

Traduction des connotations autonymiques dans trois romans de Michel Houellebecq

This paper deals with the autonyms or the widespread, orthographically indeterminate use of italics and quotation marks in Slovene translations of three of Houellebecq’s novels, which have been elaborated by three different Slovene translators. Autonyms are divided into three main categories according to whether they convey the words of definite or indefinite individuals, the language of the narrator himself or the concepts and values of the whole society. Within the framework of a style often qualified as “white”, the extended use of italics and quotation marks with function of autonymic connotation allows the author to transmit to the reader very fine semantic nuances and contributes to the richness of his work. Like metaphorical networks, stylems such as the recurrent and extended use of italics and quotation marks require from the translator a preliminary work of interpretation and the development of a coherent strategy making it possible to preserve intact the function of these elements in the narrative. Although the three translations analysed can be considered as globally faithful to Houellebecq’s texts and made possible the notoriety of the French writer in Slovenia, none of them is distinguished by a rigorous and coherent treatment of autonymic connotations indicated by non-normative use of italics and quotation marks. The most frequent and damaging anomalies are the maintenance of these visual signs where the expressions indicated in French do not have to be in Slovenian or, on the contrary, their elimination where it is perfectly possible and appropriate to maintain them for the detailed understanding of the text. The author draws attention to possible solutions and opts for the elaboration of a consistent translation strategy for the treatment of the analysed elements.

Saint Jerome’s Posthumous Life: Aspects of His Reception in the Twentieth Century

The paper examines three examples of Saint Jerome’s contemporary reception. First, in Sous l’invocation de Saint Jérôme, the essay by the French writer and translator Valery Larbaud (1946), Jerome’s life is imagined as the large city of Hiéronymopolis where three itineraries are possible: one that is imaginary to Stridon, Rome, and Bethlehem; one that is iconographical through the paintings of Raffaello, Correggio, and Domenichino, and one that is literary through Jerome’s works, divided into many “city districts,” where an impressive bridge, the Vulgata, connects Jerusalem to Rome. – In the eccentric novel Jérôme ou de la traduction by the French-Canadian writer Jean Marcel (1990), Hieronymus’s famous lion narrates the main episodes of the Saint’s life, especially regarding his translations. This is an existential metaphor for the passage from the ancient eastern world to early Christian Rome. – The poetic movie by the Brasilian director Júlio Bressane, São Jerônimo (1999), is not a biographical reconstruction of Jerome’s life, but rather a fresco, which consists of some moments of his life and some iconic symbols (the skull, the lion, the desert).

Morocco through the lenses of four French writers

ABSTRACT This paper aims to examine how Morocco is represented in the works of Jean and Jérome Tharaud, Henry de Montherlant and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. More specifically, the paper attempts to develop a more nuanced vision of how Morocco is viewed in French travel writing than what previous studies (mainly those adopting the Saidian approach) suggest. Indeed, since Edward Said’s Orientalism was published in 1978, French literary representations of Morocco have generally been examined in terms of their engagement with the French imperial establishment. This paper focuses on the images of Morocco in the works of the four selected writers to offer a new conceptualization of French Orientalism, one that can be considered as both an application and a criticism of Said’s Orientalism. The outcome of the analysis shows that while the Tharauds’ views of Morocco are marked by the same racism and imperialism Said talks about, Montherlant’s and Le Clézio’s views of the country seem to subvert traditional clichés and stereotypes, providing two paradigms of a Western portrayal of the Orient that go against Said’s study of Orientalism. It is therefore argued that the French literary construction of the Orient (Morocco in this case) is neither completely racist and imperialist as Said and the saidists pretend, nor completely objective and innocent as the Orientalists would have us believe. French Orientalism, as conceptualized in this paper, contains a mixture of different views and attitudes. Hence the use of the plural form ‘Lenses’ instead of the singular ‘Lens’ in the title.

LA CRITIQUE DE L’INSTRUMENTALISATION DE LARELIGION DANS LA CONQUÊTE DE PLASSANS ET LAFAUTE DE L’ABBE MOURET D’ÉMILE ZOLA

Abstract The question of religion is as important a concern as human happiness. This reflection demonstrated the interest that Émile Zola has in it. It has proven that the criticism that the French writer formulates against Catholicism is less institutional than it is addressed to the clergy, who perverts its ideal of cohesion and social regulation. In a pragmatic way, he denounces the political and ideological instrumentalisation of the Catholic Church, which becomes, a tool of domination of the weakest, by the strongest. His criticism can be explained above all by the desire to see the emergence of a Catholic institution, not only freed from the pettiness ofreligious actors, which is capable of contributing to the rehabilitation of human dignity. Keywords:Happiness, Catholicism, protest, instrumentalisation, religion.

Letters of Anna and Lubov Dostoevsky in the Archive of the National Library of France

The article introduces into scientific circulation two letters written by the widow and daughter of F. M. Dostoevsky in 1912 and 1924 and addressed to the famous French director Jacques Copeau. These documents were discovered as a result of archival searches in the J. Copeau foundation in the National Library of France. The two letters are connected by their subject — the debut production of the play “The Brothers Karamazov” by Copeau at the Paris Theater of Arts in 1911. Reviews of the production published in the European and Russian press contain range of opinions: from enthusiastic to sharply critical. In his letter A. G. Dostoevskaya praised Copeau’s drama, however, she familiarized herself with it without seeing the theatrical production itself, by reading the book that the director had sent her. The publication of Copeau’s play, which is based on the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”, is a little-known exhibit of the Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky, established by the writer's widow in 1889. It is mentioned only in the notebook of A. G. Dostoevskaya 1912–1913. The year of inclusion of published Copeau’s play in the collection of the Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky is established based on the letter and the notebook of the writer’s widow. The letter from L. F. Dostoevsky contains information about her communication with such famous French writers as Jacques Copeau, Irénée Mauget and Paul Bourgeois, as well as about the attempts of the copyright heiress to receive remuneration for the production undertaken by Copeau. These details augment the currently scarce information about the emigration period in the biography of the writer's daughter. The appendix to the article contains the letters of A. G. and L. F. Dostoevsky in French and in translation.

THE THREAT OF DISEASE ON FEMALE IDENTITY IN EMILE ZOLA’S NOVELS

Disease and its effect on the body and personal autonomy, as well as its influence on the social position of the diseased person, are among the key themes in the novels of the 19th century French writer Émile Zola. When it comes to female characters, illness has a multifold impact, having both physical and psychological effects, erasing in extreme cases female identity itself. The aim of this article is to offer insights into how sickness is depicted as a menace that leaves female characters deprived of any power they might have by affecting their appearance, which is the main indicator of their social identity and the key instrument they can use to establish and maintain relationships, and by taking away their ability to control themselves and how they are seen by others.