The election of Marguerite Yourcenar to the French Academy in 1980 was widely commented. The controversy was caused by her free lifestyle, sexual inversion and her American citizenship. The size of her work, published in the prestigious Pléiade editions, with its male characters, the Roman emperor Hadrian and the alchemist Zeno, both splendidly show the fate of a man struggling with issues of his time and reveal the personality of the writer. A futile battle against nature and sexual inversion, clarity of vision, curiosity of the world satisfied by numerous travels and tireless study of historical documents, as well as self-improvement and faith give her work an individual and universal character. Her vast erudition and talent for writing enabled her to cross the threshold of an institution which had been a guardian of the French tradition since 1635. She used her inauguration speech as an opportunity to criticize the institution for underestimating the role of women in creating culture.
Der Band enthält die Abstracts ausschließlich in englischer Sprache.
EN
Two characters, Franz Gerlach in Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Condemned of Altona (Les sequestrés d’Altona, 1959) and Théo Steiner in Toujours l’orage (1997) by Enzo Cormann, are influenced by their traumatic experience of the war that makes them evade reality and leads them to self-exclusion. Talking to other people provokes questions concerning their identity, family, human development and destiny. Both of the characters are concerned by the feeling of guilt for being alive; this shows how sinuously destiny works in particularly difficult situations while one’s behaviour and actions, once they are recorded by one's conscience, do not let you live anymore because the responsibility becomes too heavy
FR
Le numéro contient uniquement les résumés en anglais.
An enthusiast of Nathalie Sarraute’s writings, Jean-Paul Sartre convinced the author that her first novel Portrait d’un inconnu (1948) would not have found a publisher unless he wrote a preface to it. While underscoring her original writing technique, Sartre used terms and expressions that render the receptions of the novel considerably unfaithful to Sarraute’s intentions. Sarraute repeatedly commented upon it, admitting she would prefer to have written an article about the novel by herself, according to Sartre’s earlier promise. Key words: Sarraute, narrator, tropism, roman, others.
The consideration of the silence of a present person in some French 20th century drama reveals the power and the cruelty of human silence. The play by Anouilh displays the destiny of a woman who is convicted to be a voiceless witness, whereas the one by Beckett shows the silence of a husband begged by his companion to confirm her presence. In the play by Lagarce, the agony of an ungrateful son unleashes a torrent of complaints pronounced by a women belonging to his family. Finally, both of the analysed plays by Sarraute show the consequences of silence in relations between friends.
The Beckettian theatre describes the agony of the modern world. His character as shown in the phenomenon of his perception, even when limited to four aspects: body, items, time and the Other, let us confirm the validity of Beckett’s reflections about a man who is lost, terrified and resigned to our world.
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