Inaugural lecture Marc Bloch Chair - The precision of poetry and the imagination of science

“The precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist”: Explorations in American studies

Inaugural lecture by Monica Manolescu, USIAS Marc Bloch Chair 2024-2026

With an introduction by Roland Recht, USIAS Chair of Art Historiography

• Watch the video of the lecture (in French)

What happens when, in the midst of a nationally-defined literature, a trilingual writer bursts in, a writer who comes from elsewhere, chased by the hardships of history, and who reinvents himself in the language of his new country? Such a writer redefines boundaries, takes liberties with his adopted language and operates a synthesis of several cultural traditions. When this writer is also a reputed entomologist who has discovered and named several new species of butterflies, literature and science come together in yet another synthesis, that of the “precision of the poet and the imagination of the scientist.”

Starting from the example of the Russian-French-American writer Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), this inaugural lecture will follow Monica Manolescu’s explorations in American studies, at the intersection of languages, cultures and disciplines. While our ways of doing research are usually highly specialized, certain objects of study and cultural figures resist the fixity of a single approach. They invite us to follow their hybrid dynamics, offering a lesson in ethics about the importance and inherent richness of otherness, a lesson that our societies still need to hear at the dawn of the 21st century.

First of all, the lecture will present Monica Manolescu’s research in the Nabokov archives of the New York Public Library, which led to the publication of several previously unpublished texts by Vladimir Nabokov in the Cahier de l’Herne volume devoted to this writer, which she edited with Yannicke Chupin in 2023, and also to the release of the hitherto unpublished journal of his wife, Véra Nabokov’s journal, which gives us a fascinating insight into the American publication of the novel "Lolita".

Secondly, the lecture will discuss the question of literary experimentation, by highlighting research Professor Manolescu conducted on writers who renew our understanding of literature and who create radically innovative texts. Nabokov was one such author, but not the only one. This will take us to another field of study, that of experimental literature in contemporary America, both on paper and in electronic modes that embrace the literary possibilities of digital technologies.

Finally, in the same spirit of experimentation, the lecture will trace a third line of inquiry that moves across the border of literature into art. It starts from the observation that the separation between literature and art became blurred in postwar America. Artists blend poems, sculptures, performances, and leave museums in order to create monuments in faraway places. They are also interested in the scientific aspects of these remote sites, especially geology and ecology.

This marked the beginning of environmental art which, in the late 1960s, started to reflect on the ecological crisis that had already emerged and has deepened today. Robert Smithson, one of the major artists of this period, was an avid reader of Nabokov and was inspired by his texts. Thus, we come back full circle, to find once again the synthesis of the “precision of poetry and the imagination of science.”

The ultimate goal of the lecture is to spotlight this type of research that brings together literature and science, and that helps us think about the ethical, technological and ecological challenges of the present.
 

This address is the inaugural lecture of the Marc Bloch Chair of USIAS. These inaugural lectures are intended for a broad audience, who will be invited to learn about the subject from a pioneering researcher working at the forefront of research. The lecture will be held in French.

The lecture is the second part of a larger event, which starts with the inaugural lecture of the Paul Ehrlich Chair "Rare genetic diseases, or the story of a neglected cellular antenna" by geneticist Hélène Dollfus - see the full programme of the afternoon.

---

The Marc Bloch Chair in the social sciences and humanities was created in 2022, as one of three associated chair positions with a duration of two years, for Strasbourg-based researchers who have made an exceptional contribution to their field. The Chair is named in honour of Marc Bloch (1886-1944), a French historian who was a professor of medieval history at the University of Strasbourg from 1921-1936. Co-founder of the historical journal “Annales”, he was known for his work on comparative and economic history, and his interest in interdisciplinarity. 

Image credits:

Butterfly specimen from Nabokov's personal collection, donated to Cornell University in 1960
(Photograph by Jacki Whisenant)

Véra Nabokov, L'Ouragan Lolita. Diary 1958-1959, translated by Brice Matthieussent,
introduction and notes by Yannicke Chupin and Monica Manolescu, Éditions de l'Herne, 2023

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, on the Great Salt Lake (Utah), 1970
Holt/Smithson Foundation and Dia Art Foundation 

Marc Bloch, 1944, unknown author, Wikipedia