It’s one o’clock in the morning, and I regret it.

Wednesday, February 7, 1973 Here are excerpts from the diary of a literature student in the 1970s in Bern (his hometown), Vienna, and Paris, at a time when universities gave students free rein to read, listen to music, and reflect.

Why publish them now? To remind us of the timeless quality of great works of art. To revive the memory of an era that held literature and the arts in high esteem, that fostered a culture of dialogue and open-minded exchange.

Publisher’s website: http://editionsorizons.fr/index.php/l-irreel-intact-dans-le-reel-devaste-pages-d-un-journal-de-jeunesse-1971-1974.html

Co-edited by Dominique Massonnaud and Vanessa Obry Textimage is a new online journal that explores the forms of dialogue between text and image. It will publish articles twice a year, grouped thematically.

Each issue will include a review of recent publications and exhibitions addressing the text-image relationship, and, gradually, a section curated by a contemporary artist.

Publisher’s website: http://revue-textimage.com/sommaire/sommaire_19genese.html

It was in Florence, in 1896, that André Gide and Fedor Rosenberg met. Their friendship was so immediate and intense that the Russian orientalist accompanied Gide and his wife Madeleine for part of their honeymoon. Later, he regularly visited the Gides, particularly in Cuverville, and became a close friend of the writer’s inner circle. This friendship, largely conducted through letters, lasted until the death of “good Fedor” in June 1934.

This correspondence reveals an intimate side of Gide, ready to disclose his homosexuality to a correspondent who reciprocates in kind; it also offers a historical and cultural perspective on European literature and the circulation of ideas at the beginning of the 20th century. In the background of reflections on daily life, health, current projects, and literature, the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution are also evoked, punctuated by temporary interruptions in the exchanges between the two men. While not all the letters could be recovered, nearly 350 correspondences are gathered here.

These thirty-eight years of dedicated exchange reveal the passionate dialogue between the “major contemporary” and his “most sensitive, reliable, and faithful friend.” Nikol Dziub is the recipient of the 2015 doctoral thesis prize from the University of Haute-Alsace and the 2019 Catherine Gide Foundation-Treilles Foundation Prize for her research project entitled “The Kremlin Cellars: Gide and the NRF Facing Russia.” Also a graduate of Kyiv University and the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, she is the author of two essays and some fifty articles. She has also edited about ten collective volumes.

Publisher’s website: https://presses.univ-lyon2.fr/product/show/gide-et-rosenberg/927

Traduzione di Enrico Monti (in collaborazione con Irene Amodeo, Anita Elisse, Chiara Froldi, Greta Gabrieli, Roberta Grillo, Inès Kieffer, Marta Nicolosi, Camilla Predieri, Elisabetta Sabattini, Chiara Zanderigo e Khalil Zantou)

Texte de la quatrième de couverture (en italien)

Vincent König è il curatore degli archivi della scrittrice svizzera Esther Montandon. Da una cartella etichettata “fatture”, emergono un giorno, per caso, decine di fogli ancora inediti. Con una prosa lontana da qualsiasi eccesso, Esther evoca la scomparsa della figlia Louise, morta in un incidente. I ricordi si mischiano alle ipocrisie e alle convenzioni del mondo circostante, freddo, incapace di comprendere. Lo scorrere implacabile del tempo e l’impossibilità per Esther di far fronte al “dopo” caratterizzano queste pagine, pubblicate con il titolo «Vivere vicino ai tigli». Storia di una madre che non vuole smettere di essere tale, malgrado la tragedia, il libro è anche una riflessione sulla forza dei sentimenti e sul potere della letteratura nel rappresentarli. Dietro Esther Montandon, si nasconde infatti un collettivo di giovani scrittori, l’AJAR, che con eccezionale sensibilità conduce il lettore all’ascolto di una sola e unica voce, avvolta nel proprio dolore. «Vivere vicino ai tigli» riesce a commuovere e a convincere, provando non solo che la finzione non è il contrario della realtà, ma che forse niente è più autentico della finzione stessa.

Book Presentation

The translation of this collaborative novel could only be a collaborative effort. Between January and April 2020, a group of undergraduate students in the CLE (Cultural and Literary Studies) program worked on the novel under the guidance of Enrico Monti. A series of weekly meetings in the classroom (and later via videoconference) allowed for in-depth study of the text, fostering dialogue and exchange. This approach had the advantage of introducing a slower pace into the translation process, which facilitated a deeper understanding of the text, an appreciation of its specific characteristics, and a grasp of the subtle interplay of echoes that develops between the different chapters.

Two critical essays complete the volume. Enrico Monti explains in detail the various stages of the work undertaken and highlights the challenges of collaborative translation. Paola Codazzi revisits the AJAR’s (Association of Young Researchers in Contemporary Translation) reference models, attempting to define the collective’s place within the contemporary literary landscape.

Editor’s website : https://www.sefeditrice.it/catalogo/vivere-vicino-ai-tigli/5351

From the invisibility of migrant women to the visibility of female migration, there is a space to explore. For this reason, a polyphonic encounter, both scientific and sociocultural, gave rise to the texts presented in this collection. This volume is unique and original in several respects: it gathers the voices of migrant women through their testimonies, but it also gives a voice to leaders of associations, particularly migrant associations in the Grand Est region of France and French-speaking Switzerland. It also contains articles by researchers interested in female migration. Various questions arose, to which these testimonies and contributions offer some answers. Can we speak of intercultural orality when studying women’s perspectives on migration? What interlinguistic situations can be identified? How can one bear witness to the experience of female migration? Is the notion of interculturality sufficient for women’s voices in a cross-border, migratory, and scientific context?

Publisher’s website : http://editionsorizons.fr/index.php/les-migrations-feminines.html?m=1

“Much has happened to me that is worth narrating, worth celebrating, in spite of the regrets and sorrows of exile. My life began under Apartheid until I attained the age of 22, and then subsequently lived in many places and societies, in Central Africa, Britain, the United States, Poland, and during a brief sojourn, in France and, finally, in Switzerland.” – Lewis Nkosi in ‘Memoirs of a motherless child’

This rich volume is dedicated to the astounding South African writer and literary critic Lewis Nkosi (1936–2010). In this book, Nkosi’s celebrated one-act play “The Black Psychiatrist” is published together with its unpublished sequel “Flying Home,” a play on the satirically fictionalized inauguration of Mandela as South African president. Critical appraisals, tributes and recollections by scholars and friends reflect on the beat of his writing and life.

An ideal volume for those encountering Lewis Nkosi for the first time as well as for those already devoted to his work.

Editor’s website : https://www.africanbookscollective.com/books/lewis-nkosi.-the-black-psychiatrist

The work of Sarah Kirsch (1935-2013), long confined to her poetry collections alone, now deserves a comprehensive overview of all its facets.

This study therefore proposes to analyze Sarah Kirsch’s work through the lens of the kaleidoscope, used as both an analytical tool and a methodological principle, favoring intertextual and intercultural approaches.

The aim is to weave a framework around a number of motifs inherent to the collection *Allerlei-Rauh* (1988)—the focus of this study—and applicable to her entire oeuvre. Thus, behind the poems emerges an open body of work that, from travel writing to haiku and ecological concerns, revisits autobiographical writing and political engagement.

Voir le site de l’éditeur

The extensive body of work by the Italian writer Fulvio Tomizza (1935-1999), defying any Manichean approach, confronts the reader with the historical drama of the Italian-Istrian exodus at the end of the Second World War, offering an original and empathetic perspective stemming from his hybrid Italian-Slavic identity. This book provides an overview of nearly all of Tomizza’s work, which is organized around a diverse range of writings, predominantly testimonial, introspective, or historiographical. Foreword by Fulvio Senardi, President of the Giuliano Institute of History, Culture and Documentation in Trieste.

Publisher’s website: https://presses-universitaires.univ-amu.fr/fulvio-tomizza-lexode-a-lexil

For Gide, the Great War was a time of transformation. His first priority was helping refugees from the occupied territories, then finding a proper distance from the present in order to begin thinking about the future.

Amidst the general turmoil, the writer glimpsed the beginnings of a cultural Europe where diversity worked toward unity. During the 1920s and 30s, assuming the role of witness that posterity has remembered, he frequented intellectual elites, traveled extensively, and engaged in numerous exchanges, working to foster understanding between nations. While he did not become involved in the many public initiatives that emerged at the time, his influence transcended borders, and his work left its mark on the 20th century.

From his Journal, as much as from his critical articles, not to mention his fiction, arose an original reflection on the individual rather than on institutions. This book illuminates the various facets of this reflection and, at the same time, invites us to consider the role Gide attributed to the man of letters in society.

Representations of dreams – no matter if factual or fictional – are influenced not only by cultural patterns but also by the specific opportunities offered and the specific challenges posed by the genre or medium which was chosen for them. The essays in the two volumes of this publication consider, in detailed case studies, variants of factual dream reports and fictional dreams in epic poems, dream visions, satires, the Chinese genre zhiguai, novels, lyrical poems, prose poems, dramas, dream plays, Japanese mugen no plays, radio plays, paintings, comics, films, video games, operas, and instrumental music. The authors and artists discussed include Artemidorus, Bachmann, Baudelaire, Bergman, Berlioz, Bertrand, Boulanger, Borchert, Burroughs, Calderón, Chaucer, de Chirico, Christine de Pizan, Eich, Gan Bao, Garnier, Handke, A. Hardy, Heine, Hitchcock, Homer, Jean Paul, Liu Xiang, Kurosawa, Levi, Liszt, Magritte, Matisse, Murnau, Nabokov, Redon, J. Renoir, Reverdy, Rimbaud, Quevedo, Saariaho, Sebald, Spiegelman, Swedenborg, Strindberg, Trakl, Valmiki, Vermeer, Virgil, R. Wagner, von Wysocki, Zeami, and many others.

Publisher’s website : https://www.verlag-koenigshausen-neumann.de/product_info.php/info/p9695_Mediating-the-Dream—br–Les-genres-et-m–dias-du-r–ve—br–Cultural-Dream-Studies—Kulturwissenschaftliche-Traumstudien–Bd–4.html