Caminando por la violencia del pasado

Walking through the violence of the past

Enrique Gutiérrez Rubio – Daniel Nemrava

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):157-159  

La mémoire du génocide rwandais deux décennies après « Rwanda : écrire par devoirde mémoire » : troubles psychologiques et devoir de justice pour un exemplum dans Souveraine magnifique d'Eugène Ébodé

The memory of the Rwandan genocide two decades after "Rwanda: writing as a duty to memory": psychological disorders and duty to justice for an exemplum in Eugène Ébodé's Souveraine magnifique

Louis Bertin Amougou

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):161-175 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.011  

In July 1998, encouraged by the Fest'Africa festival, reacting to the silence of African elites following the genocide, a group of African writers attended a writing residency in Rwanda on "Rwanda: écrire par devoir de mémoire" ('Rwanda: writing as a duty to memory'). The works that issued from this project were a response to the silence of African elites on the topic of this crime against humanity perpetrated by Africans against Africans. Writing against the current of ordered memory two decades later, Eugène Ébodé published Souveraine Magnifique, a novel in which the plot revolves around the aftermaths of the genocide. This paper...

Le sentiment du passé dans Le Nez sur la vitre d'Abdelkader Djemaï

The feeling of the past in Le Nez sur la vitre by Abdelkader Djemaï

Nabila Bekhedidja

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):177-187 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.012  

Le Nez sur la vitre (The Nose on the Glass), published in 2004, tells the story of an immigrant man in France who goes to meet his son who does not respond to his letters. At the end of the road, he will find, behind the glass of the coach, his past and his memories. Images of his childhood in his native douar during the war of national liberation pass rapidly before his eyes. On arriving at the prison where his son is serving a sentence, the father learns that his son ended his own life in his cell the day before. Abdelkader Djemaï paints a character who compensates for his poor command of the French language by keeping his...

El duelo y la culpabilidad en Ayer no más de Andrés Trapiello

Mourning and guilt in Ayer no más by Andres Trapiello

Elżbieta Bender

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):189-201 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.013  

Andres Trapiello's novel Ayer no más offers interesting material for the investigation of complex transgenerational relations affected by past traumatic experiences. The novel depicts the ways the descendants of the participants in the Spanish Civil War deal with their parents' guilt and shows how the memories of the past erupt after years of historical silence. The author, through references to postmemory and transgenerational transmission, attempts to explain the mechanisms behind inherited guilt, the connection between this guilt and the grief felt by the victims' families, and the way these experiences have influenced social life in contemporary...

Notas al pie de la memoria: exilio, autobiografía y olvido en cuatro poetas de Valparaíso (Galaz, Rodríguez, Mizón y Embry)

Footnotes to memory: exile, autobiography, and oblivion in four poets from Valparaíso (Galaz, Rodríguez, Mizón, and Embry)

Ximena Figueroa Flores – Nibaldo Acero

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):203-212 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.014  

From the selection of some of the most significant poems of Alicia Galaz, Osvaldo Rodríguez, Luis Mizón, and Eduardo Embry, all poets from Valparaíso and exiled from Chile during the military dictatorship of Pinochet, it is postulated that these poetics - written in Spanish and French - make up a meta-testimonial and autobiographical discourse of oblivion. For if the most recognized writings of this period are inclined to denounce the violence or the breakdown of identity caused by the dictatorship, these poets tend, instead, to create a poetic discourse about uprooting from a distance, based on the evocation of affectionate nostalgia that reconstructs...

La construcción de la memoria en la ficcionalización de la «nueva narrativa histórica chilena»

The construction of the fictionalized memory in the "new Chilean historical narrative"

Guillermo González Hernández

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):213-227 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.015  

In current Chilean literature it is possible to see a phenomenon in the publications of the past five years, related to an increase in the number of novels and stories that have a central focus on uncommon historical themes. These works succeed in revealing the hidden history of Chile by disclosing historical facts unknown to most people who are not regular readers of historiographical publications. In this paper, the postulates of White, Grützmacher, and Bonett are used to analyze what has been termed the "new Chilean historical narrative", on the basis of an analysis of three recent works: Logia (2014) by Francisco Ortega, Historia secreta...

La memoria histórica en el presente de la escritura saeriana

Historical memory in Saer's scriptural present

Perrine Guéguen

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):229-241 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.016  

This paper explores the link between the Argentine author Juan José Saer's narrative and historical memory. The latter usually appears in between the lines in his novels, essays, work, papers, manuscripts, and correspondence, and yet it is of great significance. The main tool of this analysis is genetic criticism, in a broad sense of the term, which gives us access to the writer's desk. This reveals a coherence in Saer's work when introducing historical motifs from Argentina's Dirty War (1976-1983) through a personal aesthetic, addressing specific portrayals of characters and temporality. Through the use of the mise en abyme of his character's...

« J'ai une mémoire, donc j'existe » − la dichotomie mémoire-oubli dans l'œuvre dramatique de Matéi Visniec

"I have memory, therefore I exist" − the memory-oblivion dichotomy in the dramatic works of Matéi Visniec

Sylwia Kucharuk

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):243-254 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.017  

The objective of the paper is to analyse the memory-oblivion dichotomy present in the dramatic works of Matéi Visniec, first by referring to the opposition between beautiful death and desecrated death, second in the context of the transition from the cult of memory to the cult of oblivion, and third by examining the manifestations of the abuse of memory and oblivion in today's society, denounced by the author. The analysis is based on the terminology concerning the close relationship between death and memory proposed by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Sébastien Rongier, and on Paul Ricœur's reflections on the typology of the abuse of memory and the question...

Superposición y coalescencia, el mecanismo titilante en la narrativa de Nona Fernández

Superposition and coalescence, the twinkling mechanism in the narrative of Nona Fernández

Macarena Miranda Mora

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):255-268 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.018  

Increased by historic traumas and by the accelerated perception of the present, the memory includes an exercise of representation, elaboration, and freezing of an extinct time. In that sense, literature explores new ways to signify the past, to make an exercise of memory; an example of this is the narrative work of the Chilean writer Nona Fernández. First of all, from a general approximation of the treatment of the past in the story, followed by her narratological articulations, this paper analyses her seven books with the purpose of establishing how that literary creation operates on the construction of a singular memory. The study of the general...

Representación literaria da memoria e consecuencias da Transición na sociedade galega posfranquista: aproximación á novela O tempo en ningunha parte, de Xosé Manuel Martínez Oca

Literary representation of memory and consequences of the transition to democracy in post-Franco Galician society: a study of the novel O tempo en ningunha parte, by Xosé Manuel Martínez Oca

Diego Rivadulla Costa

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):269-283 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.019  

The present work is situated at the intersection between literary studies and cultural memory studies. The object of the study is O tempo en ningunha parte (2003), a Galician novel written by Xosé Manuel Martínez Oca. It was published in the context of the memory boom in Spain since the year 2000. The literary representation of memory, or "mimesis of memory", will be studied in the novel in order to understand the processes and cultural dynamics of the memory of the Spanish Civil War and Francoism in the society of 1985. O tempo en ningunha parte reflects the consequences of the politics of forgetting in the Spanish transition to democracy...

La memoria contra el olvido. El caso de los desaparecidos en el teatro de Jorge Díaz: La cicatriz (1997) y El naufragio interminable (2000)

Memory vs. oblivion. The case of the disappeared in Jorge Díaz's theatre: La cicatriz (1997) and El naufragio interminable (2000)

Anna Werman

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):285-298 | DOI: 10.5507/ro.2019.020  

Jorge Díaz is a Chilean dramatist committed to the sociopolitical cause. His works, especially those dealing with the dark times of the Chilean dictatorship, serve the purpose of preserving the collective memory of the groups that were affected. Diaz's theatre brings an immediate response to the injustices committed by the authorities. This paper investigates the concept of collective memory on the basis of the theoretical approaches of Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora, Elizabeth Jelin, Tulia Almanza Loaiza, and Carlos Castilla del Pino in two short plays by Jorge Díaz: La cicatriz and El naufragio interminable. Both works commemorate the...

Aldama Ordóñez, Celia de (2019), Voces del Plata. Hacia una constelación transatlántica

Aldama Ordóñez, Celia de (2019), Voices from the Plata. Towards a literary constellation

Rosalía Calle Bocanegra

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):299-301  

Boissiéras, Fabienne – Jomand-Baudry, Régine (direction) (2019), L’énigme de la mémoire. Études pluridisciplinaires

Boissiéras, Fabienne – Jomand-Baudry, Régine (direction) (2019), The riddle of memory. Multidisciplinary studies

Samuel Bidaud

Romanica Olomucensia 2019, 31(2):301-304