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.

In the last thirty years, many French novels have evoked the national past. The Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation inspired various particularly intense works. Thanks to its extreme plasticity, literary fiction has proved a very effective tool to understand the atmosphere of that period. This trend, that began developing in the Eighties, has not ceased at the beginning of the present century. Three books, published respectively in 2004, 2005 and 2006, testify to the fascination still exerted over writers by those dark years: "Le Corps noir" by Dominique Manotti, "Lutetia" by Pierre Assouline, "Itinéraire d’un salaud ordinaire" by Didier Daeninckx. In these novels, the approach to the events aims to reduce the distance of the narrative from the experience. It is a purpose formerly underrated by professional historians, now shared by some of them. This article analyzes the technical and thematic means employed by these works to reproduce the complexity of historical facts.

From a philosophical-historical point of view, Schiller’s essay "On the sublime" is commonly considered as a self-critical recantation of the opinions on “world history” previously expressed in his inaugural address in 1789. In fact, the degeneration of the French revolution into a regime of terror and oppression after 1792 seemed to disprove categorically the historical-teleological optimism asserted by the professor in his lecture. Actually, the ‘optimism’ of the ‘historian’ Schiller shouldn’t be overestimated. In the inaugural address, the aesthetic-creative role played by the “philosophical head” in the construction of “world history” already shakes the belief in an objective teleological sense of history. Later on, in the essay "On the sublime", only the free will and the creative power of the human being explicitly guarantee the construction of sense and the development of culture. At the turn of the nineteenth century the tragic poet shows the grimace of teleology in Wallenstein. As a matter of fact, the astrological belief of this protagonist is a sign of his constitutive weakness and inability to act in the open-ended course of history.

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.