Is Writing in “Le Lambeau” by Philippe Lançon a Testimony, a “Pharmakon”, or a Path to Existential Salvation?

On January 7th 2015, Philippe Lançon, a journalist at “Libération” and at “Charlie Hebdo” attends the newspaper’s premises, when the islamist terrorists attack. The killers’bullets tear his jaws off, severely injure his arms, make his existence capsize, but he survives. In his novel “Le Lambeau”, he tells the story of a mental as well as physical reconstruction, sketching the chronology of his days in various hospitals, depicting the visitors who make his days brighter and the varied shades of his consciousness. Is his writing, a mere testimony of a tragical experiment, the chronicles of a journalist who witnesses how one comes back to life? Or is it a “pharmakon”, a poison within a remedy, which puts back to life things past and gone, as a way of healing? Or shall we give a spiritual significance to this writing, so haunted by Proust that it parodies his style and shows literature as a means of salvation

Le vin des pauvres chez les frères Goncourt et Zola

Dans Germinie Lacerteux dont la Préface est le point de départ du naturalisme en 1864, Jules et Edmont de Goncourt évoquent la déchéance et la double vie d’une servante, qui après s’être abîmée en dévotions mystiques, suit, par amour, le chemin de l’alcoolisme et de la débauche hystérique. Zola dans Mes Haines exalte cette apparition du peuple dans le roman dont la physiologie est décrite avec une précision clinique. En 1876, il fait de l’Assommoir, un grand roman social de la misère ouvrière. Faut-il voir dans ces tableaux cyniques du désespoir alcoolique dû à l’amour une stricte vision naturaliste, voire une « bas-fond manie » qui a fait scandale, en ce qu’elle exposait trop crûment les misères et les immoralités du peuple ? Conjuguée au féminin, l’hystérie d’un Eros énergumène et furieux était-elle construite comme description réaliste d’une pathologie, aux antipodes de l’idéalisation romantique de la femme ? Ou bien, faut-il y percevoir une poésie noire, une esthétisation métaphorique de ces fureurs féminines en quête d’absolu aux accents baudelairiens ?In Germinie Lacerteux, which Preface is the starting point of naturalism in 1864, Jules and Edmond de Goncourt deal with the fall and the double life of a servant, who first follows the paths of mystical devotions, and then, for the sake of love, falls into alcoholism and hysterical debauchery. In Mes Haines, Zola enhances the emergence of the people in the novel, whose physiology is described in a clinical and precise manner. In 1876, he writes L’Assommoir, a great novel of social misery. Should we see, in those pictures of alcoholic despair due to love, a mere naturalistic vision, an outraging « bas-fond manie », as it enhances too vividly the miseries and immoralities of the people? Concerning a hysterical madly erotic woman, was this fiction built as the realistic description of a pathology, in discrepancy with the romantic idealisation of women? Or should we read it as noire poetry, which transformed this feminine fury in search of the absolute in an esthetical metaphor, just as Baudelaire did

Éros et Cosmos chez Flaubert et D. H. Lawrence

Introduction Deux années sulfureuses marquent respectivement les mondes littéraires français et anglo-saxon : 1857 et 1928. 1857 se signale en effet par un double procès pour atteinte aux bonnes mœurs en ces premières années de censure morale, politique et intellectuelle du second empire. D’un côté celui des Fleurs du Mal, de l’autre celui de Madame Bovary ont érigé en scandale la licence de deux écrivains particulièrement incompris qui ont, selon les censeurs, porté atteinte à l’institution ..

Les voix du conteur entre poéticité et ironie dans Le Coq de bruyère, Le Médianoche amoureux et d’autres récits de Michel Tournier

Spontaneously eager to imitate the charming voices of childhood, the writer most preferably choses the literary pattern of tales, which he considers both soothing and poetical and whose rhythms are bewitching. Nevertheless, he twists in his own way every narrative usual pattern, for instance in Sept Contes (Seven Tales): Santa Claus transforms into a woman of nowadays, and embodies the quarrels of Christians against the supporters of laicity. Little thumb is exiled in town where he yearns for his former country side life style. Does irony, which adds to the text an extra voice, aim at putting the charm of carmen away, or does it create a common understanding, essential to wit, or does it aim at creating a more abstract philosophical meaning?The subtle alterations from one form to another, from brief tales to the more serious short novels of Medianoche amoureux, will probably lead us to conclude to a sort of mild and playful re-poetisation

Poetical metamorphosis of black men’s cry : Césaire as an alchemist in Cahier d’un retour au pays natal

In Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, Aimé Césaire, the poet from the French West Indies, expresses the subjectivity of a minority in both ways : the black scholar and poet comes back home as a stranger after having experienced being a black lonely student in Paris. This unique existential experience does not prevent him from crying his wrath loudly in the name of a majority, extending his writings to the universality of people submitted to oppression. For that matter, he does not speak his mother tongue, the “creole”, but French, the language of colonization that he metamorphoses as an alchemist would do. Hence, he creates a superior writing, which is close to the narrow paths of esthetical blendness. He mixes Rimbaud’s pre-surrealist sense of epiphany with African narratives and rhythms, that History has hidden. He can be compared to alchemists as he creates out of nothing a new linguistic material. Doing so, he does not deny his singularity as part of a minority. His new language is not a translation aimed at readers of different cultures nor a blend of mixed cultures, it really tries to enforce a new identity, at the crossroads of the remembrance of political consciousness of past sufferings as slaves and the pride of being coloured, either from Africa or from West Indies. Let us examine how this basic work expresses the revolts of oppressed minorities using a very singular poetics, on three levels ; on the esthetical, political, and ethical levels. First, we shall see how Césaire gives a voice to a voiceless minority through his new lyrics, then how Césaire as a poet of the universal, tries to lead all black people have a dignified conscience, then we shall see how this universality is not abstract one but concrete and how Césaire creates a «literature of the minorities» as Kafka did in its own way in Czechoslovakia expressing the soul of the Jewish community in German. Can Césaire’s endeavours be compared to the great poet of Prague ? Did he solve the deep contradictions of speaking in the name of a few and convince many

Activity of chemotherapy in the palliative treatment of salivary gland tumors : review of the literature

Chemotherapy is sometimes used as palliation for patients with salivary gland tumors not amenable to curative treatment. However, if chemotherapy improves survival is unknown. To identify some prognostic parameters in this disease, we conducted an extensive review of the literature. The prognostic value of the baseline clinical characteristics and the different chemotherapy regimens used was assessed using the Cox proportional hazards regression model on the available individual data. In addition, the effect of the different chemotherapy drugs on median survival time was evaluated using meta-weighted linear regression with dummy covariates referring to each chemotherapy drug. The total number of patients included in these studies that fit our inclusion criteria was 264 patients. By reviewing carefully the papers and by contacting the different authors, we were able to retrieve the individual data of 205 patients. In the multivariate Cox analysis, only the use of platinum-based chemotherapy was identified as an independent predictor of an increased survival (P = 0.01). These results were confirmed in a meta-analysis where median survival was increased by 2.5 (95% IC:0.7-4.4) and 4.9 (95% IC:0.45-9.4) months for patients treated with platinum (P = 0.007) and anthracyclin-based (P = 0.03) chemotherapy, respectively. Although exploratory, our analysis suggests that treatment with a platinum-based chemotherapy regimen may be an independent factor of better survival for patients with incurable salivary gland neoplasms

Le bovarysme et la littérature de langue anglaise

La notion centrale de bovarysme retenue comme outil d'analyse a permis de mettre en relief, au-delà de ressemblances thématiques, une interrogation récurrente du texte littéraire sur le rôle de la lecture dans la définition de sa propre identité. Le roman de Flaubert et son héroïne constituent alors plus qu'une référence, une véritable déclaration de connivence entre auteur et lecteur / lectrice qui situe le roman au coeur d'un incessant processus de création/recréation, plus tard explicité par Umberto Eco comme celui de « œuvre ouverte ». A l'intertextualité affirmée se joint une dimension métatextuelle donnant au roman une portée autocritique qui dépasse le niveau du simple divertissement, sans pourtant nier la nécessaire facette Iudique. Ce que les études ici réunies ont montré, c'est que la critique littéraire la plus contemporaine n'est pas une construction in abstracto, mais bien une théorisation s'appuyant sur la trame même du. Récit romanesque, au-delà des modes, des époques ou des limites géographiques

Efficacy and safety of sparsentan versus irbesartan in patients with IgA nephropathy (PROTECT): 2-year results from a randomised, active-controlled, phase 3 trial

BackgroundSparsentan, a novel, non-immunosuppressive, single-molecule, dual endothelin angiotensin receptor antagonist, significantly reduced proteinuria versus irbesartan, an angiotensin II receptor blocker, at 36 weeks (primary endpoint) in patients with immunoglobulin A nephropathy in the phase 3 PROTECT trial's previously reported interim analysis. Here, we report kidney function and outcomes over 110 weeks from the double-blind final analysis.MethodsPROTECT, a double-blind, randomised, active-controlled, phase 3 study, was done across 134 clinical practice sites in 18 countries throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Patients aged 18 years or older with biopsy-proven primary IgA nephropathy and proteinuria of at least 1·0 g per day despite maximised renin–angiotensin system inhibition for at least 12 weeks were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive sparsentan (target dose 400 mg oral sparsentan once daily) or irbesartan (target dose 300 mg oral irbesartan once daily) based on a permuted-block randomisation method. The primary endpoint was proteinuria change between treatment groups at 36 weeks. Secondary endpoints included rate of change (slope) of the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), changes in proteinuria, a composite of kidney failure (confirmed 40% eGFR reduction, end-stage kidney disease, or all-cause mortality), and safety and tolerability up to 110 weeks from randomisation. Secondary efficacy outcomes were assessed in the full analysis set and safety was assessed in the safety set, both of which were defined as all patients who were randomly assigned and received at least one dose of randomly assigned study drug. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03762850.FindingsBetween Dec 20, 2018, and May 26, 2021, 203 patients were randomly assigned to the sparsentan group and 203 to the irbesartan group. One patient from each group did not receive the study drug and was excluded from the efficacy and safety analyses (282 [70%] of 404 included patients were male and 272 [67%] were White) . Patients in the sparsentan group had a slower rate of eGFR decline than those in the irbesartan group. eGFR chronic 2-year slope (weeks 6–110) was −2·7 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year versus −3·8 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year (difference 1·1 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year, 95% CI 0·1 to 2·1; p=0·037); total 2-year slope (day 1–week 110) was −2·9 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year versus −3·9 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year (difference 1·0 mL/min per 1·73 m2 per year, 95% CI −0·03 to 1·94; p=0·058). The significant reduction in proteinuria at 36 weeks with sparsentan was maintained throughout the study period; at 110 weeks, proteinuria, as determined by the change from baseline in urine protein-to-creatinine ratio, was 40% lower in the sparsentan group than in the irbesartan group (−42·8%, 95% CI −49·8 to −35·0, with sparsentan versus −4·4%, −15·8 to 8·7, with irbesartan; geometric least-squares mean ratio 0·60, 95% CI 0·50 to 0·72). The composite kidney failure endpoint was reached by 18 (9%) of 202 patients in the sparsentan group versus 26 (13%) of 202 patients in the irbesartan group (relative risk 0·7, 95% CI 0·4 to 1·2). Treatment-emergent adverse events were well balanced between sparsentan and irbesartan, with no new safety signals.InterpretationOver 110 weeks, treatment with sparsentan versus maximally titrated irbesartan in patients with IgA nephropathy resulted in significant reductions in proteinuria and preservation of kidney function