L’inquiétante sincérité : Baudelaire et Chopin lus par André Gide

Why does André Gide so often compare Chopin to Baudelaire? For several reasons: because for him, the two artists are unique, irreplaceable, incomparable; because both were initially misunderstood; and because they are both classics of the nineteenth century. In other words, what distinguishes them, according to Gide, is their aesthetics of discretion, which is verysimilar to the one he develops in his own works – particularly those in which he defends the homosexual cause.

Fryderyk Chopin w literaturze francuskiej: od figury romantycznej do ikony popkultury

The reception of Chopin and his music in French literature follows the rhythm of the changes in the European intellectual and aesthetic climates. George Sand recorded in her memoirs the image of a romantic genius par excellence, a dark, torn and complicated soul. The decadent and symbolist poetry, best exemplified by Maurice Rollinat, presents a portrait ofa blood-spitting neurasthenic, a soulmate of the poet. Marcel Proust paints the image of an elegant dandy and exquisite artist, while the first part of the twentieth century is dominated by the neoromantic vision of Chopin as a great Polish patriot; this theme is perfectly illustrated by the poems of Anna de Noailles and Edmond Rostand. André Gide presents a radicallynew view of Chopin’s music, seeing the Polish composer as a neoclassicist pianist. Contemporary literature and art go on to dress Chopin in jeans, eagerly turning him into a mass culture hero.

READING ON NAUSEA AND THE IMMORALIST THROUGH EXISTENTIALISM

The concept of existentialism is that the existence of a person is prior to their essence. The term "existence precedes essence" subsequently became a maxim of the existentialist movement. Put simply, this means that there is nothing to dictate that person's character, goals in life, and so on; that only the individual can define their essence. This study discussed existentialism in Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre and The Immoralist by Andre Gide, through Roquentin and Michel as the Characters. Roquentin and Michels, they tend to have an absolute freedom, means there is no influence from outside. What they actually want sometimes lies no motives why they are doing that thing.

Relația text-imagine în cazul ilustrației de carte la sfârșitul secolului al XIX-lea. Două studii de caz: Le voyage d’Urien și Les Vierges

The 19th century witnessed an important shift in the relationship between book illustrations and literature: the literal approach of Romantics, which subordinated images to the literary text was replaced by the interpretative and metaphorical paradigm of the Symbolists. By the end of the century, painters refused the traditional servile attitude towards text, demanding a real autonomy of their creations. Instead of “illustration”, artists such as Odilon Redon preferred words like “transmission” and “interpretation”, whilst art critic André Mellerio coined the terms “concordance” and “correlative parallelism” to describe the relationship between the two arts. This paper aims to identify the traces of this debate in two rather different projects: Urien’s Voyage, by André Gide, decorated by Maurice Denis, and The Virgins, a text written by Georges Rodenbach and meant to accompany 4 lithographs created by József Rippl-Rónai.