Numéro 39

2024

Publication date: 20.09.2024

Licence: CC BY

Editorial team

Assistant editor Paulina Tarasewicz, Jadwiga Bodzińska-Bobkowska

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Tomasz Swoboda

Editor-in-chief Ewa M. Wierzbowska

Issue content

études

« Ayant fait quelques voyages… » Au Professeur Michał Mrozowicki à l’occasion de son passage à la retraite

Wiesław Malinowski

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 9-10

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La nouvelle Russie de Pierre le Grand. Un fantasme russe des premières Lumières françaises

Marek Mosakowski

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 11-26

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.009.20184

In this article, we focus on the image of Russia under Peter the Great in France during the early Enlightenment. We discuss Fontenelle's text Éloge du tsar Pierre Ier, written shortly after the death of this Tsar and commissioned by the French Academy. Our hypothesis is that this text formed the foundation in France of the myth of Peter the Great as the outstanding moderniser, leading the absolute majority of French philosophers after Fontenelle to actually recognise Peter the Great as a true hero of the Enlightenment. Our method is to analyse in detail the rhetorical devices contained in Fontenelle's text and to compare the laudatory image of Peter the Great created by them with the equally laudatory position of other French philosophers, including Voltaire. Our conclusion is that Fontenelle's juxtaposition of Russia before Peter the Great with the new Russia during his reign fits perfectly with the Manichean metaphor of light, typical of the Enlightenment, which must of necessity prevail over darkness.

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Sur la nécessité d’une éducation de qualité dans la vie des femmes d’après les romans André (1835) de George Sand et Marta (1873) d’Eliza Orzeszkowa

Beata Kędzia-Klebeko

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 27-46

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.010.20185

Among others, the nineteenth century brought ideas about social progress, including these important for the emancipation of women, such as a model of education that guarantees girls and women economic stability, financial independence and the right to freedom of choice. Through the comparative perspective of the novels of two emblematic women writers, G. Sand in France and E. Orzeszkowa in Poland, we’d like to show how European literature is involved in the social cause of popularising the idea that knowledge is a basic condition of everyone’s life. Our point of reference will be the novels André (1835) and Marta (1873) and their analysis. The female protagonists, faced with their lack of knowledge, distance themselves from professional life by choosing to marry. This alienation, underpinned by ignorance, takes on a symbolic dimension of the end of physical and spiritual life in the literary vision of French and Polish women writers.

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Charles Baudelaire : intimité, modernité, identité

Tomasz Swoboda

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 47-76

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.011.20186

Both a child of the century and a harsh critic of his time, Charles Baudelaire remained deeply marked by his « tyranny of intimacy » (Richard Sennett’s expression), and in a way contributed himself to its expansion, but at the same time kept a distance from the culture of intimacy that took hold with the advent of Romanticism. In our paper, we shall try to grasp the link between intimacy and modernity, to see how the tension between the two constructs both individual and collective identity. We will examine the poetùs letters, diaries and poems, both prose and verse, including two « intimate » poems from The Flowers of Evil.

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Le théâtre au service de la cause féminine. Retour à ma femme de Maria Deraismes

Ewa Małgorzata Wierzbowska

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 77-102

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.012.20187

Maria Deraismes uses her playwrighting skills to demonstrate the absurdity of the law and the prejudices that limit women. She demonstrates in her plays the rigidness and, at the same time, the absurdity of the patriarchal wall against which the needs, ambitions and dreams of women crash. In the play Retour à ma femme, Deraismes presents various forms of sexist oppression, reveals their inner workings, and encourages in-depth reflection on the patriarchal order that produces them. Undoubtedly, her primary concern is the inferior position of women, but it is evident that she also aims to improve society for both sexes. Deraismes creates female characters that viewers and readers can identify with and from whom they can draw the strength to change the world, as well as evolve themselves.

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Entre fascination et doute. Octave Mirbeau et la science

Anita Staroń

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 103-118

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.013.20188

Octave Mirbeau is consistently interested in the development of science, as is evident from his press articles, short stories and novels. But his judgment of science and its conquests, of scientists and their methods, is not unambiguous. His work contains therefore both enthusiasm for the power of human knowledge and the vivid conscience of its harmful effects. This study aims to highlight these contrasting positions and reflect on their foundations, which arise from the polemical nature of his writing, from his own lucidity and from the lack of faith in the human race. In spite of his pessimistic beliefs, Mirbeau persists on fighting for the values he cherishes, confronting an idealistic vision of science with a disillusioned image of the reality.

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Des vocations en échec ? Le destin de l’écrivain et de la littérature dans Un coco de génie de Louis Dumur

Anna Opiela‐Mrozik

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 119-137

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.014.20189

The article presents the profile of Louis Dumur, a French writer of Swiss origin, one of the founders and indefatigable editor of new Mercure de France. Although Dumur was an average poet and playwright and author of nationalist texts, he wrote a novel Un coco de génie (1902), in which he addresses the issue of the writer’s vocation and the mission of literature. The story of a seedman’s son, who suddenly discovers his literary talent and faces reluctance from the uncultivated local community, is a satire on the petty bourgeoisie society. It is all the more virulent because the young creator turns out to be a somnambulist who recreates masterpieces of world literature. This unconscious rewriting leads the first-person narrator of the novel to reflect on the process of creating itself. Thus Dumur anticipates the appearance of the concept of intertextuality and the text being a mosaic of quotations.

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La fiction et les sciences. Palafox d’Éric Chevillard

Anna Maziarczyk

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 139-157

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.015.20190

This article focuses on the role of science in Palafox by Éric Chevillard. Its objective is to study the way in which the writer exploits it on the diegetic and narrative levels to create unparalleled prose, transcending the usual literary canons. The scientific element functions here in a different way than in popular stories and plays a role similar to the Oulipian constraint: it serves as a textual generator supposed to produce a completely original novel which eschews rigid structures and classic narrative mechanisms. Drawing on research relating to the scientific novel, this article ultimately seeks to demonstrate that Palafox, inspired by the life sciences, is an ecological novel which, without tedious didacticism, encourages us to reflect on the way in which people treat living creatures that have accompanied them for centuries – animals.

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Georges Perec ou entre le moderne et le postmoderne

Wacław Rapak

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 159-173

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.016.20191

This article focuses on the literary and artistic work of Georges Perec. The aspect I discuss is the dual character of his work, which, in my interpretation, can be situated between the modern and the postmodern. In other words, I would have to say that his work is situated between the syncretism that I take to be the dominant form of literary and artistic modernity and the eclecticism that is the dominant form of « liquid modernity », as defined by Zygmunt Bauman. The tool I use here is the concept of LIBERATURA, which allows me to highlight the status of Je me souviens of Georges Perec between the modern and the postmodern, between the literary work and the artistic book.

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La mécanique freudienne du deuil dans À présent et Vivre Vite de Brigitte Giraud

Katarzyna Kotowska

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 175-190

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.017.20192

This study explores the Freudian mechanics of mourning as depicted in Brigitte Giraud's A Present and Vivre Vite. The hypothesis posits that these two works, separated by twenty years, illustrate the evolution of mourning through a chronological examination of À présent (2001) and Vivre Vite (2022). The methodology focuses on the concepts of temporality, hallucinations, and melancholia, analyzing how these themes shift between the two narratives. The conclusion argues that Giraud's use of temporal shifts, hallucinations, and melancholic reflections in both books demonstrates the universality of Freud's mourning concept while highlighting its unique individual expressions. Notably, the shift from intense emotional expression in À présent to a more introspective approach in Vivre Vite reflects the author's own personal journey with loss and the passage of time. The study suggests that Giraud's skillful use of language serves as a vital tool for both personal healing and for capturing the collective human experience of loss and resilience.

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La musique rédemptrice : K.622 et Dring de Christian Gailly

Jadwiga Bodzińska-Bobkowska

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 191-207

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.018.20193

The aim of this study is to compare two novels by Christian Gailly, a French jazz saxophonist, psychoanalyst and writer, died in 2013. The universes of the novels K.622 and Dring, are similar in terms of the action and the characteristics of their protagonists, both in their fifties, and depressed; music lovers and obsessed with concrete musical works. This study shows that the mainspring of the narrative, the center of the fictional universe and the major interest of the characters is music. Perceived as an ordering principle of the universe, Mozart’s and Bach’s music is not only omnipresent in the novels, but above all is a life-saving power.

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varia

Voix de femmes queer au coeur de la littérature haïtienne contemporaine

Alessia Vignoli

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 209-226

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.019.20194

The present paper explores the representation of the romantic and/or sexual relationships maintained by some female characters and their social roles that do not conform to the heteronormative universe in a selected corpus of contemporary Haitian literary works. Our corpus consists of four works by Haitian women writers, published between 2013 and 2018: the novels Absences sans frontières (2013) by Évelyne Trouillot, Je suis vivant (2015) by Kettly Mars and Un ailleurs à soi (2018) by Emmelie Prophète, and a short story from the collection Écorchées vivantes (2017) edited by Martine Fidèle. Taking into account the current social context in Haiti, in particular social divisions and institutional homophobia, the aim of the article is to show the evolution that has taken place in the treatment of (female) homosexuality, from stigmatisation and stereotyped representations to more varied configurations that reflect contemporary realities.

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Ut pictura poesis. De One plus One aux « Godardesques » dans l’art contemporain (IIe partie)

Kamil Lipiński

Cahiers ERTA, Numéro 39, 2024, pp. 227-243

https://doi.org/10.4467/23538953CE.24.020.20195

The article deals with Jean-Luc Godard's interventions in the multimedia arts, known as « fraternal arts », and « ut pictura poesis » to reconsider the audiovisual juxtaposition of fiction and documentary in the film-collage of the modern period of end of the sixties and « cinema effects » in contemporary arts. It retraces some of the main elements of the film One plus One directed by Jean-Luc Godard and addresses its role and importance in the clandestine nature of artistic creation by revealing the interconnections between « musical history in the making » and the aesthetics of graffiti, Brechtian quote, and distancing (Verfremdungseffekt). In the second part, the essay draws on Burgin and Dubois to examine how the « cinema effect » (l’effet-cinéma) of the so-called « Godardesques » emerges in the context of contemporary museum installations. By approaching artistic works, our wish is to reveal the forms of reconstitution of the Godardian One plus One. These works loosely linked to classical cinema can be considered, following Burgin, as cinematic heterotopias.

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Files to download

Editorial Page PDF Contents PDF Introduction (Ewa M. Wierzbowska) PDF

Słowa kluczowe: modernisation, Russia, Peter the Great, Fontenelle, Enlightenment, comparative literature, women’s emancipation, quality education, social demands, Charles Baudelaire, intimity, modernity, identity, Deraismes, Théâtre chez soi, prejudices, gender oppression, hypocrisy, science, scientist, pessimism, progress, education, vocation, literature, writer, somnambulism, science, scientific novel, animal, ecological novel, Éric Chevillard, syncretism, eclecticism, literary work, artistic book, rhizome, Giraud, mourning, Freud, temporality, melancholia, Christian Gailly, music and literature, musical meditation, contemporary Haitian literature, queer literature, Emmelie Prophète, Évelyne Trouillot, Kettly Mars, Jean-Luc Godard, ut pictura poesis, cinematographic heterotopia, Godardesque, Rolling Stones