Polish Images in Alain van Crugten’s Novel La dictature des ignares (The Dictatorship of the Ignorants)

Abstract

Alain van Crugten, born in 1936 in Brussles, professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and translator of masterpieces from the canon of European literature, expert in prose and drama, gives a special place to Polish history, literature and culture. Among others, Van Crugten has translated from Polish into French: all dramas by Witkacy and his two novels, the theatrical works of Marian Pankowski, the literary work of Bruno Schulz. As a researcher in Polish literature, he includes in his own rich literary, theatrical and prose work numerous references and contexts, allusions and quotations to Polish culture in its broadest sense. A fuller picture of Poland and Poles, however, is present in Alain van Crugten's novel La dictature des ignares, published in 2023. The article shows, referring to the methodology of literary geography, the wanderings of the main character, along the trails of tourism and the trails of literary studies and history; it examines the importance of the image of Poland and Poles, from the perspective of the world-theatre:“Theatre Square” in Warsaw and also – Adam Mickiewicz's and Kazimierz Dejmek's Dziady, with many other linguistic, literary, genre and historical (especially to 1968 in Poland) references to Polonica.