Bookshelf

Miloš Tsernianski : Le Roman de Londres

Traduit du serbe par Velimir Popović. Postface de Vladimir Dimitrijević. Première édition : 1992. Traduction revue et corrigée. Collection La bibliothèque de Dimitri

« J’ai écrit ce roman à Finchley, dans la banlieue de Londres, en 1946-1947. À une époque où ma femme et moi étions très proches du suicide. »

Texte d’une modernité étourdissante et au lyrisme enivrant inspiré par l’expérience de son auteur, Le Roman de Londres suit le destin d’un couple russe exilé à Londres après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Errant dans une ville qui les ignore, le prince Repnine et son épouse Nadia s’efforcent d’exister dans le désespoir de l’inappartenance. Dès le début se dessine la terrible voie que le prince compte emprunter pour échapper au désespoir. Cette fatalité détermine le cours de ce roman épique, rappelant la difficulté de l’homme à vivre dans la confusion de l’époque contemporaine. Livre de toutes les personnes déplacées et portrait d’une ville tentaculaire, Le Roman de Londres est aussi un roman d’amour poignant et une réflexion profonde sur le libéralisme effréné.

Miloš Tsernianski (1883-1977) fut l’un des plus importants poètes et romanciers serbes ainsi que le chef de file de l’avant-garde yougoslave. Diplomate à Berlin et à Rome au début de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, il s’exile à Londres où il réside pendant plus de deux décennies. Il y écrit ses œuvres les plus marquantes (Migrations, Lamento pour Belgrade, Le Roman de Londres). Toute son œuvre est marquée par une vision métaphysique de l’homme et de l’humanité.

About the author

Nadia Sikorsky

Nadia Sikorsky was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and went on to complete her postgraduate studies there, earning a PhD in History. She spent 13 years at UNESCO, first in Paris and then in Geneva. After serving as Director of Communications at Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, she launched NashaGazeta.ch in 2007, Switzerland’s first Russian-language online daily newspaper.

In 2022, Nadia Sikorsky was named to Le Temps’ Forum des 100, which brings together individuals who, in the newspaper’s view, have “significantly contributed to the success of French-speaking Switzerland”, from across public life, business, politics, science and culture.

After 18 years at the helm of NashaGazeta.ch, Nadia Sikorsky decided to devote herself to what had always held a special place in her work as a journalist: culture in all its diversity. This led to the creation of Russian Accent, a trilingual cultural blog in Russian, French and English, born in the heart of Europe, in Switzerland, which has become her second home and whose multiculturalism and multilingualism have helped shape the character of this new project.

At the heart of the project is the perspective of a European of Russian origin, drawing on more than 35 years of professional experience and a deep knowledge of both cultural traditions. Nadia Sikorsky sees her role as that of a cultural mediator between the two. The title of the blog, Russian Accent, reflects this idea: the accent is neither a linguistic barrier nor a political position, but a distinctive cultural imprint within a European context.

Events
Ella Maillart
Brauner
saint laurent
Most read
Daniil Harms: Between Reason and Zaum

A new book by the Geneva-based Slavist Jean-Philippe Jaccard and his Russian colleague Andrei Ustinov, now living in San Francisco, has been published by the European University at St Petersburg: Vzir Zaumi. Daniil Harms and the Literary Avant-Garde of the 1920s. In the authors' own words, the volume offers a kind of X-ray of Leningrad's "left-wing " circles and their evolution during the period between Harms's poetic debut and the creation of OBERIU, as well as the dynamics that shaped those circles.

The Frail Iron Genius

A few days ago, the Lausanne-based publisher Éditions Noir sur Blanc brought out Guzel Yakhina’s novel about the celebrated Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. French readers will be able to read it in Maud Mabillard’s translation and, importantly, in full, including the ninth chapter omitted from the Russian edition.