Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T10:23:27.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urbanity and Literature – Cities as Transareal Spaces of Movement in Assia Djebar, Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Cécile Wajsbrot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2011

Ottmar Ette (translated by MARK MINNES)
Ottmar Ette (translated by MARK MINNES)*
Affiliation:
Am Neuen Palais 10, D-14469 Potsdam, Germany. E-mail: ette@uni-potsdam.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Transarea studies focus upon spaces as created by the movements that criss-cross them. From this point of view, from its very beginnings, literature is closely interrelated with a vectorial (and much less with a purely spatial) conception of history – and with urbanity, which plays a decisive role in Gilgamesh's travels through a (narrative) cosmos centered upon the city of Uruk. This article explores the city as a transareal space of movement in three examples of literature, with no fixed abode, around the turn of the millennium, i.e. Assia Djebar's Les Nuits de Strasbourg, Emine Sevgi Oezdamar's Istanbul-Berlin Trilogy, and Cécile Wajsbrot's L’île aux musées. These three writers project, in a very specific way, cities in motion as anagrammatic and fractal structures.

Type
Risks, Environment and Sustainable Development – Papers from the 2009 Academia Europaea Meeting in Naples
Information
European Review , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 31 May 2011 , pp. 367 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes and References

1.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud). See my extensive analysis in, O. Ette (forthcoming) ‘Experimente des ZusammenLebensWissens in den Literaturen ohne festen Wohnsitz: Assia Djebar und die Straßburger Nächte’.Google Scholar
2. See in this context the very interesting essay by Asholt, W. (2005) Les villes transfrontalières d'Assia Djebar. In: M. Calle-Gruber (ed.) Assia Djebar, Nomade entre les murs… Pour une poétique transfrontalière (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose), pp. 147–160.Google Scholar
3. See in this context Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 399sq.Google Scholar
4.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 11.Google Scholar
5.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 14.Google Scholar
6.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 17.Google Scholar
7.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud).Google Scholar
8.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 18.Google Scholar
9.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 35.Google Scholar
10.Maalouf, A. (2009) Le dérèglement du monde. Quand nos civilisations s’épuisent (Paris: Bernard Grasset), p. 293.Google Scholar
11.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 41.Google Scholar
12.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 50.Google Scholar
13. See Barthes, Roland: Comment vivre ensemble, op. cit., p. 155.Google Scholar
14.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 350.Google Scholar
15. See Maalouf, A. (1998) Les Identités meurtrières (Paris: Bernard Grasset).Google Scholar
16. For more information on the concept of the nomadic in the work of Assia Djebar, see Calle-Gruber, M. (2005) Assia Djebar, Nomade entre les murs… Pour une poétique transfrontalière (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose).Google Scholar
17.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 108sq.Google Scholar
18. See also Ruhe, E. (2005) ‘Un cri dans le bleu immergé’. binswanger, Foucault et l'imagination de la chute dans ‘Les nuits de Strasbourg’. In: M. Calle-Gruber (ed.) Assia Djebar, Nomade entre les murs… Pour une poétique transfrontalière (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose).Google Scholar
19. See in this context Bade, K. (2000) Europa in Bewegung. Migration vom späten 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (München: Verlag C.H. Beck).Google Scholar
20. See in this context Ette, O. (2001) Europa als Bewegung. Zur literarischen Konstruktion eines Faszinosum. In: D. Holtmann and P. Riemer (ed.) Europa: Einheit und Vielfalt. Eine interdisziplinäre Betrachtung (Münster, Hamburg, Berlin, London: LIT Verlag), pp. 15–44.Google Scholar
21.Djebar, A. (2002) La mémoire des femmes. Propos recueillis par Aliette Armel, Magazine Littéraire (Paris), 410, p. 100.Google Scholar
22.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 353; Concerning the border-crossing and transnational perspective, see W. Asholt (2005) Les villes transfrontalières d'Assia Djebar. In: M. Calle-Gruber (ed.) Assia Djebar, Nomade entre les murs… Pour une poétique transfrontalière (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose); P. Barbé (2001) Transnational and translinguistic relocation of the subject in ‘Les Nuits de Strasbourg’ by Assia Djebar. In: Esprit Créateur (Baltimore) XLI, 4, pp. 125–135; M. E. Vialet (2002) Between sound and fury: Assia Djebar's poetics of ‘l'entre-deux-langues’. In: Symposium (Syracuse) LVI, 3, pp. 149–162.Google Scholar
23.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 373.Google Scholar
24. ‘Yes. One always hears that people lose their mother tongue when they are forced to live in a foreign country. But I believe that people sometimes lose their language in their homeland. When times are bad, language lives through a bad experience. I felt as if Turkish words had fallen ill during the military dictatorship. I had the feeling that I had gotten tired, very tired in my own language.’ Özdamar, E. S. (2004) Wir wohnen in einer weiten Hölle. (Interview mit Nils Minkmar). In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (Frankfurt am Main) 47 (21 November), p. 23.Google Scholar
25. The first-person narrator from Emine Sevgi Özdamar's novel Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde uses almost the exact same words to reflect upon language. See Özdamar, E. S. (2003) Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde. Wedding – Pankow 1976/77 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch), p. 23.Google Scholar
26.Özdamar, E. S. (1999) Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei hat zwei Türen aus einer kam ich rein aus der anderen ging ich raus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch); for more information on the following remarks see also my essay, O. Ette (2007) Über die Brücke Unter den Linden. Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Yoko Tawada und die translinguale Fortschreibung deutschsprachiger Literatur. In: S. Arndt, D. Naguschewski and R. Stockhammer (eds) Exophonie. Anders-Sprachigkeit (in) der Literatur (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos), pp. 165–194.Google Scholar
27. ‘In 1967, there still was no bridge between Asia and Europe. The ocean kept the two shores apart, and whenever the water was between me and my parents, I felt free. […] The Asian and the European parts of Istanbul belonged to two different countries.’Özdamar, E. S. (1998) Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch), p. 222.Google Scholar
28. Irmgard Ackermann considers Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn a ‘novel of personal development’ (‘Entwicklungsroman’). See Ackermann, I. (1999) Emine Sevgi Özdamar. In: Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur. 62 (Munich: Edition text+kritik), p. 5.Google Scholar
29. We find this spelling in the title of the first chapter of the first section of Özdamar, E. S. (1998) Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch), p. 11.Google Scholar
30.Özdamar, E. S. (1998) Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch), p. 63.Google Scholar
31.Özdamar, E. S. (1998) Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch).Google Scholar
32. See in this context Ette, O. (2005) Von Inseln, Grenzen und Vektoren. In: M. Braig, O. Ette, D. Ingenschay and G. Maihold (eds) Grenzen der Macht, Macht der Grenzen (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert), pp. 135–180.Google Scholar
33.Djebar, A. (1997) Les Nuits de Strasbourg. Roman (Arles: Actes Sud), p. 16.Google Scholar
34.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Editions Denoël), p. 10; For an in-depth analysis of the novel, see my article, O. Ette (forthcoming) Cécile Wajsbrot, ‘L'Ile aux musées’ oder die verborgenen Choreographien der Anwesenheit.Google Scholar
35.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Editions Denoël), p. 11.Google Scholar
36. See Wajsbrot, C. (2005) Mémorial (Paris: Zulma).Google Scholar
37. See Wajsbrot, C. (2002) Caspar-Friedrich-Strasse (Paris: Zulma).Google Scholar
38.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Aditions Denoël), p. 12.Google Scholar
39.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Editions Denoël), p. 38.Google Scholar
40. See in this context Schade, G. (1987) Die historische Entwicklung der Berliner Museumsinsel. In: Die Museumsinsel zu Berlin (Berlin: Henschel), pp. 22 and 33.Google Scholar
41.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Editions Denoël), p. 83.Google Scholar
42.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Editions Denoël), p. 106.Google Scholar
43. See Mandelbrot, B. B. (1991) Die fraktale Geometrie der Natur. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Dr. Reinhilt Zähle und Dr. Ulrich Zähle (Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag).Google Scholar
44. See in this context Ette, O. (forthcoming) ‘Caspar-David-Friedrich-Straße’: Cécile Wajsbrot oder die Ästhetik der Abwesenheit; see also the eighth chapter of O. Ette (2005) ZwischenWeltenSchreiben. Literaturen ohne festen Wohnsitz (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos), pp. 239–263 and pp. 54–59.Google Scholar
45.Wajsbrot, C. (2008) L'Ile aux musées. Roman (Paris: Aditions Denoël), p. 85.Google Scholar