The Joy and Melancholy of Living Beings in Mon ancêtre Poisson

IF 0.3 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE SYMPOSIUM-A QUARTERLY JOURNAL IN MODERN LITERATURES Pub Date : 2022-10-02 DOI:10.1080/00397709.2022.2149069
Marla Epp
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Abstract

Abstract Christine Montalbetti’s novel Mon ancêtre Poisson (2019) is teeming with descriptions of living things, perhaps not surprisingly given its subject, the life of her great-great-grandfather, the botanist Jules Poisson. In this essay, I argue that the focus on living beings becomes a way of fleshing out her account of this distant ancestor, whose life story she can only piece together from archival documents. As I demonstrate, the narrator, a version of Montalbetti, turns to shared experiences of the physical world as a way of imagining her great-great-grandfather, picturing them walking in the same garden and experiencing similar physiological sensations. The narrator draws attention to the corporeality of both herself and Jules, emphasizing their physicality and carefully positioning them as breathing bodies, part of a complex network of living beings. Ultimately, I show that, for the narrator, the world of living things is a source of both joy and melancholy. Her research into her great-great-grandfather becomes part of a larger process of reconciling the joy of engaging with the abundance of living and growing things around her with the sorrow of accepting the fundamental and inescapable fragility of living bodies, be they animal, plant, or human.
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《梦》中众生的欢乐与忧郁ancêtre泊松
克里斯汀·蒙塔尔贝蒂(Christine Montalbetti)的小说《Mon ancêtre泊松》(2019)充满了对生物的描述,考虑到小说的主题是她的曾曾祖父、植物学家朱尔斯·泊松(Jules Poisson)的一生,这也许并不奇怪。在这篇文章中,我认为对生物的关注成为充实她对这位遥远祖先的描述的一种方式,她只能从档案文件中拼凑出他的生活故事。正如我所展示的,叙述者,一个版本的蒙塔尔贝蒂,把对物质世界的共同经历作为想象她的曾曾祖父的一种方式,想象他们在同一个花园里散步,经历类似的生理感受。叙述者把注意力吸引到她自己和朱尔斯的肉体上,强调他们的肉体,并小心地将他们定位为呼吸的身体,是一个复杂的生物网络的一部分。最后,我想说明的是,对于叙述者来说,生物世界既是欢乐的源泉,也是忧郁的源泉。她对曾曾祖父的研究成为一个更大的过程的一部分,这个过程是调和与周围丰富的生命和生长的事物接触的喜悦与接受生命的基本和不可避免的脆弱性的悲伤,无论是动物、植物还是人类。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.20
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0.00%
发文量
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期刊介绍: Symposium is a quarterly journal of criticism in modern literatures originating in languages other than English. Recent issues include peer-reviewed essays on works by Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Mikhail Bulgakov, Miguel de Cervantes, Denis Diderot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Paloma Díaz-Mas, Assia Djebar, Umberto Eco, Franz Kafka, Francis Ponge, and Leonardo Sciascia. Scholars of literature will find research on authors, themes, periods, genres, works, and theory, often through comparative studies. Although primarily in English, some issues include discussions of works in the original language.
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