Nostalgia originii la Andreï Makine, Testamentul francez și Sorin Titel, Țara îndepărtată / The nostalgia of the place of birth in Andrei Makine's French Will and in Sorin Titel's The Aloof Country

Simina Pîrvu

doi:10.35824/sjrs.v2i1.19193

Authors

Simina Pîrvu West University of Timisoara

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35824/sjrs.v2i1.19193

Keywords:

exile, Makine, Titel, nostalgia, native place

Abstract

In the Middle Ages, exile meant expatriation, the prolonged absence from the native lands, one can say that a person is in exile when it is not possible to return back home. Exile involves unsettlement; the expatriated suffers from nostalgia and tries to recover his origin, the center, his home. Thinking about the past involves an idealized representation of lived history, which may have the effect of a mythical evocation of the past. The nostalgia is one of the central ideas of the novels of the Russian writer Andreï Makine, who has hardly built his identity as a Russian writer of French, his literary beginnings being not simple. The theme of the nostalgia and the parallel between two different worlds are constantly found in Makine's novels, and in The French Will it gets a special note. Andreï Makine says in interviews that he chose to write in French, but his country of origin is always in his soul. Another writer – Romanian this time – in whose novels we find the nostalgia of origins is Sorin Titel, who reveals an unusual world, Banat, where the writer was born. The estrangement from Banat has beneficial consequences in almost all respects. Established in Bucharest, the author has the nostalgia of Banat and transforms it into an epic projection, reinvents Banat. The removal from the places of origin, the distancing, the alienation, are mandatory conditions of the pilgrimage to himself, for only by being far from Banat he could reinvent him, using the memories of his childhood. Even the title of his first book with which he begins the recuperation is enlightening: The Aloof Country, signifying both the Banat, geographically, and the age of childhood, at a symbolic level. This is the case with the two writers, Andreï Makine and Sorin Titel, writers who being far away from their native places, have fictionally translated what they feel for home - Russia and Banat.

Author Biography

Simina Pîrvu, West University of Timisoara

Simina Pîrvu teaches Romanian at a Secondary School for almost 15 years and; in 2018 she graduated a Master programme at the West University of Timișoara, in Literature and Culture - Romanian Contexts, European Contexts. Her dissertation thesis was Obiceiuri de primăvară. Analiză de caz – Strigatul peste sat în Banat (Spring Practices. A Case Analysis – Shouting Over the Village in Banat), her research being conducted by professor Otilia Hedeșan. Among her professional achievements mention should be made of the article Mircea Eliade ' Hooligans between nonconformism and failure, published in the Culture Magazine Discobolul, Year: XX, No. 238-239-240, 2017; Love and Death in Dying Animal, by Philip Roth, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and House of the Sleeping Beauties, by Yasunari Kawabata, in Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, Issue no. 14, 2018; Adaptation and mimicry in the novels No Time Like the Present, by Nadine Gordimer and Vremea minunilor, by Cătălin Dorian Florescu, in Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2018). She was also involved in HerA Project (Local Heritage for Active Tourism in Banat), a project set up by The West University of Timișoara, the City Hall of Kikinda and The National Museum of Kikinda, project of which she is very fond, because it corresponds to her interests - tourism, traditions and everything related to Romania's national heritage and its preservation.

References

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Surse electronice:

Fairweather, N. (1999).Interview: Andrei Makine – Trough the Iron Curtain to Paris. In Independent, 31 ianuarie 1999, accesibil la http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/interview-andrei-makine-through-the-iron-curtain-to-paris-1077329.html, vizualizat la 20 iunie 2017 (traducerea mea).

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Moltoni, M. (2013). Interviu Andrei Makine – Interviewing Andrei Makine, Russian born French Author. Interviu acordat Mariei Moltoni, de la L′ItaloEuropeo, publicat în data de 29 aprilie 2013, accesibil la adresa http://www.italoeuropeo.com/interviews/1352-interviewing-andrei-makine-russian-born-french-author, accesat la 28 iunie 2017 (traducerea mea).

Vlădăreanu, E. (2013). Interviu cu Andrei Makine: „Dacă într-o literatură există mari poeți și prozatori, atunci avem de-a face cu o limbă bine lucrată”, în „Suplimentul de cultură”, Anul IX, nr. 421, 7-13 decembrie 2013, pp. 8-9, accesibil la:

http://www.suplimentuldecultura.ro/index.php/continutArticolNrIdent/Interviu/8929, accesat la 30 iunie 2017.