Novelistic Nostalgia: The Pleasure and the Pain
This article explores nostalgia in its creative/utopian as well as negative/pathological aspects, as reflected in novels by two contemporary authors: Milan Kundera and Mircea Cărtărescu. While nostalgia mostly perceived as a highly positive value clearly permeates Cărtărescu’s novel, in Kundera’s wr...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/trans, |
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| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Français |
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TRANS-
2012
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| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | This article explores nostalgia in its creative/utopian as well as negative/pathological aspects, as reflected in novels by two contemporary authors: Milan Kundera and Mircea Cărtărescu. While nostalgia mostly perceived as a highly positive value clearly permeates Cărtărescu’s novel, in Kundera’s writing we observe a gradually developing violent rejection of this sentiment. Both Cărtărescu and Kundera display a need to return to their childhood/adolescent origins, albeit for opposing reasons: what the first wishes to symbolically re-create (restorative nostalgia), the latter desires to demolish with a supremely anti-nostalgic gesture. |
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