Gustave Kahn: un écrivain engagé éd. par Françoise Lucbert, Richard Shryock (review)

Chamoiseau, Condé, and Gisèle Pineau, Loichot finds resonances with writers ranging from Lafcadio Hearn to Toni Morrison, to name a few, and with Haitian writers living in North America, Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière. In the afterword, Loichot calls upon her readers to engage in “a just reading practice” that she herself models here,one“that does not feast on Caribbean texts,but rather reaches out to them,hungers for them, as well as they hunger for one another in relational metabolism” (182). Wake Forest University (NC) Sarah Barbour Lucbert, Françoise, et Richard Shryock, éd. Gustave Kahn: un écrivain engagé. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2013. ISBN 978-2-7535-2171-1. Pp. 288. 17 a. Although specialists may know Kahn as an art critic or as the symbolist poet first credited with the systematic use of le vers libre and a theory of its evolution, the articles here offer a more comprehensive picture of this Jewish artist and intellectual of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The volume, which includes essays from a 2005 Sorbonne conference, opens with an overview of Kahn’s life and work.A number of contributions showcase his literary talents as poet, storyteller, chroniqueur, and préfacier, while others underscore his commitment to the role of art and artists in the political struggle for social reform. Richard Shryock, for example, demonstrates how Kahn’s efforts to create an “art pur” (53), detached from everyday life, complement rather than contradict his view of art as a means to improve society. Of particular interest are Thierry Paquot’s account of Kahn’s “ouvrage d’histoire” and “essai d’actualité” (137), L’esthétique de la rue, and Catherine Méneux’s treatment of Kahn’s art social in which aesthetic creation counts for less than “le lieu de sa destination” (168) in forming essential connections between art and the people. Kahn’s commitment to progressive causes often animates his pensée critique, which is evident in his work as founder and director of diverse literary and cultural publications, promoter of fellow artists, and advocate for the transformation of society through art. Among the most engaging studies in this collection are those focused on his participation in discussions concerning Jewish art and culture in French society around the turn of the century. Dominique Jarrassé investigates Kahn’s role as a critique d’art juif and helps to flesh out his notions of what constitutes Jewish art.With regard to the Dreyfus Affair, Philippe Oriol reveals that although Kahn never took an official position on the captain’s innocence or guilt, he supported Zola for stepping beyond his role as a novelist in order to defend the Jewish officer. For his part, Philippe Boukara depicts Kahn as nothing less than a “discret lieu de mémoire” for French Jews thanks to his efforts to document the rural traditions of his Alsace-Lorraine heritage as “porteuses de sens et de valeurs non périmées” (244). According to Catherine Fhima, moreover, at a time when assimilation was held to be the only path to French identity, Kahn was able to combine “judéité, francité et écriture” (245) in order to devise “un modèle 262 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 263 d’adaptabilité à la modernité française et juive” (261). In this way, Kahn contributed to the“fondation d’une nouvelle conception de l’identité juive”(261) by reformulating religious Judaism in terms of ethnicity and culture, and by repositioning the place of Jewish traditions within the French way of life and characterizing the two as inseparable.At a time when issues such as la laïcité, French identity, and the role of art in politics continue to find their way into public debates, this volume on the rich social, political, and aesthetic legacy of Gustave Kahn seems particularly pertinent. Brandeis University (MA) Hollie Markland Harder Mazauric, Catherine. Mobilités d’Afrique en Europe: récits et figures de l’aventure. Paris: Karthala, 2012. ISBN 978-2-8111-0656-0. Pp. 384. 29 a. This valuable book treats a body of travel and adventure literature that, it argues, has recently come into being with the creation of...