Saved from the waters

Resemantization of a biblical scene

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10518

Keywords:

Moses, foundling, typology, Sebald, Austerlitz

Abstract

Thanks to its countless rewritings and representations, the “Finding of Moses”, the biblical scene of the infant rescued from the waters, can be considered one of figures from the book of Exodus that most persistently inform our contemporary imaginary. The foundling, the orphan destined to perform extraordinary feats, is a figure shared by ancient narratives (from the Bible to popular fairy tales) and modern novels (from Tom Jones to Harry Potter), and the ‘nobody’s child’ who survived the waters represents a sort of subset of this wide category. He often responds to the need for peace and reconciliation between hostile worlds or peoples, a task symbolised by his ability to cross unharmed a passage precluded to most. Moreover, the positive values he embodies seem to remain constant even beyond the fracture of modernity, in a time that generally rereads ancient themes and characters from a parodic angle. The paper aims to investigate the contemporary metamorphoses of this figure, by focusing on two scenes from the novel Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald (2001).

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Daria Biagi, Sapienza University of Roma

Daria Biagi graduated from the University of Bologna and earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Trento. Between 2014 and 2022 she was a member of research projects on literature and translation at the Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Padua and the Freie Universität zu Berlin. Her research interests include literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, theory of the novel, history of translation. She is the author of a book on Stefano D’Arrigo’s Horcynus Orca (Orche e altri relitti, 2017) and of a study on the translation of German novels in early 20th century Italy (Prosaici e moderni. Teoria, traduzione e pratica del romanzo nell’Italia del primo Novecento, 2022). As a translator, she mainly worked on novels and short stories by Franz Kafka, Anna Seghers, Jörg Fauser and Terézia Mora, and was awarded the Italian-German "Nachwuchspreis" for literary translation in 2018.

Downloads

Published

2023-12-15

How to Cite

Biagi, D. (2023). Saved from the waters: Resemantization of a biblical scene. SigMa - Rivista Di Letterature Comparate, Teatro E Arti Dello Spettacolo, (7), 187–200. https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10518

Issue

No. 7 (2023): Escapes and returns. Rewritings of exodus in contemporary arts

Section

Sezione monografica

License

SigMa Journal is an open access, online publication, with licence:

cc-by-80x15_80

 CCPL Creative Commons Attribution

The author retains the copyright of his work whilst granting anyone the possibility “to reproduce, distribute, publicly communicate, publicly exhibit, display, perform and recite the work”, provided that the author and the title of the journal are cited correctly. When submitting the text for publication the author is furthermore required to declare that the contents and the structure of the work are original and that it does not by any means compromise the rights of third parties nor the obligations connected to the safeguard of the moral and economic rights of other authors or other right holders, both for texts, images, photographs, tables, as well as for other parts which compose the contribution. The author furthermore declares that he/she is conscious of the  sanctions prescribed by the penal code and by the Italian Criminal and Special Laws for false documents and the use false documents, and that therefore Reti Medievali is not liable to responsibilities of any nature, civil, administrative or penal, and that the author agrees to indemnify and hold Reti Medievali harmless from all requests and claims by third parties.