Circle-Stories or Upon the Narrative Circles of Life and Death in 'The Book of Whispers' by Varujan Vosganian
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Keywords

hermeneutics
double spiral
circle
memory
sepulchre
text The Book of Whispers

How to Cite

Ivancu, E. (2014). Circle-Stories or Upon the Narrative Circles of Life and Death in ’The Book of Whispers’ by Varujan Vosganian. Studia Romanica Posnaniensia, 41(2), 83–96. https://doi.org/10.14746/strop.2014.412.007

Abstract

The present article considers the symbolical values of the circle in the novel Cartea șoaptelor (The Book of Whispers) by Varujan Vosganian from a hermeneutical point of view (Gilbert Durand, Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant). Moreover, from a spatial perspective, the circles of death are regarded as a double spiral, negative and positive, and the passage of characters such as Yusuf through this double spiral is the equivalent of a symbolical death and a resurrection in a new form. Moreover, taking over Paul Ricoeur’s idea (Memory, History, Forgetting) of a text being considered a sepulchre for the absents of history (Michel de Certeau), the text of The Book of Whispers is regarded and analysed as a text of the voice of those who have disappeared and died without their story being known. The roundness of character and ultimately that of transcending sufferance that the novel incorporates is rendered exactly by these circle-stories and by their polyphony.
https://doi.org/10.14746/strop.2014.412.007
PDF (Limba Română)

References

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