Published: 2023-10-25

Régine Robin, medley with Bob Dylan and a “pas-de-deux” with Georges Perec

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Abstract

In all her writings, Régine Robin regularly pays tribute to her favorite companions: among them, there is a particular emphasis on Jewish writers or authors who vaguely claim Jewish origins. First of all there is Kafka, whose book is on the table of a black and white picture of Régine, Paul Celan, the two Roth (Jozef and Philip), Romain Gary, philosophers Steiner, Derrida, Arendt, and Nobel laureates such as Patrick Modiano and Emile Ajar (Romain Gary). The last one preoccupied her in the last book she published: Ces lampes qu’on a oublié d’éteindre, but nobody seems more prominent in her formation and vision on literature than Georges Perec. Indeed, the famous member of OuLiPo (founded in 1960) is sharing multiple things with Robin: first of all, both are hidden children (she is three years older than Perec), second, they grew up in the same “arrondissement,” and thirdly, both practice literature as a way to keep both the memory of the past alive and to transcend its traumatic nature. Literature is never “Spielerei” but must be innovative and it is this last domain that I illustrate as brilliantly “conversive.” Both intersperse the places of everyday life with their own “memories” and take solace in music and movies when writing is too much a burden. Both think about the future of the arts, on the impact of modern life and the invention of the personal computer. The relationship between jazz and its mirroring effect in the narrative (the sudden breaks, the repetition and improvisation) are corresponding tools that alleviate the pain and kill the void of everyday life. In that respect, Dylan (in Cybermigrances) and the list of famous jazz-[wo]men in Je me souviens (Perec) are worth “pereckoning”… between the principle of free jazz (creation) and “contrainte” (foundation of OuLiPo) both authors navigate brilliantly.

Citation rules

Gyssels, K. (2023). Régine Robin, medley with Bob Dylan and a “pas-de-deux” with Georges Perec. Romanica Silesiana, 24(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.31261/RS.2023.24.03

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Vol. 24 No. 2 (2023)
Published: 2024-06-17


ISSN: 1898-2433
eISSN: 2353-9887

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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