THE FAR EAST – THE MIDDLE EAST. ISRAEL'S PRESENCE IN FRANCOPHONE LITERATURE (Till R. Kuhnle, Carmen Oszi, Saskia S. Wiedner (eds.), Orient lointain – proche Orient, La présence d'Israël dans la littérature francophone (Tübingen: Editions Narr Verlag, 2011), ISBN 978-3-8233- 65167-7, pp. 160

Speranta Sofia MILANCOVICI
2012 Societate şi Politică  
late 2008, the sixth edition of the Francophone and Roman Studies Researchers' Congress (Frankoromanistentag). Following the workshop conducted on this occasion and dedicated to the relations between France, the francophone space and Israel, from the perspective of literature, philosophy and history of ideas, appeared three years later the volume entitled The Far East -The Middle East, Israel's Presence in Francophone Literature, bringing together studies signed by researchers from Germany,
more » ... el, France, Austria, Portugal, Brazil and the United States. The heterogeneity of the authors' thinking, coming from different geographical areas, but also with different mentalities and different cultural mindsets, leads, naturally, to different approaches of the proposed issue. However, all the studies converge towards the idea of the Jewish particular collective identity, an inconsistent people whose contribution to the francophone culture, and also to the global one, cannot be denied, but which, however, is always compelled to review its place and condition in the world. In this respect, the editors quote a Jewish writer, philosopher and filmmaker, Romanianborn and later of French expression, Benjamin Fundoianu / Benjamin Fondane, who signed, during the preamble of the Second World War, an essay entitled Utopia and Territory, which stands out through its capacity to capture the antinomy from the essence of Judaism: "An inconsistent nation. We are attributed the lowest materialism and Judaism is the moral's history, the idealism's history. A contradiction that may very well be the foundation of our existence. It is our very existence. On one hand, leaning towards the laws and the abstract ideas; on the other hand, the strong and mature instinct. On one hand, the moral elevation, the beautiful spirit; on the other hand, the desire to live firmly. On one hand, light; on the other hand, dust. What a beautiful lifecreating contradiction!" 1 The central idea of the essay makes a synthesis between pragmatism and idealism, "to overcome the antagonisms attributed to the Jewish nature". 2 Moreover, the editors have chosen to fully replicate, in the preamble of the studies selected in the volume, the text The Seen Palestine, signed by Benjamin Fundoianu, in the Romanian stage of his creation, and published in the Zionist paper, Mântuirea, from the 26 th of March, 1919, in Bucharest. Several studies focus the activity and cultural positioning of the Jewish scholars in different Francophone countries. Carmen Oszi, a Romanian -born Israeli researcher, offers an approach to the issue of Zionistic debates in the Jewish press in Romania, with a case study on the relation to Benjamin Fondane to this subject. Dominique Guedj devotes her study to analyzing the way in which the vision of Judaism appears in Benjamin Fondane's texts from his youth.
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