Oltreoceano - Rivista sulle migrazioni

Water Scenes in American Renaissance Literature: Poe’s Maelström and Thoreau’s Pond

2024-02-08T11:38:36+00:00

Water Scenes in American Renaissance Literature: Poe’s Maelström and Thoreau’s Pond From the seas and oceans in the short stories and novels by Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe through Henry David Thoreau’s description of the pond in Walden, to Mark Twain’s Mississippi, there is hardly any American “classic” in which water does not play an important function as both central symbol and key element of the narrative. This essay dives into this rich tradition by examining some compelling water scenes in Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelström” (1841) and Thoreau’s Walden (1854). More specifically, in the first part, I suggest that the whirlpools and vortexes in Poe’s sea stories allegorize the disorienting situation in which the modern subject finds itself. In order to capture this specific dimension of Poe’s writing, I invoke here Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of “liquid modernity”, though I put a slightly different spin on it. I also look at how such key twentieth-century thinkers as Gaston Bachelard, Theodor W. Adorno, and Marshall McLuhan responded to Poe’s use of water and vortical imagery. In the second part of the essay, I turn to Thoreau’s Walden, and I discuss how “semantic overturning” is one of the rhetorical strategies underlying the use of water symbolism in this foundational text of the American Renaissance.

North Atlantic: The Most Dangerous Water in the World

2024-02-09T11:14:46+00:00

During the twentieth century the North Atlantic became the most dangerous water on the planet. Hundreds of ships were sunk and thousands of men and women died in that cold grey water. We can begin with the Titanic disaster of 1912, The Empress of Ireland collision of 1914, the Lusitania torpedoed in 1915, and the Mont Blanc explosion of 1917. During World War II numerous ships and men were lost to the attacks of U-Boats. It is ironic then that this dangerous crossing is also the major route for the mass migration to North America and the search for a new life after World War II. One of these immigration ships, the Andrea Doria, collided with the MS Stockholm and sank in 1956. Long before the modern period of history, the North Atlantic brought disease and death to the Indigenous peoples of the New World. We will examine The Jesuit Relations as the record of all the interactions between the Indigenous peoples and the French colonists in the 1600s.The settlement of Quebec was founded in 1608 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain who crossed the Atlantic approximately twenty times between France and North America. In the years 1634-1640 a major epidemic of smallpox and influenza killed thousands of Indigenous Wyandot people in New France and in the new English colonies to the south. Champlain died of an apparent stroke in 1635, but he could also have been infected with one of these diseases. In volume 13 of the Relations for year 1637 Père le Mercier records more than 130 references to fever, sickness, contagion, disease, epidemic, plague, dead children and bleeding. For the native populations of North America, the Atlantic Ocean brought destruction to their civilization and changed their history. What do the eyewitness accounts of the Jesuit missionaries tell us about human behaviour in crises of disease and death and possibly the search for martyrdom?

“A royal holiday beyond the broad ocean”: Visual Humor and Parodic Reflections in Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad

2024-04-26T20:02:17+00:00

Halfway between fiction and travel writing, The Innocents Abroad (1869) chronicles Mark Twain’s own experience as a tourist through Europe. As previous scholarship has widely underlined, Twain’s persona of the naïve American traveler casts an ironic outlook on the traditional rhetoric characterizing nineteenth-century literary narratives and travelogues about the European Grand Tour. In this context, the manifold forms of water in The Innocents Abroad represent a key feature of Twain’s parodic reinvention of the cultural myth connected to the Old World. Although it may be perceived as a plain literary background, the function of water addresses central issues on the semantic and hermeneutic level alike. In Twain’s travelogue, in fact, waters (such as the Atlantic Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea, or even rivers and lakes) are far from being expressive of an archetypal and reassuring symbolic trail, which is headed toward the rediscovery of mutual transatlantic origins, along with their regenerative power. Contrariwise, waters reflect –both verbally and visually thanks to the illustrations included in the first American edition of The Innocents Abroad– the parodic image of an unintelligible world; countless inconveniences and misadventures hinder the American traveler’s mobility, ruining the successful outcome of this rite of passage. Therefore, by subverting the heuristic value traditionally assigned to water as a literary object, The Innocents Abroad does not merely typify a counternarrative to nineteenth-century travelogues; instead, Twain’s work may also stand as a leading precipitant of the most recent turns in twenty-first-century sea literature.

“Water is Life”: Indigenous Views on Water and Wom

2024-04-26T20:19:37+00:00

The current water crisis is disproportionately affecting many Indigenous communities across Canada, where the lack of access to water has life-threatening effects on Native health and, in particular, on Indigenous women and girls who are more vulnerable to waterborne infections and mental health problems resulting from water deprivation. Moreover, the inability to carry out their domestic tasks makes women more exposed to lateral violence within their households. To counter this violence against women and water, Indigenous women writers are drawing on their traditional knowledge to assert the sacredness of water and of women as water carriers and life-givers. As part of their broader decolonizing politics to oppose settler-colonialism and destructive views of the Earth as a commodity, they are reasserting their peoples’ traditional roles as water protectors and emphasizing the vital and transformative role of water as a source of life and renewal. This article analyses Katherena Vermette’s collection of poetry river woman and K Dawn Martin’s performative piece “Kahnekanoron – Water is Life” which offer a counter discourse to both the settler view of water as a source of profit and the migrant view of water as a passageway to an unknown Eden. The aim is to show how Indigenous views of water as a source of interconnection between humans, animals and nature offer an alternative to Western ideologies of exploitation of the Earth and to the colonial mindset that spurs unequal and violent relations among human beings. The woman-water connection elicited in these poems emphasizes the importance of both for our survival, but also sheds light on how both are intertwined as an effect of patriarchal violence. Ultimately, by celebrating water as a living being, these writers posit water as a site of resistance and healing from the wounds of colonization.

Reclaiming the Abyss, Reckoning with Time: Water in the Afrofuturist Imagination

2024-04-26T20:28:03+00:00

Water is a powerful image in black diasporic literature, and a particularly evocative one for Afrofuturism, as testified by various contemporary Afrofuturist artworks, ranging from music to visual arts and literature. My essay focuses on two North American black authors, Nalo Hopkinson and Rivers Solomon, so as to analyze how their writings employ water imagery— and, specifically, imagery related to the Atlantic Ocean—to reclaim a sense of temporality and history that can truly mirror black experience and go beyond oppression and marginalization, in accordance to what Michelle M. Wright has theorized in her work Physics of Blackness (2015) and to what several Afrofuturist scholars have pointed out in the past few decades (Dery 1993; Eshun 2003; Nelson 2001; Lavender 2019) regarding science-fiction’s subversive potential for black expression. This reframing and acknowledgement of non-conforming black experiences/subjectivities is made possible also by the two authors’ reinterpretation of African water mythologies and deities, merfolk/mermaids in particular. In the novels examined, these creatures become the embodiment of a hybrid identity in which the past, the present, and the future converge in a creative way, dismantling traditional depictions of alterity and processes of othering. I will further argue that in Hopkinson and Solomon’s writings, as a source of both life and death, the oceanic waters constitute an environment which allows us to envision the possibility for a different future than that imposed by canonical Western notions, as well as contributing to the characters’ identity-building path. By plunging into the physical and symbolic abyss of the Atlantic Ocean, these novels retrieve a painful yet transfigured past, looking at it not as an enemy, but as an instrument of awareness and activism.

In Conversation with Maylis De Kerangal: Exploring the Archipelago of Her

2024-04-26T21:04:05+00:00

The literary career of Maylis de Kerangal, which began in 2000 with Je marche sous un ciel de traîne, has continued with the publication of around fifteen works of fiction, the most famous being Corniche Kennedy (2008), Naissance d'un pont (2010), and Réparer les vivants (2014), which have received prestigious awards in France and abroad. The last two were adapted into films in 2016. These novels, along with Tangente vers l'est (2012), À ce stade de la nuit (2014), Un monde à portée de main (2018), and Canoës (2021), have been translated into Italian and published by Feltrinelli. The title of this conversation is inspired by the French author's latest collection, Archipel, released in 2022, which brings together twenty-two texts, including fiction, stories, and essays published between 2007 and 2022. The metaphor of the archipelago simultaneously refers to the different forms explored by de Kerangal, within which it is possible to discern a profound unity. Among the numerous themes present in the writer's incredibly rich and ongoing work, some central poetic questions in her texts are addressed: the concept of writing as translation, the role of voice both in theme and narration, and the author's relationship with her characters. Through detailed writing that employs specialized vocabulary, Maylis de Kerangal immerses her readers in evocative polyphonic narrative worlds, allowing them to delve into the souls of multiple characters, sharing their emotions and sensitivities. Maylis de Kerangal's powerful writing thus equips contemporary novels with the means to preserve their narrative strength and remain vibrant, even in a media-dominated world where by images prevail.This conversation took place at the University of Udine on March 21, 2023, as part of the 29th edition of the Dedica Festival in Pordenone dedicated to the French author.

Israel and French America. On two Tropisms of Réjean Ducharme's Novels

2024-04-26T21:15:04+00:00

Since his debut on the French-language literary scene at the age of twenty-five, Réjean Ducharme (1941-2017) has been recognized as one of the most influential writers and playwrights in Quebec literature. Despite the immediate success of his first novel, L’Avalée des avalés, published by Gallimard in 1966, in both France and Quebec, he spent his life in anonymity, refusing to appear in public. The complete edition of his nine novels, recently published in Gallimard’s “Quarto” collection (ed. Nardout-Lafarge, with the collaboration of Monique Bertrand and Monique Jean, 2022), has shed new light on the work of the author, who died on 21 August 2017.
This article focuses on the recurrent inscriptions of Israel and French America in several of his novels, L’avalée des avalés (1966), Le nez qui voque (1967), Dévadé (1990) and Va savoir (1994), which were published over a period of thirty years. They are referred to as “tropisms” to underline precisely the recurrence of these places which are not described but evoked, towards which, literally, the texts “turn” and which appear as privileged “orientations”, as well as fascinations, invested by fantasy and bookish memory. The aim is to bring the novel’s treatment of these two tropisms into dialogue with the discourses and representations of Israel and French America that circulate and evolve at the same time in Quebec society. In this way, a condemnation of the idea of country and homeland and, despite the irony of the texts, a kind of nostalgia appear.

Shipwrecks, storms and tears: the dysphoric vision of faith in Catherine de Saint-Augustin

2024-04-26T21:23:07+00:00

This article aims to investigate the use of the ‘aquatic metaphor’ within what is considered to be the first Vie written in New France. La Vie de la mère Catherine de Saint-Augustin was in fact published by Father Paul Ragueneau, the nun’s spiritual director, in 1671 following her death. Although it is an autobiographical writing at its infancy, the work undoubtedly presents some interesting features from a narrative and linguistic point of view. Through the study carried out by Gaston Bachelard in his essay L’eau et les rêves (1942), an attempt will be made to emphasise and give meaning to the woman’s all-round use of the water element. In particular, the latter is exploited by the nun to express her inner state. After her arrival on the new continent on 19 August 1648, the hospitalière’s writings are strongly influenced by the Atlantic crossing during which her existence seems to oscillate between life and death. In fact, the ship and the storm are at the centre of numerous metaphors used to describe difficult conditions or moments in which Catherine finds herself suspended between two contrasting situations. As a highly symbolic element in the Christian liturgy, holy water is also one of the symbols adopted by the nun as an instrument of purification from evil and on which she relies in times of need. Thus, it becomes the means by which God is able to protect the faithful from the demonic visions that torment her. We will then see how, even in Hell, water acquires a highly symbolic meaning as the perfect expression of the union of opposites. Finally, we will give space to tears and weeping. The latter is the main element through which the young woman expresses her sorrow, but, depending on the circumstances, it is also a medium to invoke divine intercession. Therefore, water becomes a powerful symbol that is linked to its surroundings, allowing those who use it to build their own image but also to come into closer contact with the spiritual entity.

• The ocean as a bridge and a barrier between Africa and Europe: Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique

2024-04-26T21:31:10+00:00

As foregrounded in the very title of Fatou Diome’s postcolonial autofiction, Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (2003), the Atlantic Ocean is an indispensable and persistent leitmotif that infiltrates both the words and the pages. The text tells the story of Salie, a young Senegalese woman based in Strasbourg, France, while Madické, her little half-brother, still lives in Senegal, on the small island of Niodor. Although she tries to discourage him, the boy would like to join his sister in Europe to pursue his dream of meeting his idol Paolo Maldini and becoming a professional football player. The telephone is their only means of contact in the immense, deep waters that separate them and, at the same time, unite their destinies. While the writer effectively deconstructs the contrast between the myth of a Europe-Eldorado and the dystopia of a poor and hopeless Africa, she also shows the reader how the ocean has many ambiguous and heterogeneous interpretations: on the one hand, the Atlantic can be a prodigious bridge, a liquid umbilical cord connecting the two continents, but, on the other, it is also a hostile and dangerous border, which becomes a tomb for some of the characters in the book. The aquatic presence accompanies the narration not only at the thematic level, but also through several aesthetic and rhetorical solutions, such as the use of metaphor, personification and zoomorphism, as well as of a fluid writing technique which mimics the wave movements of the sea. The article aims to study this stylistic and thematic polymorphism of the Atlantic in Diome’s novel, trying to show its importance for the construction of the author-narrator’s Afro-European identity.

The haunted waters of Congo in Alain Mabanckou’s Lumières de Pointe-Noire (2013) and Petit Piment (2015)

2024-04-26T21:38:15+00:00

Lumière de Pointe-Noire (2013), an autobiographical story, and the picaresque novel Petit Piment (2015), whose protagonist is an orphaned child who wanders the labyrinthine streets of Pointe-Noire. Both texts evoke the legend of Mami Watta, who is both a maternal and sensual mermaid, and a deadly spirit. This ancient mythical creature haunts the seas along with other magical spirits and is part of Congolese beliefs. In Lumière de Pointe-Noire, the aquatic space, evoked through Mabanckou’s memories, remains forbidden to children’s games because of its magic effect on men. The author plunges us into a sinister affair, in which the sea is the murderous protagonist, by using photographs, which enrich the reading, and cinematographic art, whose references are scattered throughout the story. The writer describes the prohibitions and the popular legends imposed on him as a child and the fear of the ocean, while taking a critical look at these popular legends as an adult. Similarly, the myth of the mermaid and the dangers of the sea are recounted in his picaresque novel, Petit Piment: here the creature is a murderous figure who captures the orphans and drags them into the abyss of the waters. The author uses fiction to ironically denounce the educational system and popular beliefs. In this way, Mabanckou elaborates on his childhood memories associated with the ocean and filters these beliefs through the naive eyes of the little orphan, which enables the superposition of the author-child with his protagonist. Finally, the character of Doukou Daka, Petit Piment’s teacher, emerges from the narrative as a positive figure, who embodies the voice of reason, comparable to the adult author of Lumière de Pointe-Noire.

Hermetic polysemy of water in the oneiro-iconopoems of the Surrealists Benoît and Bounoure

2024-04-26T21:44:06+00:00

This essay aims at highlighting the aquatic occurrences in some poems by the French Surrealist poet Vincent Bounoure, illustrated by the Quebecois artist Jean Benoît. Starting from a brief presentation of the latter, the article draws attention to the phenomenon of reverse emigration: rather than the well-known migration from Europe to North America, it focuses on Benoît’s choice to leave the conservative milieu of Quebec and move to Paris with his wife Mimi Parent in the late 1940s. This eastward emigration across the Atlantic was fruitful for the couple, who was welcomed into the Parisian group of the Surrealist movement, then still animated by its founder, André Breton; some years after his death, they also helped Vincent Bounoure continue the Surrealist activities, against Jean Schuster’s attempt to consider them finished in 1969. A year before Breton’s death, Benoît and Bounoure published a work entitled Envers l’ombre (1965), which consists of fourteen poems by Bounoure with some illustrations by Benoît. Our analysis will first offer some elements for an iconotextual philological reconstruction of how this work was produced, by also taking into account some unpublished documents from Bounoure’s archives. It will then offer an interpretation of those iconotexts which, either in Bounoure’s poems, in Benoît’s images or in both, evoke some references to water. Attention will be focused, in particular, on the hermetic interpretative clue indispensable for the polysemic understanding of these watery references in Bounoure’s poems and their analogical transfiguration in Benoît’s illustrations; finally, we propose to call these texts “oneiric iconopoems”.

Water as Vital Tears in Migrant Texts Overseas

2024-02-07T14:12:44+00:00

This article examines the multiple meanings of water and its importance in literary texts. As a symbol of totality, where everything is possible, the ocean, in particular, links numerous aquatic mythologies which resort to mysterious dark seas and primordial waters as the world’s site of origin from the abyss of the night. Much travel literature is, indeed, inspired by the motifs of life, death and resurrection, by uncertainty, and by frightening monsters, ghost ships, mysterious marine beings both male and female, imaginary places both blissful and hellish, and treasure islands both lost and found. All these elements stimulate the individual to face the unknown and to abandon the inner abyss and the instability of solitude and misery so as to discover new realities and opportunities. The ocean thus has the ambivalent function to both separate and reunite, thanks to well-established routes that over time have intensified trade relations, territorial ambitions, scientific and technological discoveries, and general theories like Darwin’s. Even the Atlantic Ocean has been traversed by numerous voyages, despite having long been considered as the terror of sailors, the External Sea, the Sea of Darkness, and the impassible Surrounding Ocean before the revolutionary voyage of the three caravels in 1492. These voyages include those embarked on by many Italians who from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards set out in search of a new homeland filled with promises but also with obstacles to overcome before reaching the longed-for destination and being overcome by the anxieties of life. The Americas are thus a landing place replete with the hope for a better future and are distinguished by other waterways which irrigate their soil with more or less majestic waterfalls, big and small streams, and rivers that are either as big and tumultuous as oceans, or a peaceful and reassuring source of life for both the Indigenous peoples and the newcomers. This issue of Oltreoceano tackles all these aspects as it investigates different man- / woman-water approaches and explores what Neruda identifies as the potential polysemantic value of water as tears and as life.