Sebastian Ziółkowski

This paper aims to highlight the resemblances existing between the poetic art by Isidor Ducasse (Lautréamont) and the poetic and aesthetic realisations of some expressionist authors. We have mainly analysed the concept of antagonism which seems to be a cardinal component of both the Lautréamont’s poetics and most expressionist works. Another part of our analysis is dedicated to the hypertrophy of the author’s I instance, emblematic in the Lautréamont’s work, reminding the expressionist principle of irradiation of the author’s I. Furthermore, we have analysed the principle of exaggeration, so much visible in Chants de Maldoror. It aims an antinaturalistic derealisation of the poetic universe as well as a caricatured painting of the political and sociological reality. All those aspects enable some sociocritical participation of the literary work in a changing world.

The aim of this paper is to analyse some characteristics of the art of poetry by Rimbaud in the context of dramatic expressionism. The expressionist movement seems in fact to have inherited some concepts and motifs from the new aesthetic introduced by Rimbaud (poetic language revolution, a very personal vision of art where all the elements of the fictional world seem subordinated to fluctuations of the author’s psyche, subjectivism which abolishes the rules of the Aristotle’s mimesis, etc.). This new analytic perspective is particularly interesting because we can easily find realisation of the Rimbaudian vision of the new art of poetry in some pieces by such expressionist dramatic authors as Strindberg, Lenormand or Pellerin.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the use of some expressionist motifs and patterns in The Madwoman of Chaillot [La Folle de Chaillot] by Giraudoux. In the analysed drama we can see realisation of such expressionist process as antinaturalistic desobjectivization of the world, developed monologism, social middle-class revolt, rehabilitation of a marginal protagonist, abstraction, antinaturalism, or subjectivism inducing the “irradiation” of the author’s I.

The aim of the article is to show that some motifs and concepts which can be found in the expressionist dramas – emerged in the early part of the XXth century – have already been explored by Gérard de Nerval (1808‐1855) during the last years of his life. The paper analyses in particular the last – and unfinished – Nerval’s récit entitled Aurélia in which analogies with some techniques used by expressionist authors such as the exploration of the universe of dreams and soul or the research of the true identity of man are more than surprising.

This paper aims to highlight the exploitation of some expressionist motifs in two plays by the French playwright Armand Salacrou (1899-1989), L’Archipel Lenoir and Histoire de rire throughout the painting of a metaphysical anxiety. In those pieces we can see realisation of such expressionist concepts as the war of brains (bataille des cerveaux), irradiation of the author’s I which conditions an antinaturalistic and caricatured expression of anxiety in an axiologically misstructured world. We can also appreciate elaboration of the expressionist motif of psychological murder which is an illustration of empoisoned relations between man and woman who do seek to destruct and moulder each other.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the climatic plays by Henri‐René Lenormand (1882‐1951), and to show how difficult climatic conditions shown in his plays influence the behaviour and the attitude of the characters. In the paper different motifs are taken into consideration : fog (and, therefore, the humidity of the climate), the tropical climate in general and the tropical wind called lesimoun. In Lenormand’s plays climate is not just a secondary motif, devoid of significance, but an element which conditions the atmosphere of those plays, engenders a deep melancholy or awakens hidden and repressed instincts of the characters. The climate emphasises thus a deep existenTal pessimism and the tragic of an individual lost in a hostile and incomprehensible world.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the treatment of the categories of time and space in L’Inconnue d’Arras by Armand Salacrou [The Unknown Woman of Arras] in the context of the European Dramatic Expressionism. In the analysed drama Salacrou abandons the traditional vision of time and presents a sort of deconstructed time perspective in which events and situations from the life of the main character do not follow any chronological logic. As for his treatment of space, Salacrou establishes a spatial perspective which is situated beyond all material and realistic contours and which reminds us expressionist techniques of spatial structuration.