Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T07:27:36.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Voices from Exile: A Literature for Europe?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2009

John Neubauer
Affiliation:
Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Algemene literatuurwetenschap, Oude Turfmarkt 141, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: J.Neubauer@uva.nl

Abstract

Exile, for all of its pain and suffering, has offered European writers a way to step out of their national linguistic and cultural environment. Did exiled writers make use of this opportunity, and start writing a ‘literature for Europe’? By no means all did; many of them sealed themselves off in order to maintain the purity of their mother tongue, while others ‘opened up’ and adjusted to the culture of their host country, often even by adopting its language for their writing. Considering these questions, Pascale Casanova’s La République mondiale des lettres1 is of great help, although her models are Joyce, Beckett, and other writers, who were not exiles in a literal sense. Many ‘genuine’ exiles retained the national mentality of their youth.

Type
Focus: European Literature
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1.Casanova, P. (1999) La République mondiale des letters (Paris: Seuil).Google Scholar
2.Suleiman, S. R. (ed.) (2006) The Idea of Europe. Focus issue of Comparative Literature, 58(4).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3.Lukács, G. (1916) Die Theorie des Romans (Theory of the Novel) (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1963).Google Scholar
4.Starn, R. (1982) Contrary Commonwealth. The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, (Berkeley: University of California Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5.Mikes, K. (1794) Törökországi levelek (Letters from Turkey) (Budapest: Lampel, 1905).Google Scholar
6.Horia, V. (1960) Dieu et né en exil (Paris: Fayard).Google Scholar
7.Malouf, D. (1978) An Imaginary Life (New York: Braziller).Google Scholar
8.Ransmayer, C. (1988) Die letzte Welt. Roman mit einem Ovidischen Repertoire (Nördlingen: Greno). Translated by J. Woods as The Last World: a Novel with an Ovidian Repertory (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990).Google Scholar
9.Zorich, A. (2007) [Y. Botsman and D. Gordevsky]. Roman Star (Moscow: AST Press).Google Scholar
10.Krasiński, Z. (1835) Nie-boska komedia (The Undivine Comedy) (Paris: Pinard).Google Scholar
11.Cornis-Pope, M. and Neubauer, J. (eds) (2004) History of the Literary Cultures in East-Central Europe. Vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Benjamins).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12.Jasieński, B. (1929) Je brûle Paris (I Burn/Rush quickly through Paris) (Paris: Flammarion).Google Scholar
13.Wat, A. (1988) My Century. The Odyssey of a Polish Intellectual. Foreword by C. Miłosz (Berkeley: University of California Press), edited and translated R. Lourie from the Polish Mój Wiek (London: Book Fund, 1977).Google Scholar
14.Werfel, F. (1942) The Song of Bernadette (New York: Viking).Google Scholar
15.Bobkowski, A. (2007) Szkice piórkiem (Sketches with a Quill) (Warsaw: Cis) (first edition Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1957).Google Scholar
16.Joyce, J. (1916) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977).Google Scholar
17. ‘Tout écrivain français est international, il est poète, écrivain pour l’Europe entière […] Tout ce qui est ‘national’ est sot, archaïque, basement patriotique […] C’était bon dans des circonstances particulières, mais cela est révolu. Il y a un pays d’Europe’ (as quoted in Casanova’s original French edition, p. 126).Google Scholar
18. ‘Est écrivain européen celui qui est lu par l’élite de son pays et par les élites des autres pays. Thomas Hardy, Marcel Proust, Pirandello, etc., sont des écrivains européens. Les écrivains de grande vente dans leur pays d’origine mais non lus par l’élite de leut pays et ignores par les élites des autres pays sont des écrivains […] disons nationaux’ (Larbaud Ce vice impuni, la lecture, as quoted in Casanova’s original French text, p. 157).Google Scholar
19. ‘Aux forces centripètes orientées vers le pole autonome et unifiant, qui permet à tous les protagonists de s’accorder sur une mesure commune de la valeur littéraire et sur un point de repère ‘literairement absolu’ […] à partir duquel on mesurera cette valeur, s’opposent les forces centrifuges des poles nationaux de chaque espace national, c’est’-à-dire les forces d’inertie qui contribuent à diviser, particulariser, essentialiser les différences, reproduire les modèles du passé, nationaliser les productions littéraires’ (pp. 156–157 in the original French edition).Google Scholar
20. V. Pârvan (1926) Getica: o Protoistorie a Daciei (Getica, or A Pre-History of Dacia) edited by R. Florescu (Bucharest: Cultura Naţională). (Chisinau: Editura Universitas, 1992).Google Scholar