Keywords: nationalists; Respublika; newspapers; Vitas Tomkus; Jews; gays; Algirdas Brazauskas; Jewish community; Holocaust in Lithuania
Many say newspaper’s articles are among the worst cases of anti-Semitism since independence from the Soviet Union
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Keywords: early Renaissance Christendom; Henry V of England; Philip the Good of Burgundy; Charles VI of France; Charles IV of Luxembourg
Shortened text of an address given at the opening of the Sigismundus exhibition in Budapest. Sigismundus rex et imperator: Art and Culture in the Age of Sigismund of Luxembourg, 1387–1437. Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts, 18 March–18 June, 2006. Luxembourg, Musée national d’histoire et d’art, 13 July–15 October, 2006.
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Keywords: financial crisis; European integration; European Union; EU enlargement; Treaty of Lisbon; EU member states; export markets; currency crisis; Euro; European Central Bank; eurozone
The financial crisis highlights how dearly Hungarians are paying for an unreformed welfare state – and a childish, parochial political class.
More...review of: ----------------------------- Independence, minorities, tourism: Montenegro in transition – a collection of essays on a country with many faces (German language text); edited by Jens Becker and Achim Engelberg
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"Czech president Václav Klaus recently stood beneath a portrait of Czechoslovakia’s first president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and delivered another fervent dose of his usual euro-scepticism to the nation [...]."
More...If we see the 20th century as a form of culture, we will immediately notice a disagreement between the calendar and the cultural period. The last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th century constitute a watershed, the death of the old and the birth of a new century. As a cultural, historical unit, the 20th century does not begin until around 1910, with new phenomena in art, futurism in literature and abstraction in painting. It is the same with the half-century.
More...Keywords: Silviu Purcărete; movie
What we are trying to debate in this article is the fact that Silviu Purcărete's dramatic storytelling went far beyond the limits of the words. The film ”Undeva la Palilula” is commended of fading in the area of the simple sequences of paints and delirious-grotesque incidents, deliberately designed to the expense of dramatic and ideal content, it confirms us the existence of a unique language of expression based, ironically, on the art of storytelling ! The film, expected as a triumph, divided the critics into two adverse groups, because, apart from a testament to his own theatrical art, Silviu Purcărete appears not to have brought anything new that can redefine him. Although most references to the director's visual thinking are linked to the field of painting and film, in our PRO argumentation ”Undeva la Palilula”, we aim an approach from the animation theater perspective, arts area in which the director made his debut and which is a single body of force through the syncretism of arts.
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Keywords: Bulgaria; Prime Minister Boyko Borisov; EU; NATO; former Prime Minister Ivan Kostov; Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov; Sergey Stanishev;
Coming from Bulgaria’s leader, plain talking sounds authentic. But it doesn’t suit everyone
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Keywords: BÜCHNER; Georg Büchner; Danton´s Death ;National Theatre;
Georg BUchner lived in the first half of the 19th century, in the age of romanticism. He died at the age of 24, that is, very young, as did many of those usually classed as romantic poets. He was nevertheless one of those astonishing and rare artists who in his creative vision extended outside and beyond his time, as did Blake, Poe, or in an earlier age Hieronymus Bosch. Like them, he remained nlarginal in his own day and was discovered with a sense of surprise by the taste of more or less remote descendants. Danton's Death received its premiere in 1927, 100 years after ist author's death.
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Keywords: Ion Popescu Gopo; Romanian communist censorship; Mihai Stanescu; caricature; Romanian animation
Two internationally known Romanian cartoonists adopted different strategies of artistic survival during the communist era. Ion Popescu Gopo chose, as did many Romanian writers and artists, the aesthetic escape, which meant to embellish his historically circumstantial identity into universal concepts, wrapping his topics and motifs into a highly artistic expression with no obvious reference to his ideological context. In contrast, the younger caricaturist, Mihai Stanescu, preferred to confront the communist ideology with its own caricature, and he suffered from being censored in Romania, yet published abroad. Allowed to sell his ideologically inoffensive artifacts, Stanescu earned perhaps more money under the communists than in the competitive, free market, in spite of the fact that he can now publish his caricatures freely; they are now simply volumes with no other restrictions apart from financial ones. Neither the aesthetic defeatism of Gopo nor the aesthetic engagement of Stanescu has survived after 1989. Is this "failure" a matter of ideology? Is it a sign of a more profound change in contemporary Romanian society? My paper tries to answer these questions, which are not necessarily solely applicable to Romanian culture, but which are, I dare say, vital for other societies facing transitions from communist to democratic regimes.
More...Keywords: the humanities; Eastern Europe;
Reflections on the state of the Humanities in Eastern Europe which are based on a conference held in Collegium Budapest.
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Keywords: pain-act; speech-act; diagnosis; performative; ex-citable pain; pained
Speaking of the monstrous or ‘foreign’ body archivally inscribed in culture, one notes a surfeit of imagery at play, a slideshow of supplementary images which both circumscribe and stultify any attempt to write or speak about the body outside of this code of foreignness. This paper argues that such an archive of etiolated body is shadowed by a similarly circumscribing archive of pain. Archives of pain, whether medical, cultural, literary, or ontogenetic, have long been conceived in terms of montage, a series of ‘signs, images, or ciphers’ belonging to the language of diagnosis. This code of diagnostic expertise constatively works to describe and inscribe pain as a supplement to inscriptions of bodihood which are themselves supplementary. This paper seeks to affectively map a shift away from constative taxonomies of pain and body image, towards an approach that ethically and aesthetically privileges the performa
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Keywords: art; face; uncanny; ethics; Levinas;
The article peruses the idea that art, and more specifically, representation of the face, has something monstrous and uncanny in it. The author concentrates on Levinas’s philosophy and shows that, first, art by giving the image to the face, freezes it in a plastic form and by this means turns it inevitably into a caricature. Second, face in art, unlike alive face, lacks temporality. What is lively, what is human expression is locked, not able to change, not exposed to vulnerability and therefore no longer is an ethical face of the Other. The article argues that Levinas does not reject the art but tries to re-locate it in a larger context of world: its meaning comes from being engaged in the word: social, cultural, political and above all ethical context.
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Keywords: conflict; policy; intercivilizational contradictions; abortion;
The present research considers two Global problems of the humanity: intercivilizational contradictions and the pandemic of abortion as serious conflicts, the solution of which depends on the relevant public educational policies. The tension in the relationship between the Islamic World and the West, caused by the so-called “caricature scandal”, encourages to understanding the conflict and the ways of its solution. There is also the problem of massive numbers of abortions in the world that requires a scientific analysis and relevant conclusions. The research revealed that both sides of intercivilizational conflicts are responsible for it. The freedom of speech as an ingredient of democracy cannot exist only for itself. It should be based on the human values, including respect for other nations, religions, cultures, as well as the protection of human life. The second part of the research concerns the pandemic of abortion. Based on the achievements of modern embryology, sociology and bioethics, four levels of this conflict were defined. The first level is a conflict concerning the life of the unborn child. The second one is a conflict concerning a mother. The third one is a conflict with the nation. The fourth one is a conflict with God. On these issues, the survey was conducted among the first year medical students at Ternopil State Medical University. It was also concluded that it would have been useful to present the model of state policy aimed to prevent conflicts between civilizations, as well as the pandemic of abortion to the students. This policy should include: information policy (promotion of the idea that human life is the highest value, and human relationships should be based on the principles of tolerance); education policy (education in today’s youth of the culture of interpersonal relationships based on honesty, responsibility); social policy (creation of the material conditions for young families, single mothers); policy in the health sector (providing high quality medical services, maternal and child health); policy in the sphere of law (the adoption of laws that will protect the lives of unborn children).
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Keywords: parody; intellectual humour; caricature; satire;
Humour in Bellow's prose is both rich and complex and it could not express better than it did, the author's propensity for self-analysis and self-scrutinizing heroes. The purpose of this paper is to highlight Bellow's mastery in handling his humour and presenting episodes that are both grotesque and absurd in some of his best novels, such as “Henderson, the Rain King”, “Herzog”, “Humboldt's Gift”, “Mr. Sammler's Planet” and “The Dean's December”. The association of the various types of humoristic touches of his novels to the potential effects and functions they play in them remain within the scope of the present paper.
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