2016 / 21 Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere

Prospero. Rivista di letterature e culture straniere è una rivista annuale a stampa e online ad accesso aperto del Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università di Trieste (DiSU), pubblicata dal 1994 presso la casa editrice EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste. È apparsa in precedenza con il complemento di titolo Rivista di letterature e civiltà Anglo-germaniche e, dal 2005 al 2011, con quello di Rivista di Letterature straniere, Comparatistica e Studi culturali. La rivista pubblica contributi originali dedicati alle letterature di lingua inglese, tedesca e francese. Prospero ospita contributi inediti di studiosi italiani e stranieri che pongono il testo letterario e l’analisi testuale al centro di più ampie riflessioni di carattere ermeneutico, filologico e storico-culturale. In particolare, si apre alle convergenze di carattere interdisciplinare e transdisciplinare tra la letteratura e gli altri saperi. Numeri monografici curati da guest editors italiani e stranieri su temi specifici si alternano a numeri miscellanei.

Proust and Karl Kraus are obviously very near to one another in the field of satirical denunciation of war propaganda during the First World War. Both have a particular virtuosity and lucidity in using what is called in German “Sprachkritik”/ Language Criticism. Both show how contradictory and naive was the frame of mind of ordinary people in Vienna or in Paris during this war. A certain number of significant episodes may be fruitfully compared which enlighten, beyond satirical analogies, a cyclic philosophy and something less horrible in the Proustian vision of war. Last, the comparison with the chief targets of Karl Kraus’ bitter satire allows to bring to light the ideological limits that even the most audacious passages in "Time Regained" don’t exceed.

Between 1942 and 1944, Paul Morand, writer-diplomat, served the government of Vichy regime, which had to collaborate with Hitler's Germany. But as a writer, what was his involvement in Vichy politics? Indeed, it has put its name and its great reputation to serve Petain and its ideology of the National Revolution, notably by writing journalistic chronicles that orchestrate the themes of this policy: that of moral renewal, the return to the earth, etc. He also held important administrative positions, including that of ambassador of France in Bucharest. But in his fictions the writer has remained aloof from any commitment. The presence of an ideology of law is more noticeable in his pre-war writings than in those of the period of the occupation. The Vichy experience will leave traces in the writings of the post-war period, which the writer begins with a Swiss exile for about ten years. The Morand case makes it possible to observe different figures as regards the relations between literature and politics. For him, literature must stay away from political commitments and positions. It must retain a special status that disengages it from direct current events in order to enter into an artistic dimension, which gives it its full force.