Having emigrated from France to Russia, Charlotte Lemonnier has
survived the cruelties of the Stalinist regime and the Second World War. Maintaining
great serenity of soul, she lives freely among the inhabitants of a small
village in Siberia, conveying to her grandson Alyosha a vivid image of the
freedom available in France as well as a feel for the French language. The adolescent
tries to reconcile Charlotte’s tales with the Russian mentality and the
hardships of life in Russia, but fails in his aspirations, particularly in the domain
of eroticism. He eventually emigrates to France, where he seeks to overcome
Anthroponymes et toponymes dans Le testament français d’Andreï Makine 125
his disappointment by writing novels in French. Through Charlotte’s posthumous
letter, Alyosha realizes that he was born in a gulag as the fruit of a
coercive sexual relationship imposed on an imprisoned female kulak.
The present study is based on the hypothesis that poetonyms contribute significantly
to the constitution of the meaning of literary texts. Despite the centrality
of literary names in Makine’s novel, however, its poetonyms have not yet
been studied in any detail. I will therefore analyse symbolic, etymological,
historic, geographic, anagrammatic aspects, etc. of the most important anthroponyms
and toponyms that occur in this novel (Alyosha, Charlotte, Pashka,
Félix Faure / Atlantide, Boyarsk, Saranza, Stalinka …). By combining the
different names and placing them in their French and Russian linguistic contexts,
I will show that there is a movement from one cultural background to the
other. Thus, through name configuration in particular, Dreams of My Russian
Summers portrays a multicultural migration between France and Russia – between
East and West. Dreams of my Russian Summers is a Bildungsroman
that encompasses several issues: identity formation (what shall I be: Russian,
French, cosmopolitan?); sentimental education (love, what is it?); disappointment;
and, finally, awareness of reality.]
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:80454 |
| Date | 17 August 2022 |
| Creators | Brütting, Richard |
| Publisher | Deutsche Gesellschaft für Namensforschung e.V., Universitätsverlag Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-803849, 4, qucosa:80384 |
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