English
Polish
Anger as defiance, anger as self in Anna Langfus’ Le Sel et le soufre and Les Bagages de sable
France Grenaudier-Klijn
F.Grenaudier-Klijn@massey.ac.nz BioFrance Grenaudier-Klijn – dr, honorowy pracownik naukowy na Massey University w Nowej Zelandii. Jej publikacje dotyczą literatury francuskiej po Szoa, współczesnego francuskiego noir, kobiet piszących po francusku i francuskiej kultury popularnej. Jest również specjalistką od francuskiej powieściopisarki Belle Époque Marcelle Tinayre (1870–1948). Obecnie kończy katalog postaci z twórczości Patricka Modiano.
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2976-6993
Massey University
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 20 (2024), pages: 238-252
Publication date: 2024-12-17
Abstract
For Polish-born writing-in-French novelist Anna Langfus (1920-1966), fiction writing ought to aim both at self-expression and other-communication. Chiefly concerned with the question of post-Shoah identity and refusing to reduce characters to the oversimplified position of victims, her narratives foreground the voice and experience of the survivor, while seeking ethical communication with readers. Hence, Langfus appeals to the common human-being-ness of characters and readers, through the evocation of universal emotions and feelings. Anger is one such emotion, and this contribution proposes to analyse the narrative and ethical role of anger in her first two novels: Le Sel et le soufre (1960) and Les Bagages de sable (1962).
The article will first provide a quick overview of the conceptualisation and interpretation of anger in religious, philosophical, and psychological contexts. It will then include a reminder of the difficulties Shoah survivors met to be heard in the immediate post-war years in France and situate Langfus within her historical context.
The second part of the discussion will examine episodes of anger in Langfus’ first two novels and propose an interpretation of anger as a tool harnessed by the protagonists to remain in contact with their lost loved ones and with their own intimate selves.
The discussion will conclude on the ‘communicability’ inherent to Langfus depiction of anger, suggesting that the inscription of this ambivalent emotion allows the novelist to challenge stereotypical representation of post-Shoah survivors, while also, and perhaps more importantly, enabling her to call to an (ideal) reader, now drawn into a communal space of human frailty.
Keywords
Anna Langfus, anger, post-Shoah, survivor , characterization, readers response
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