Abstract:

Texts written by significant names of the literary world after their travels to various geographies are regarded as important sources for not only the world of literature, but also sociologists, anthropologists, historians, political scientists and culture researchers today. Observations of writers and artists, written with a different sensibility and perspective from others’, reveal realities hidden under observations and their working processes. Although an artist’s imagination sometimes seems to hide the reality and isolate it from its context, it either clearly gives utterance to what many other scientific areas cannot articulate, or it inculcates. In this respect, those texts are of great importance. The Soviet Union under the regimen of Gorbachev invited fifteen artists and philosophers including significant names such as Claude Simon, Arthur Miller, Peter Ustinov, Federico Major, Yaşar Kemal and Zülfü Livaneli to Issyk-Kul Forum, led by Chinghiz Aitmatov, and held in Bishkek, Kirghizstan in 1986. Nobel laureate Claude Simon, one of the most famous names of contemporary French literature, edited and published his travel notes under the title L’Invitation/The Invitation upon his return to France. Simon’s work depicts the world behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ with a cynical and ingenious expression, and it presents pictures of the Soviet regime maintaining its enigma as a ‘closed box’ even today, as well as offering impressive aspects of life style in that geography. The aim of this study is to expose this travel and the Soviet Union fragments under the regimen of Gorbachev from the French viewpoint with examples from the above-mentioned text, from Claude Simon’s perspective as a Western and independent luminary, by researching the narrative structure of the text. 

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