, Bruch‘-

,Bruch‘- 2: Denis Diderot, The Post from Königsberg to Memel / Kelionė iš Kenigsbergo į Mėmelį

ISBN 978-3-9827179-2-0 / 978-3-9827179-1-3
9.9 x 21cm, 32 pages
English / Lithuanian
9 EUR

In 1773, Denis Diderot travelled from Paris to the court of the Russian empress Catherine II in search of practical applications of his encyclopaedic wisdom. Somewhere along the postal route between Königsberg (Kaliningrad) and Memel (Klaipėda), he composed a poem, grafting frivolous tableaux of Mediterranean gods onto the Baltic coast. More than just a pastime to escape the boredom and isolation of his journey, poetry provided a therapeutic mirage of agency: Operatic clichés and self-referential fabulations are deployed to domesticate the all-too-real stakes of engaging with an unknown, potentially hostile environment. The impending encounter between philosopher and authoritarian is allegorised as a confrontation between traveller and the unruly forces of an animated nature, its sheer force and limitless violence turned playful farce, a precarious laugh in the face of an unleashed modernity.

The poem is prefaced by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who satirically restages Diderot’s voyage as a ‘dialectic of enlightenment’ avant la lettre. His Diderot in Petersburg (1873) is an erotic-burlesque novella in which the fictionalised confrontation between thinker and tsarina eventually leads down into the torture chambers of total politics, where the obligatory whip is unpacked to exorcise the philosopher’s wit. Instead of ‘freedom, equality, fraternity’: ‘orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality’. What is to be done? Que faire? Rira bien qui rira le dernier.

English translation by Jacob Bromberg. Lithuanian translation by Genovaitė Dručkutė. Co-published with Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts. Supported by Goethe-Institut Lithuania, Lithuanian Council for Culture, Neringa Municipality.

Copies are available at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts, Thomas Mann Cultural Centre (Nida), Vilnius Academy of Arts. Or click here to order directly from us and arrange postage.