Keywords: Malevič; Oleg Michajlovič
Oleg Michajlovič Malevič: Osobitost české literatury. Paralely a konfrontace. Doslov Vladimír Svatoň. Praha, Malvern 2009. 339 stran.
More...L’écrivain Karel Ptáčník a débuté en 1954 par son roman L’année vingt et un. Du point de vue de la composition ce roman se compose surtout des segments suivants: de l’introduction, du motif du nom Weiss, du moment synchronique, de la forme d’un journal, du temps sacré et de l’anticipation. A la fin de son étude l’auteur compare Karel Ptáčník à Adolf Branald et Jan Čep.
More...This article presents an analysis of Raymond Aron’s sociological conception of ‘industrial society’, with an emphasis on the idea of the ‘primacy of politics’. The discussion of Aron’s conceptual and empirical treatment of ‘industrial society’ is based on an analysis of a selection of his major works. The author explains in what sense this is a genuinely sociological conception and to what degree it is inspired by classical political philosophy. He identifies where Aron departed from the theory of the convergence of capitalist and communist political systems and shows how Aron’s conception of industrial society contradicted the central tenets of both classical and official Soviet Marxism. In the article, Aron’s conception of industrial society is examined within the context of various strands of comparative political sociology. The author asks whether different approaches than those so successfully put to use by Aron in his analyses of 20th-century societies are necessary in order to fully understand the new realities that only became visible years after Aron’s death.
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Fairy tales as used forms of narration play an important role in application of children and juvenile literature into teaching German language as foreign language. General decision for and against application of fairy tales makes sense, the teacher has to use all available arguments. Fairy tales take an important place at education in families as well as in teaching. Elements of fairy tales have influenced fables, myths and legends, too.
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Keywords: historical novel; Estonian Literature; Karl Ristikivi; Novalis; German Literature; Comparative Literature; Rõõmulaul;
Karl Ristikivi and his Novel "Der Freudengesang" in dialog with "Heinrich von Ofterdingen" by Novalis
More...Keywords: Straus; Gazyna; Wolff; Katarzyna
Grazyna Straus - Katarzyna Wolff: Czytanie, kupowanie i wypozyczanie. Spolecny zasieg ksiazki w Polsce w 2004 roku. Warszawa, Biblioteka Narodowa 2006.
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Keywords: onomastics
The study deals with the transonymisation – transfer of an already existing proper name into a new onymic class – climbing-path names. The orohodonyms (climbing-path names) identify the vertical lines of the parts of rocks which serve for climbing purposes. The authors and the users of the proper names are climbers; they are therefore referred to as sociolect orohodonyms (socioorohodonyms). The already existing proper names influence the formation of climbing roadnames. In the investigated field of rockclimbing, orohodonyms come into existence by transonymisation of anthroponyms (personal proper names), zoonyms (animal proper names), toponyms (oikonyms ‘proper name for the inhabited area’ and anoikonyms ‘proper name for the uninhabited area’) and chrematonyms (proper name for objects which are the result of human activity and have been naturalized in economical, political and cultural relations). The terms of antroponymic origin are most frequent.
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Keywords: Jean Cocteau; visual arts; literature and cinema; poetical intuition.
A poet and a movie director, Jean Cocteau brilliantly manifested surrealist inspiration in his poetry, in the performative art of his theatrical representation, and in his cinematography. His work is the best example to follow when asking how much the new art of cinematography inherited from other artistic expressions, especially from literature. This study seeks to provide new and interdisciplinary inside into precisely those ways in which film is intimately related to literature.This article recognizes cinema as a longstanding art and analyzes its technique, inspired by other arts. As with literary texts, cinema must attend to narrative creation, to the construction of plot and to the unfolding of character. As in theatre it involves declamation and the art of decorations. As in dance performance it relies on music, sound and animation. There are ways in which cinematography, through special effects, finds its own path and provides a means to express poetical intuition. In this, Cocteau has been recognized as one of the most creative directors of all time.
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Keywords: parable; exile; human condition; choice; interferences
Vintilă Horia tackles the history with regard to the origin of evil and individual’s alienation in a similar way to Albert Camus. His novel, The Knight of Resignation, is a parable about totalitarianism, and ideological evil that makes the human being feeling alienated, in a way that is similar to the situations from Albert Camus’s novel, The Plague. In Vintilă Horia’s opinion, the existential evil can be eradicated only through knowledge. The temporary victory against a visible enemy is not essential, but the people’s eliberation from the common threat with dead since it means an eliberation through knowledge meant to eliminate the source of evil inside the human being, and not its forms. In his novel, The Plague, Albert Camus offers a pragmatic solution against the evil, which is the action that gives sense to existence in an universe where the human being is defined through the act itself, and voluntarily action where the Christian morality does not exist. As far as Vintilă Horia’s work is concerned, the interior metamorphosis existes under the auspices of the Christian morality, and the ideological evil, the tyranny of empires are all consequences of the lost of faith. The communist and nazist hell generated by ideologies brings forward the awareness of a permanent danger of re-activating the evil in the world and the necessity to erradicate its source in order to help peoples to live their life in freedom. This vision explains the philosophy of resignation defended by Horia’s hero. Despite this attitude of initial resignation, Radu-Negru becomes a fighter in the end since he fights for a collective destiny, and not as individual as he is considered in the beginning of the work. Before the moral evil, de-humanization through the mutilation of prisoners’ consciousness meant with a view of transforming the traitors and tortionaries of the power, the exiled prince comes back to finally defend the eternal values of the Romanian identitary space, and the ancient heroes who do not give up in front of danger. The final option of Horia’s hero, the common cause of a nation that rebells itself against the oppression, is similar to the one of Camus’s heroes.
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Keywords: Augustin Bunea;Virgil Șotropa;Teodor Tanco;historiography;Uniation;
This paper aims to present the way in which the martyrdom of the Saints in the Romanian county of Năsăud, which occurred on November 12th, 1763, is described in the historiography produced by Greek-Catholic authors. We are analyzing the opinions of historians such as Augustin Bunea, Zenovie Pâclişanu, George Bariţiu, Nestor Simon, Victor Onişor, Virgil Șotropa, Ștefan Buzilă, Teodor Tanco, Ironim Marțian or Nicoleta Marțian, who relate, even tangentially, the investigated event. Two contrasting perspectives are reviewed: one is the objective approach, considering the event in all its complexity, and highlighting its motivations and consequences in their entirety. This view is recorded bysome of the authors concerned: Teodor Tanco, Victor Onişor, Virgil Sotropa, Nestor Simon, George Bariţiu. The other view prefers to minimize the religious motivation of the Saints’ martyrdom, focusing Pâclişanu, Augustin Bunea, Nicoleta and Ironim Marțian, Dionisie Piciu, Ștefan Buzilă. These diverging views are analyzed and compared with that of the Orthodox Church, but with other existing historiographical materials and approaches, projecting the underlying causes and the historical truth. The paper presents an event with a profound theological significance (the profile of Transylvanian neomartyrs is still insufficiently known to the public), which highlights some Transylvanian Orthodox heroes of modern times, as seen by Greek Catholic historiography. It proposes a relatively new approach in the contemporary theological research, also making use of a rich historiography made up of both previously published and unpublished material.
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Keywords: conceptions of Shoah portrayal in literature; stereotypes; minorities; the subliminal impression of the Shoah; the sense of fear; gallows humour; so called „second generation“ of the Shoah
In the works of Irena Dousková (b. 1964) the Shoah appears in several different forms. Often it appears only implicitly, as in the verse collection Bez Karkulky (Without Little Red Riding Hood, 2009) and the prose fiction Někdo s nožem (Someone with a knife, 2000). In her most recent work of prose fiction, Darda (Darda, 2011), the Shoah is thematized by means of a dream. In a kind of waking dream, her late father, Freistein, a S hoah survivor, speaks to her. Similarly, the vision of sudden annihilation in the form of a tsunami, which has repeatedly come to the narrator since her childhood and she has been trying to decipher in psychotherapy, is a reference to the traumatic experiences of what is widely known as the ‘second generation’ of Shoah victims. Though she avoids an explicit description of Nazi despotism visited on the Jewish population, which is seen from the perspective of a victim, the author concentrates on the consequences of such inhumane behaviour. Instead of being presented with characters’ accounts of their own survival in concentration camps, the reader is presented with narratives about biological survival, which is inherent in the species universally as an endeavour to preserve itself (Goldstein píše dceři, Goldstein writes to his daughter, 1997, and the story ‘Štěstí’ [Happiness], in Čím se liší tato noc [How this night is different], 2000). Dousková’s works, however, employ other approaches as well. In her writing, the author develops a whole tangle of examples of Czech heterostereotypes, and also emphasizes – sometimes openly, sometimes implicitly – the Jewish identity of the characters or the narrator. In such a context, one has to take into account the theme of Czech collective memory about the destruction of Czechoslovak citizens who either considered themselves Jewish or were designated as such by others. Even after the death of the eyewitnesses to the catastrophe of their Jewish neighbours, traces remain in collective or individual memory, in the form of either direct narration of a given local community (as in the story ‘Chuligán’ [Hooligan], in Čím se liší tato noc), or of a petrified local legend or myth, which circulates in that community (O bílých slonech, Of white elephants, 2008). The subtle way in which the author constructs such types of Shoah survival sometimes leaves the reader with only a subliminal impression.
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Keywords: cultural imaginary; Jagoda Truhelka; Zlatni danci; national branding of space; Croatian children’s literature
According to Croatian children’s literature historians, Crnković and Težak (2002), overstated Croatian patriotism and religiousness in Jagoda Truhelka’s work were reasons for avoiding it in official school curricula during the era of both Yugoslav states. Thus, her work was often evaluated on an extraliterary basis. The author’s autobiographical trilogy Zlatni danci [The Golden Days] is interpreted along these lines, to discern dominant motives and narratives which contribute to the reconstruction and interpretation of her cultural imaginary which may be described as Croatocentric. The author signals this by various means: Anica’s didactic patriotic “tirades” learned at school, descriptions of the teacher’s school and her salon, by reconstructions of children’s play imitating the battle of Siget (Croats vs. Ottomans), by telling the story of lumberjack Đorđo (an Istrian Croat) and his significant role in the battle for Vis. The element of space is also important in the trilogy, both because of its integrative role and as a meaningful indicator of cultural self-identification. The analysis implies that the imaginary of The Golden Days represents not only its author’s values, but also, to some extent, the values of the community that is represented.
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Keywords: Mask; monologue; Quranic tradition; existential faith; dogmatism; punishment; confidences; Allah;
Confidences to Allah tells the story of Jbara Aït Goumbra, a shepherdess living in the Moroccan mountains. Written in the form of a monologue, the novel relates the daily relationship between Jbara and her confidant, Allah - thus revisiting the quranic tradition of Shahadah. For Jbara, God appears as a friend who supports her "existential Jihad." Repudiated by her family, Jbara becomes Sheherazade, a luxury prostitute, before getting arrested - which she interprets as a punishment of divine justice. Once released from prison, she renames herself Khadija, and becomes the spouse of an imam. Every mask Jbara wears means to test the boundaries of her faith in Allah. Azzedine gives a testimony of what Kirkegård calls an “existential faith", and engages in a metaphysical thinking on the relationship of man to God, beyond any dogmatic position.
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Keywords: Gheorghe Izbășescu; Zburătorul; culture; editorial; Onești;
The poet Gheorghe Izbășescu (1935-2017) belongs to the eighties and his poetic work enjoys wide appreciation from critics and poetry lovers. In addition to his literary contribution he had - albeit sporadically – also a genuine and quality publishing contribution. After the Revolution from1989, he revived Zburătorul, an interwar magazine of great cultural significance founded in 1919, by the critic and literary historian E. Lovinescu (1881-1943). In this article, we will focus on the editorials signed by G. Izbășescu in the magazine Zburătorul. The exegesis aims 14 texts published between 1990 and 1997. The quality of writing, the style and ideas of each magazine issue gave power to move forward in a time of transition that seemed never to end. Despite of all the efforts made by G. Izbășescu the publication would stop running in 1997. However, it remained in the consciousness of the Romanian literary community as a magazine that promoted the younger generation coagulated a generation, that of the Romanian writers from the eighties and put Onești city in a cultural circuit. But G. Izbășescu’s merits are much more.
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Keywords: civilization; (anti-)hero; progress; moral values; science; technique;
Although Jules Verne’s heroes are generally viewed as emblematic expressions of a self-confident and conquering industrial and colonial society, specialists have long recognized a pessimistic turn in Verne’s writing: while he previously celebrated scientism and positivism, from 1886 onwards anxiety and the questioning of faith continually grew in his works. Critical approaches to Verne’s narratives are traditionally less sensitive to the fin-de-siècle implications of his writing: nonetheless full of tensions, it acknowledges the threatening force of the technical civilization in an ever-changing world and questions the blind spots of modernity. Readings not considering such implications risk missing significant nuances that allow a much deeper and wider understanding of Verne’s heroes than commonly granted.
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Keywords: Becher Peter;Höhne Steffen;Krappmann Jörg; Weinberg Manfred
Peter Becher — Steffen Höhne — Jörg Krappmann — Manfred Weinberg (edd.): Handbuch der deutschen Literatur Prags und der Böhmischen Länder. Stuttgart, J. B. Metzler 2017. 445 stran.
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Keywords: The contemporary Czech prose for children and youth; instructive or auxiliary literature; “literature of questions and answers”;
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Czech literature for children and young adults has been witnessing the development of the instructive (auxiliary) literature. This kind of literature, which appeared abroad in the 1960s, may be characterized as “the literature of questions and answers”, i.e. literature motivating children to consider the given topic – mostly an ethical one – and giving them, at the same time, an answer in the form of an instruction. In Czech literature for children and youth, Ivona Březinová (1964) may be considered as an innovator in this genre. Her literary production is exclusively related to children and youth. Instructive literature appears as a special genre, invariant in her production, both in author’s fairy-tales, realistic stories from children’s lives and proses with a girl as the main character. As an experienced author, she focuses on certain problems, such as drug addiction, gambling, and mental anorexia or Alzheimer disease. Her primary aim is to arouse the readers’ interest in these problems, to inform them and influence their education.
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Keywords: Romanian literature; contemporary novel; Nicolae Breban;
An essay on the work of Nicolae Breban.
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