Richard R. Ernst

L’invenzione letteraria pu? dare vita a un secondo scrittore, a sua volta all’opera. A sua volta colui che comunica al di l? della parola, che si assume l’importante responsabilit? della creazione, che intende lasciare traccia di s?. Da lui nasce il libro, sua sfida, sostegno, tormento; prova unica o reiterata. Come prende forma nel romanzo di primo grado la figura centrale dell’autore? Come si mostra l’immagine ammaliante del suo lavoro nelle storie di lotta e rinuncia, successo e mediocrit? presentate? E qual ? l’e?etto della scrittura sul personaggio – anche nella sua interazione sociale – che, pure tra gravi ostacoli, la elegge tra le vie da percorrere e ne fa il proprio destino? Attraverso la lettura di testi di sei straordinari protagonisti del romanzo italiano nella prima met? del Novecento, ideatori di altrettanti artisti, donne e uomini, si ? tentato di dare una risposta ad interrogativi seducenti che il lettore si pone. In tal modo, penetrando il motivo dell’esperienza della letteratura, si giunge a toccare la scrit-tura come rivelazione e sigillo di vita.

“Carmen Sylva, when she discovered that I was writing, instead of laughing at me and being ironical about my modest attempts at literature, encouraged me from the very first in every way. She was getting old, her imagination was running dry, and she declared that mine had come just in time to replace hers, which was a generous thing to say. She declared that it was a happy and blessed discovery that I could hold a pen, and no end of kind and enthusiastic things. She spurred me on to write, and each time I had finished a story she immediately wanted to have it so as to translate it into German.” Queen Marie of Romania about Carmen Sylva (Queen Elisabeth of Romania) The history of the monarchy in Romania and of its four kings would be incomplete without the story of the queen consorts, who seem to have been even more fascinating personalities than the kings were. Especially the first two queen consorts, Elisabeth (Carmen Sylva) and Marie of Romania, became famous as writers during their lifetime. They both wrote in their mother tongues, Elisabeth in German and Marie in English, and published many of their books, not only in Romania, but also abroad, thus reaching a widespread readership, worldwide publicity, and literary recognition. This affectionately collected, critically edited volume comprises the most precious tales and essays by the queen consorts, either translated into English (Carmen Sylva) or in the original English version (Marie of Romania).

More than a quarter of a century living away from the country she grew up in, the author finds she is constantly revisiting her native land, when often only inside her head. It is a journey which never seems to end. This collection of poems and short stories about visits, real or imaginary, to or within Northern Ireland spans an “ex-Paddy’s” lifetime from childhood, through troubled times and on into middle age.

Anthony Barron explores the relationship between the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the forms and themes of Beckett’s critical and creative writings. He shows that Beckett’s aesthetic preoccupations are consonant with some of Schopenhauer’s seminal arguments regarding the arational basis of artistic composition and appreciation and the impotence of reason in human affairs. While Beckett’s critical writings are, in places, formidably opaque, this work examines the ways in which such texts can be elucidated when their intertextual affinities with Schopenhauer’s arguments are revealed. Using Schopenhauer’s thought as a presiding interpretative framework, Barron demonstrates how the widespread presence of philosophical and theological ideas in Beckett’s creative texts signifies less about his personal convictions than it does about his authorial aims. He thereby highlights the ways in which discursive ideas were appropriated and manipulated by Beckett for purely literary ends. A central contention of this book is that to judge the place of ideas within Beckett’s art, we should ignore questions of their theoretical persuasiveness and consider their role as purely aesthetic devices, the value of which is revealed in terms of the existential impact they have upon his characters. In each of the chapters that deal with Beckett’s fiction, Barron underscores the artistically energizing tensions that exist between the concepts that Beckett’s characters invoke in their attempts to comprehend the import of their experiences and their conative and affective tribulations which invariably prove resistant to such analysis. Here the means by which such conceptual aporias engender semantic potentialities underpin an exploration of Beckett’s creative assimilation of rational discourse. While the focus of this publication is upon Beckett’s early and middle fiction, which was composed at a time when the relationship between the chaos of quotidian ordeals and the value of rational thought became most acutely relevant for him, numerous cross-references to his dramatic and poetical works are provided in order to highlight the overall significance of these issues within his oeuvre.

Gianluca Delfino’s study is based on the assumption that Wilson Harris’s works as a whole show a remarkable unity of thought rooted in their author’s complex imagination. As a valuable contribution to Caribbean Literature and Philosophy, Harris’s imaginative approach to reality is discussed in relation to the categories of history and time with reference to several novels, from Palace of The Peacock to The Mask of the Beggar, with a special focus on The Infinite Rehearsal, Jonestown and The Dark Jester, spanning more than forty years of his vast literary production, encompassing critical perspectives ranging from African philosophy to Jungian readings through historiography and anthropology. As a result, the cross-cultural quality of Harris’s thought emerges as a healing outcome of the traumatic colonial encounter, bringing together elements of Amerindian, African and European origin in an ongoing dialogue with time, nature, and the psyche. The outcome of an extensive research into Harris’s world, Delfino’s study comes as a contribution to late Hena Maes-Jelinek’s critical enterprise by expanding philosophical and psychological readings, with the addition of anthropological perspectives that appeal to those who were captured by Harris’s intricacy and rescued by Maes-Jelinek’s illuminating interpretations. The attempt at the reconstruction of a unifying frame around Harris’s body of work suggests a new way of looking at one of the Caribbean’s most controversial authors.