...Ann Banfield Copyright © 2009 The Trustees of Columbia University 2009 Ann Banfield "PROUST'S PESSIMISM" AS BECKETT'S COUNTER-POISON An obsession with generation traverses Samuel Beckett's work. It is, to borrow Beckett's phrase from Proust (111.260), "a neuralgia rather than a theme" (Proust...

... nonpurposiveness, where stark pessimism about the ecological impacts of human life allows for the cultivation of hospitable ideas of a posthuman future. This negativity, which is often labeled nihilism, is difficult to sustain and often appears as something like a dialectical negation rather than as the end...

..., defends James’s rejection of pessimism because “it left human beings unable to feel or to act” (135). Yes, oppression and lack of freedom do exist, the remedy being the choice of a “what if,” that is, the willingness to imagine and follow a positive solution. Recognizing that there is “very little...

...), 401 Banfield, Ann, " 'Proust's Pessimism' as Beckett's Counter-Poison," 187 Bateman, Chimene, "The Lyonnaise Medusa: Louise Labe in the Poetry of Olivier de Magny," 451 Bernard, Claudie, Le Romantisme. Du Bouleversement des lettres dans la France post-revolutionnaire (Claude Millet), 395 Billing...

... of producers and other interested parties, the film was never made. Bonhomme delves into a previously unexamined archive of materials that allow her to reconstruct the history of this failure and explain Simon's pessimism about the future of the film industry. Readers will learn much from Bonhomme's discussion...

... to balance out Cioran’s omnipresent voice of doom. The extent of Cioran’s pessimism separates him even from the existentialists of his time. Whether existence is absurd or not, according to him, misses the point entirely. Existence is incomprehensible—not absurd—and Western philosophy is incapable...

... imaginant Pasolini en Cassandre heureuse. Ce qui revient à le réhabiliter dans le champ benjaminien de la tradition de l’organisation du pessimisme. 76. Pier Paolo Pasolini, « Génocide », op. cit., p. 266. Mes italiques. On sait que Pasolini est un grand admirateur de la pensée de Gramsci; faut-il...

... that Boccaccio did intend to subvert meaning in Dante’s text. He would have had good ideological reason for doing so. As a poet and writer, Boccaccio was not an adherent to Stilnovist ideals about love and poetry. If anything, he might have been attracted to Cavalcanti’s pessimism. Blame it on the cultural...

... provided the adversaries of Symbolism with a powerful weapon against what they considered to be the movement's "northern" aesthetic of sickness, pessimism and death. According to Genevieve Bianqui, the first disciples of Nietzsche in France were patriotic and interpreted his voice as "un rappel vers les...

... in Pessimism in Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays. Trans. Eric F. J. Payne. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. Print. - - - . The World as Will and Representation. Trans. Eric F. J. Payne. Vol. 1. New York: Dover, 1969. Print. Sheringham, Michael. Molloy. London: Grant and Cutler, 1985. Print. ...

... the pain caused by the prospect of becoming healthy, des Esseintes administers the medicine of Pascal's pessimism, he finds that the words have lost their analgesic power: "les mots resonnaient, dans son esprit, comme des sons prives de sens; son ennui les desagregeait, leur otait toute signification...

... unexpected is the implicit assertion that amour-propre can be overcome—and that dialogue is indeed possible. Distancing herself from the profound pessimism of La Rochefoucauld, for whom amour-propre defines the human condition, Sablé suggests that the solution to conflict is within reach. Throughout...

... evidence of pessimism among the Hellenes in Schopenhauer's sense that it has to be considered the decisive repudiation of that idea and the counter verdict to it. Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice...

... of pessimism and solipsism, Mounier adopted a radically religious view of life and culture. Bazin's work for Esprit, a liberal Catholic review that was started under Mounier's leadership in 1932, provided a framework for the experimental amalgamation of theological, ethical, and cultural concerns and the early...

...." As Gobbers notes, "the spiritual climate surrounding the modernist artist is ambivalent," leading to a dualistic view of the world [that] continually alternates optimism and pessimism, reckless confidence and gloomy feelings of doom, and these moods may even manifest themselves simultaneously. In fact...

... the context of Les Aventures de monsieur Robert Chevalier, however, such policies prove unproductive, at least in terms of the lives of the main protagonists, suggesting that Lesage viewed the future of New France with considerable pessimism. Monneville escapes Dame Bourdon's matchmaking by pretending...

... novel would have to redeem the pessimism and often alleged immorality of Balzac s work to date as the preface to the first edition of Splendeurs (1845) made explicit, as Guichardet notes, when Balzac claimed ­there that l auteur prépare comme contrepoids et comme opposition un ouvrage où se verra l...

... )14 and contingent pessimism ( Notons qu il y a danger, et danger sérieux à notre époque de trop se familiariser. [. . . ] Votre ami du jour peut être reconnu le lendemain, pour un homme tout à fait indigne d estime [Rostaing 22 I have argued elsewhere that the suspicion surrounding friendship can...

... the power to change the course of events, which is perceived as ultimately random and beyond the understanding of the writer, it is more concerned with its own internal strategies and with containing in words the pessimism inherent in the awareness of its own limitations. (87) In this sense, Maupassant's...

... excruciating, and real, for her reader who witnesses her pain. The fatalistic pessimism in the last two lines here negates any glimmer of hope that the previous lines may have contained. It affirms that death is, ultimately, the one means for the woman to communicate her story to her lover. This woman, like...