Quêtes littéraires, 2013, No 3: Entre le sacré et le profane
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- ItemLa transposition profane de l’Exode dans Moïse fiction de Gilles Rozier(Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Wydawnictwo Werset, 2013) Sadkowski, PiotrThroughout the centuries French and Francophone writers were relatively rarely inspired by the figure of Moses and the story of Exodus. However, since the second half of 20th c. the interest of the writers in this Old Testament story has been on the rise: by rewriting it they examine the question of identity dilemmas of contemporary men. One of the examples of this trend is Moïse Fiction, the 2001 novel by the French writer of Jewish origin, Gilles Rozier, analysed in the present article. The hypertextual techniques, which result in the proximisation of the figure of Moses to the reality of the contemporary reader, constitute literary profanation, but at the same time help place Rozier’s text in the Jewish tradition, in the spirit of talmudism understood as an exchange of views, commentaries, versions and additions related to the Torah. It is how the novel, a new “midrash”, avoids the simple antinomy of the concepts of the sacred and the profane. Rozier’s Moses, conscious of his complex identity, is simultaneously a Jew and an Egyptian, and faces, like many contemporary Jewish writers, language dilemmas, which constitute one of the major motifs analysed in the present article. Another key question is the ethics of the prophetism of the novelistic Moses, who seems to speak for contemporary people, doomed to in the world perceived as chaos unsupervised by an absolute being. Rozier’s agnostic Moses is a prophet not of God (who does not appear in the novel), but of humanism understood as the confrontation of a human being with the absurdity of his or her own finiteness, which produces compassion for the other, with whom the fate of a mortal is shared.
- ItemLa quête du sacré dans les romans de Chantal Deltenre(Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Wydawnictwo Werset, 2013) Zbierska-Mościcka, JudytaLa plus que mère, La Cérémonie des poupées and La Maison de l’âme, the trilogy of the Belgian writer and ethnologist Chantal Deltenre – published in the first decade of the 21st century, illustrates post-modern religiosity, the main characteristics of which are diversity, syncretism and relativism. The search for sacrum is supposed to be a kind of initiation journey undertaken mostly by lost and uprooted individuals. It is a search for a safe and meaningful space (place), which is not just the opposite of the shapeless and meaningless world of profanum, but also one that allows to build one’s own identity.
- ItemUn Dieu sadique : le rôle de l’image blasphématoire de Dieu dans Dolce agonia de Nancy Huston(Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Wydawnictwo Werset, 2013) Front, IzabelaThe present article seeks to analyze the way in which the blasphemous figure of God in Dolce agonia by Nancy Huston allows the author to describe the sacred element in human life, seen as deprived of transcendental character. This is possible thanks to the three aspects of the text dependent on the type of God’s figure, which are: the contrast between passages marked by the cynical God’s voice and passages focused on man’s life filled with suffering; the tone and the appropriation of time variations and, finally, the double character of God who, at the same time, is indifferent to man’s lot while touched by his capacity of love.
- ItemSylvain Trudel et le réenchantement du monde(Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Wydawnictwo Werset, 2013) Thomas, Jean-PierreSince the middle of the 1980s, French Canadian novelist Sylvain Trudel has constantly put his characters in contentious situations from which they try to escape by way of creating alternative worlds at the same time real and fantastical. This device takes the characters away from their trite everyday life and into a symbolic and mystical universe. The synthème seems to be fit into that symbolic frame. Through the child’s point of view – which seems then to become some sort of secret language – each object belonging to the realm of the profane becomes tinted with a sacred meaning. Synthème and symbol would then be considered as vehicles for the sacred, that which shows through Sylvain Trudel’s novels.
- ItemL’amour vu comme un « rite de passage » : la confrontation du sacrum et du profanum chez Marguerite Duras(Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II, Wydawnictwo Werset, 2013) Ledwina, AnnaOne of the distinguishing characteristics of Marguerite Duras’ works is her focus on contradictions, especially in the realm of physicality, which is part of the “dialectic of desire”, a nonverbal pleasure. In the analysed novels: The Sea Wall and The Lover this passion manifests itself through the “rite of passage”. It is a double discovery of one’s own and someone else’s physicality. Duras perceives love as an uncontrollable, violent “experiment”, a rebellion against one’s mother and restrictions. Narrating one of the most important (and secret) episodes of her life – crossing the Mekong – the author depicts the sexual initiation of a young heroine (Duras’ alter ego), who seduces a mature man with her behaviour and dress. This experience allows her to experience the absolute and become initiated and free. For the narrator, it is an opportunity for in-depth analysis of the secular and the sacred aspects of desire. To fully understand the sacred and the profane in Duras’ works, it seems necessary to approach the phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective.