Márton László–Ambrus Judit– Bazsányi Sándor: Három bírálat egy könyvről (Rakovszky Zsuzsa: A hullócsillag éve) Three reviews on one book (Zsuzsa Rakovszky: Year of the Falling Star) Bényei Tamás: „Csehov sehol sincs”: Katherine Mansfield életműve magyarul (Katherine Mansfield: Elbeszélések. – Naplók, levelek) “There is No More Tchekhov”: Katherine Mansfield’s oeuvre in Hungarian (Katherine Mansfield: Short Stories. – Diaries, Letters.) A Holmi postájából From the Letters to Holmi Saly Noémi levele A Letter of Noémi Sally Sárközi Mátyás válasza The answer of Mátyás Sárközi
More...Translated and introduced by Júlia Vallasek
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More...Keywords: Buddhism; philosophy; postmodernism; religion
The basic ideas underlying the world view of poet and scholar Uku Masing are discussed. Masing's essays and religious-philosophical writings often state that every thinkable truth is relative. Accordingly, there is no eternal subject to cognize this absolute truth, and there is no ideal language to formulate this truth. These relative arguments of Masing seem close to certain Buddhist schools, or to postmodernism, which is why Masing is sometimes compared to them. However, this article argues that for Masing, behind this apparent relativity of truth, there still exists a single and stable Truth as well as a certain Subject to recognize the Truth – "a vagrant beyond space or time", left from one's purified ego. Analogically, there must exist a language or some other system of communication enabling contact between the Truth and the Subject. Masing's belief in this hidden Truth differentiates Masing fundamentally from postmodernism and certain mahayana schools of Buddhism, which at first sight might appear somewhat close to Masing. This illusive similarity, but fundamental difference, is illustrated by comparing Masing to Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna and postmodernist thinkers J. Derrida and G. Deleuze.
More...Keywords: Estonian; gender; contextuality; communication; culture; parts of speech
Any communication is more or less contextual. The more contextual the communication (text), the more ambiguous it is, and the higher the risk of misinterpretation. The article is focused on contextual differences between certain Estonian texts (written essay, oral dialogue and oral monologue) and the influence of culture and gender on text contextuality. The used measure of text contextuality comes from Heylighen and Dewaele (2002) and is based on the assumption that a higher concentration of certain parts of speech (pronouns, verbs, adverbs, interjections) will make a text more contextual and thus also more ambiguous, whereas that of some other parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, particles, articles) has an opposite effect of lowering text contextuality, which makes the text less ambiguous and, thus, more formal. The subjects of the experiment in cluded 8 native speakers of Estonian (4 male,4 female) and 8 native speakers of Russian highly competent in Estonian (4 male, 4 female). According to the results, the written text is considerably more formal than the oral one, while the oral dialogue is more contextual than the oral monologue. There was no significant difference between the text formality of Estonians and of Russians with a high-level Estonian competence. At the same time, the dialogue of the Estonian women proved to be significantly more formal than that of Estonian men as well as that of Russian men and that of Russian women.
More...Keywords: folkloristics; ethnocentrism; history; social psychology; cultural anthropology; literature
On the basis of post-war rumours, interviews and memoirs the article analyses the manifestations and possible reasons of the Estonians' self-identification as well as of their attitudes towards and opinions of their neighbours. The rumours of the time and the contextualized memoirs provide a simplified popular reflection of immigration and the establishment of a totalitarian state apparatus, as well as of the contours of the social relations network emergent due to the colonial policy of the new regime. Although most of them developed in the Estonia of the 1940s, many of the prejudices of the time were rooted in earlier tradition and historical circumstances. The ethnocentric attitude of the rumours communicated the feeling that the community had ceased to be homogeneous, at the same time pointing to the stranger. The cultural codes of the ethnic relationships of the time were manifested in the triad Estonians-Russians-Germans and the Estonian-Jewish and Estonian-Estonian pairs. The figure of an enemy stood out on a political and ideological rather than ethnic background. Such an attitude indicates that many Estonians had developed a simplified world model, which was stereotypical to the extreme as all immigrants were identified with occupants and proponents of the communist regime. The people's ideas of the "others", rooted partly in fact, partly in fiction, tell of an ideological, physical and cultural split between the immigrants and the natives.
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Keywords: transfer of ideas; Bulgarian National Revival society; Ottoman Empire; Russia; Europe; Eastern Question; Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878; Constantinople Diplomatic Conference 1875–1877.
The author analyses the pro- and anti-European ideas which existed or were spread in Bulgarian public space in the 19th century as well as their social, political and intellectual heralds. He pays special attention to the situation during the Eastern Crisis of 1875–1878 which energized the search for political and intellectual ideas among the Bulgarian society and polarized the active participants in this process. A special accent is put on the spread of anti-European feelings which were provoked by the unsuccessful reforms in the Ottoman Empire as well as by the pro-Turkish policy carried out by the Western powers at this moment.
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Reviews of Books
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Keywords: intellectuals; power; memories; socialism.
The author analyses the motives presented by two prominent representatives of historical science from the time of Socialism – Academician Vera Mutafchieva and Academician Ilcho Dimitrov – who took part in the government of science and society in both socialist and transition periods. Being coevals, of different origin and opposite political ideas, they occupied different positions in power but it was always in public and never behind the scenes. As expected, they both point out non-commercial, non-material and non-self-seeking motives for participating in power even when they did not approve it.
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Keywords: the concept of the state; Bulgaria; tsardom; Botev; Levski.
The numerous and active intellectual and political Bulgarian emigrants in Romania in the 19th century have left behind an impressive number of political, literary, scientific, and didactic writings. All of them, from poetry to the political manifestos that consumed the peoples of Southeast Europe in the 19th century, and particularly the Bulgarians in this case, debate a number of views on the appropriate organization of the state. These include notions such as nation state, kingdom, dual state, monarchy, republic, and concepts such as the state itself, the nation, autonomy, independence, an autocephalous Church. In particular, the Bulgarian Patriarchy, symbol of medieval tsardom and independence, is used as a key argument in the political literature of the 19th century for the right to a national state. Thus, the idea of the Balkan medieval state – the tsardoms, the Byzantine Empire, the Romanian principalities - is revived in written memory as early as the second half of the 18th century. However, the concept of the medieval ethnic and Christian state that re-emerges from within the Islamic Ottoman Empire is based on a model that existed 500 years ago on the Balkan Peninsula.
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