Două reprezentări literare ale lui Jean Calvin: Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt de Stefan Zweig şi Pierre de scandale de Nicolas Buri
Two literary representations of Jean Calvin:
Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt by Stefan Zweig and Pierre de scandale by Nicolas Buri Jean Calvin’s complex personality fascinated biographers and sparked off contradictory representations often influenced by the ideological context and by the political events. The article draws a parallel between two works. Stefan Zweig makes a crude and unfair portrait to Jean Calvin. By condemning fascism, Zweig condemns Calvin without recourse. This prejudicial portrait dominated several decades the reflection on Calvin’s literary religious and social work. A more tolerant context following the fall of the ideological barriers and walls created the possibility to a more objective return to the work of the great reformer and humanist. Nicolas Buri, journalist and writer, makes such an attempt in a postmodern fiction authorizing in the public consciousness the image of Calvin animated by ideals impossibly to be achieved, subdued to unsolvable constraints and contradictions yet humane and humanist.
Keywords: Calvin, literary representation, Zweig, totalitarism, Buri, postmodern fiction
- Zweig, Stefan. Lupta în jurul unui rug. Castellio
împotriva lui Calvin. /The Fight around a Pyre.
Castellio against Calvin./ Foreword by Eugen
Relgis. Translated into Romanian by E. Marghita,
Editura Modernă, 1945. - Zweig, Stefan. Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein
Gewissen gegen die Gewalt, Fischer Taschenbuch
Verlag, 14. Auflage, Januar 2006 (Herbert Reichner
Verlag 1936). - Buri, Nicolas. Pierre de scandale. Genève,
Editions d’Autre Part, 2008.
