Saved from the waters
Resemantization of a biblical scene
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6093/sigma.v0i7.10518Keywords:
Moses, foundling, typology, Sebald, AusterlitzAbstract
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).
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