Volume 58, Issue 1

This article explores the spectral presence of the past in the form of skulls and emotional trauma in a story about a country ravaged by a protracted war. It analyzes Anil’s Ghost (2000), a novel by Michael Ondaatje, a Sri Lankan Canadian writer renowned for constructing revisionist and fictional historiographic narratives. The novel speaks about a phase of the ethno-nationalist civil war in contemporary Sri Lanka, and the article expounds on the deconstruction and understanding of war and history as represented in this piece of fiction. In deprecating a unilateral and cohesive representation of history, the novel presents multiple voices and subverts the notion of a single truth, thereby challenging the unity and logic of representing history in fiction. It also highlights the lingering effects of past violence and buried memories haunting the present for the purpose of closure in the form of splintered personal memories resurfacing at random moments.

Even though literary works serve as excellent media for bearing witness to trauma, postcolonial and diasporic literary texts are often dismissed for their falsified accounts of traumatic life experiences. Recent studies on African American literature have stressed the need for a decolonized conceptualization of trauma that would not only disrupt the long-existing white Global Northern perspectives but also recognize feelings of empathy and solidarity among members of the community in these literary corpora. The present study adopts a hybrid analytical framework to examine the representations of trauma in the Nigerian American writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013). Specifically, we draw upon Gérard Genette’s narrative levels, Ron Eyerman’s collective memory, and Jeffrey Charles Alexander’s collective identity to argue that the novel defies conventional forms of narrative by depicting postcolonial and diasporic identities as volatile and dynamic constructs. The findings indicate the multiple ways in which the story presents diasporic Africans – that is, the female protagonist Ifemelu and her male lover Obinze – as capable of overcoming the adverse effects of traumatic memories by chronicling an authentic record of their experiences. The study also reveals that the leading female character, like the novelist Adichie, creates an empowering platform for migrants of various ethnicities to speak up about their traumatic experiences, and thereby establish what is called ‘cross-cultural solidarity’ in reconstructing a new community.

An innovative and dynamic way of practicing and thinking about translation emerged in 1950 s Brazil and became entangled with German literature. However, due to linguistic barriers, this constellation remains almost invisible today. The main protagonist of this translation discourse was Haroldo de Campos who, together with his brother Augusto de Campos, translated texts from world literature into Brazilian Portuguese. This article argues that in the translation and criticism of a poem by Christian Morgenstern, the work of Haroldo de Campos as a philologist and scholar of Comparative Literature becomes especially palpable. Beginning with an example from Morgenstern’s collection Galgenlieder , the article illustrates how Campos translated the German vanguard movement into the Brazilian context and reflected on the similarities of both literary currents. The translation also depicts Haroldo de Campos’ understanding of both Comparative Literature and criticism, in general, favoring translation, adaption, and reception over the praise of the ‘original’. In following the traces of the poem (“Ein ästhetisches Wiesel”) through Brazilian literary theory (also in the work of Roberto Schwarz and Anatol Rosenfeld), the article argues in favor of its relevance for the discipline of Comparative Literature.

In Robert Walser’s novel Jakob von Gunten (1909), a specific metanarrative revolves around the long-standing opposition between form and formlessness. This metanarrative redefines the ill-reputed non-form, establishing it as the core of aesthetic and linguistic productivity. At the same time, it provides insights into the literary precursors and theoretical contexts that reverberate throughout the novel. Literary resonances include Gottfried Keller’s canonical work Der grüne Heinrich , whose images of formlessness are adapted and transformed in Jakob von Gunten . On a theoretical level, it is a contemporary strand of Formal Aesthetics that elucidates the form-conceptual innovations in Jakob von Gunten . Reconstructing the references that structure the novel and its underlying poetology of form, this article reviews a literary manifestation of the theory of form that shapes the aesthetic discourse in the 1900 s.

This essay attempts to examine the intertextuality of the fictional character Quasimodo in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus . Thomas Mann readily professes his affection for his fictional character Adrian, and admits to the existence of a close yet secret connection between Adrian and Mann himself. It can be concluded that Thomas Mann identifies not only with Adrian but also with Quasimodo, ­who himself loves Esmeralda. But why does he identify thus? There is no simple answer to this question, and here lies the secret of Thomas Mann’s way of working. To explain this, the present essay takes a slight detour and traces his way of thinking and working. This is referred to in this essay as the ‘second concealment,’ which logically presupposes knowledge of the ‘first concealment.’ In the course of this detour, we gain some insight into why Thomas Mann appears in Doktor Faustus riding on the back of Quasimodo.

The article analyzes the ‘distant topography’ in the lyrical work of German poet Oskar Loerke (1884–1941) by referring to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of deterritorialization. It takes as its starting point a reading of “China” in Loerke’s poems, which appears as an ultimate distance but at the same time as mediated by Chinoiserie and Orientalism. However, for Loerke, China not only implies a topos of longing, but also indicates a potential transformation, especially for the lyrical subject, as it will be shown in a close reading of “Das chinesische Puppentheater” (1911). In his later work Der Silberdistelwald (Silver Thistle Forest, 1934), Loerke refers to the unreadable Chinese characters, which, in this context, can be read as to leave distant China at a distance and to deterritorialize it poetically.

This article analyzes the place of commitment and melancholy in the novel Écoutez nos défaites (Listen to our defeats) by French writer Laurent Gaudé (born in 1972). A dense, complex and multi-generic novel, it has a strong anchoring in contemporary historical events. Gaudé’s singular work, begun more than twenty years ago, scrutinizes the melancholy and lyricism which cross it in filigree, using universal literary heritage as its source – from Greek tragedy and the African tale, through immemorial myths and legends, to current world literature.