Démolir Nisard
Démolir Nisard (Demolishing Nisard) is a 2006 novel by the French writer Eric Chevillard[1].
Plot summary
The book is about the struggle of the narrator (who seems very much like the author himself) to annihilate Désiré Nisard, a French author and critic (1806–1888)[2].
One of the characteristics of Nisard that so infuriates Chevillard's narrator is the fact that the critic so loathed the burgeoning modern French literature of his times[3]. As Nisard considered that only classicism had a value, Chevillard's book can also be considered a form of meta-criticism upon contemporary trends in Literary criticism.
Quotes
- "Rejoignez-moi. Mettons-nous à plusieurs ... contre tous les Nisard de la terre pour qui ...la littérature est un bien triste missel, une école de résignation. Le lecteur y vient tête basse entendre des sermons et des réprimandes ... La folie, la fantaisie, la satire, la hargne et le défi, la mélancolie et tous les autres soleils noirs de la poésie ont roulé dans le fossé." (Join me. Let's do it together... against all Nisard's of the Earth who consider literature as a sad missal, a school of resignation. The reader comes there, head ducked, to listen to sermons and scoldings... foolishness, fantasy, satire, spite and challenge, melancholy and all the other black suns of poetry roll into the gutter).
- ^ It will be appearing in an English translation by Jordan Stump, to be published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2011.
- ^ It must be noted that the narrator lives in the present day, so what is at stake is in fact an annihilation of the works and memory of Nisard, not the man himself . . . though the narrator seems unable to differentiate between these two objectives.
- ^ He railed against of the notion of decadence, attacking Victor Hugo and Romanticism in general.
See also
External links