O UŽASU SPOZNAJE: SPEKULATIVNI REALIZAM I H. P. LOVECRAFT

Author(s): Matija Jelača / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1-2/2019

This paper provides an account of the relation between the philosophy of speculative realism and H. P. Lovecraft’s poetics of “cosmic horror”. Q. Meillassoux and R. Brassier are taken as representatives of speculative realism. These two philosophers share two fundamental presumptions: first, any philosophy that aspires to the name of “realism” has to provide an answer to the question as to how thought can think a world without thought; and second, insofar as it reveals that this is indeed possible – to think a world without thought – science constitutes the greatest challenge to correlationism. The first two parts of the text provide an account of these two aspects of Meillassoux’s and Brassier’s projects respectively. The third part recon¬structs the basic tenets of Lovecraft’s poetics of “cosmic horror”, first through an engagement with his numerous (auto)poetic writings on this genre, and then by a reading of his famous short story “The Call of Cthulhu”. Finally, the conclusion brings these various threads together in order to show that an explication of the relation between these three authors facilitates a better understanding of the specifics of their individual projects.

García Márqueze „Patriarhi sügis“ traditsiooni ja uuenduse vahel

Author(s): Merilin Kotta / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 1/2019

As a social-protest genre of literature, the Latin American dictator novel has always created a rupture of the discourse that legitimizes an antidemocratic regime or otherwise denies its antidemocratic character. When García Márquez published The Autumn of the Patriarch (written between 1958 and 1975), the tradition of pondering literarily on dictatorships was more than 120 years old. However, it was due to the fact that, in a short time, The Recourse to the Method by Carpentier and I, the Supreme by Roa Bastos also appeared, that researchers started to consider it worthy of study as a genre. That research continues into the present day. As an example of the experimental protest literature of the 1970s, The Autumn of the Patriarch blurs the lines between prose and poetry, delving into the unreliable discourse around a dead despot and his power. First, this article specifies the place of the novel within the literary tradition, taking into account the development of the dictator novel and the Latin American new historical novel, as well as intertextuality. Next, the article, working from the essay Children of the Mire. Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde (1974) by Octavio Paz, focuses on the question of how the repetition of words and situations helps us to understand the relationship between tradition and modernity in Márquez’s book. The repetitions bring prose closer to poetry and oral communication, and refer to continuity, regularity, identity and tradition. However, paradoxically, when the context of these repetitions changes, we are led to a criticism of immutability and of any kind of absolute truth. In the end, the question asked again and again in the book is: Between lies and beliefs, where is the truth to be found?

Dialektika života a smrti v prózách E. E. Schmitta a J. Gaardera

Author(s): Jana Bednářová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2016

The paper offers a comparison of two approaches to the serious topic in the books “Oscar and Pink Lady” by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt and “Through a Glass, Darkly” by Jostein Gaarder. The novels present identical theme – the serious illness of a child (teenager) with a prospect of fatal consequences in the near future. The books differ not only in the way their characters cope with inexorable reality. The author in her comparison touches upon the dialectic of life and death, as it is outlined in these texts, from psychological, social, ethical, but also archetypal aspects.

Vojnový román v súčasnej svetovej tvorbe pre mladých dospelých (Markus Zusak, John Boyne, Anthony Doerr)

Author(s): Zuzana Stanislavová / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 2/2016

The theme of war is currently penetrating to the reading of young adults in Slovakia mainly via translations from the Anglophone literature. The author of this study interprets and compares three novels on the above theme: the prose by Australian author Markus Zusak – The Book Thief, the book by American author Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See and the book by Irish author John Boyne – Stay Where You Are & Then Leave. The stories portrayed a man with disability. The interpretation of the selected texts is focused on those text parameters that, in view of the author, fundamentally affected the books’ appeal on young adult readers, as well as the authenticity and depth of penetration into the essence of the war’s inhumanity. The text parameters include the theme of love, the specificities of the voice and narration strategies, the functional use of sensual principle (colour, sound and touch) and the phenomenon of grotesque.

Câteva aspecte despre derviştii rotitori şi poeţii mistici orientali: Ahmet Yesevi, Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi şi Yunus Emre

Author(s): Camelia Suruianu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 11/2016

Although, in this context, Muslim theologians are facing a serious misunderstanding of Islamic teaching from some followers, oriental culture retains several reference names registered by literary critics in universal literature, such as: Ahmet Yesevi (1093-1166), Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi (1207-1273) and Yunus Emre (1238-1320). In this essay we tried to briefl y present some aspects of their poetic work as testimony to their creative gift.

Dito und Idem. Un caz de colaborare literară feminină în Belle Époque. Creația între „negociere” și „compromis”

Author(s): Ștefania Pricop / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2 (32)/2020

The phenomenon of literary collaboration is rather an exception in the history of literature so that the brave project in which two female authors from the nineteenth century are joining their creative forces is once more unusual and worthy of consideration. After a series of individual literary projects and one common volume of translations, the German writers Carmen Sylva and Mite Kremnitz decide to set up a common literary project – Dito und Idem – that will last for a period of six years (18821888) and that will sum up three epistolary novels, one tragic drama and two volumes of short stories. Analysing this form of literary collaboration proves to be challenging for any researcher, by revealing a whole field that is worth exploring from the perspective of the theory of literature. In such rare cases, the genesis of the work is no longer an intimate process, directly between an author and his work, but an unveiled one, that is, shared with the otherness. Similarly the work is no longer the direct expression of the individual author`s will and his artistic conceptions, but the product of a “negotiation” between two auctorial instances. The receiver himself, even the unsuspecting one, faced with a literary text that has two authors becomes suddenly aware of and interested in questions of literary theory, which in other circumstances he would probably neglect. He will ask natural questions, such as: “How is it possible to write a book on the double?”, “Who took the initiative of a work?”, “What is the relationship between the authors?” “How can they share roles and how do they communicate each other's intentions?” etc. Following his footsteps we intend to reconstruct the scaffolding of literary and paraliterary details, which influenced decisively the work of the tandem Dito und Idem. The present approach – we believe – also makes for a reflection on the forms of existence of art itself, because in this interesting game of auctorial perspectives, the creation is disputing its legitimacy, by occupying at a time either the privileged status of an object of negotiation and emulation between two creative minds or the degrading role of a bastard, as result of a miserable compromise.

Secretomania în praxisul negustorilor medievali: paradigma greacă (I)

Author(s): Loredana Dascăl / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2 (32)/2020

In order to portray the “Greek” merchant by elucidating the confidential aspects of his affairs (basically related to money and merchandise), starting the investigation from the virtues and emotions previously resulted, while exploiting, as storage media for any such information, the Greek documentary sources (the accounting books and acts and the commercial correspondence within the remaining archival fonds), as well as data from medieval juridical literature (mostly drawn up in Latin), this paper analyzes the dimensions of the secretiveness that pervades the practical and scriptural usages specific to the old medieval mercantile humanity in the Euro-Balkan region (XVth – mid-XIXth century).Generously illustrated with inedited fragments from documents (also including fifteen photoreproductions), the study aims at unifying the coordinates – communication, scriptural act, archivology – that clarify the extent to which the commercial archives testify to the secretive obsessions and compulsions of the merchants, especially the “Greek" ones, and of those who have inspired their customs.The Greek documents within the fonds of Aromanian trading houses and companies attest encoding reflexes for messages, contexts and names belonging to the entrepreneurs involved in the Euro-Balkan trade. The analysis of such communication methods has been structured on an array of mercantile risks that impose precautionary measures: economic and political espionage, Arcana Artis, great businesses, money, travelling, characterizations and recommendations, loan, trials, the “economy of secrets”. Cryptic writings, forged words and the use of pseudonyms and nicknames ‒ beyond being major palaeographic hindrances ‒ represent scriptural practices that conceal commercial realia (prohibited goods, forbidden currencies, hidden fees and profits, loans, favors, etc.).The regulatory instruments of medieval bookkeeping disclose the theoretical vision of the epoch (the one that has generated the historiographic concept of the “economy of secrets”) regarding the range of merchants' mystical consuetudes ‒ starting from protecting the correspondence, keeping secret records, concealing the archives ‒, in the interest of debating mainly the excessive prudence displayed towards the juridical requesting of these private archives. A certain discretion reveals itself as one of the defining features of the bookkeepers; in the spirit of the professional secrecy, so sacredly guarded by the medieval guilds (Arcana Artis) and even more so by the merchants' branch, this discretion occults the methodology of the accounting books and, consequently, the very “art” of counting and justifying the flow of money.In conclusion, after outlining these levels of mercantile secretiveness, by means of stepping, then, further into the family secretiveness (the trade house and firm correspond to the founding social entity), the research leads will be possible to be followed in order to disclose the personal categories of informations that prove to be sensitive inside the “Greek” merchants network and to create echoes in their social norms and emotions: blood ties, affinities or dissolutions, psychomental medical history.

Noaptea de Sânziene de Mircea Eliade, roman tradus în limba japoneză

Author(s): Haruyo Maruyama / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2 (32)/2020

As reflected by its title, the present paper aims to present some key aspects that can be found in the Japanese literary translation of Mircea Eliade’s novel The Forbidden Forest. The method of analysis is based upon two core concepts extracted from the theoretical work of Lawrence Venuti, an emblematic figure of modern translation studies. Thus, by offering a few detailed examples of how the Japanese translator Haruya Sumiya conducted his translation work for this novel, I am going to try to identify whether his approach is more prone to fall into the domestication or the foreignization category. Before proceeding with the analysis, both domestication and foreignization terms are comprehensively explained in the introductory part. Because I do not believe the analysis should be restricted only to the main text of the novel, the first point of discussion deals with the title, the postface, and the explanatory notes, as they all represent an integral part of the translation process and are meant to ease the reader’s experience while following the contents of a text that has its origin in a completely different culture. The second point of discussion is dedicated to the analysis of cultural references through the means of a few words extracted from the main text of the novel. Two of these words, which have their roots deeply embedded in the Romanian folklore, are thoroughly explained and the whole thought process behind their translation is revealed. The other two words, derived from the Christian terminology, are briefly taken into discussion in order to determine why the translator opted to render them into Japanese by employing Buddhist terms, thus letting the domestication method prevail in such cases. The Conclusions represent the last section of this article, and comprise the results of the previous analysis while establishing whether the target text is closer to the Romanian or the Japanese culture.

The Other as Host. Deconstructing the Stranger in Italo Calvino’s Invisible cities and Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence

Author(s): Oana Fotache Dubălaru / Language(s): English Issue: 65/2016

This paper attempts a comparative analysis of two postmodern novels that might be read as instances of highly sophisticated, meta-literary writing, were they not also very significant and relevant for a contemporary problematics of encountering the Other. Both Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972) and Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence (2008) rework the literary myth of Marco Polo’s travels (Il Milione, probably 1299); Calvino’s novel is also alluded to by Rushdie. Besides the exotic setting and the Oriental storytelling frame, the figures of the Stranger and his ‘Other’ are constructed in a modern (and ambiguous) manner in both novels. Although, at a certain level, these narratives belong to the genre of historical novels, their close reading of the past involves an even closer look at the present. The issues of intercultural exchange, of tolerance, of moral responsibility, become central to the two novels that develop a challenging representation of identity. The intertextual relationships between Polo’s travelogue and the later novels also thematize the motifs of stranger and host in a complex and fascinating structure. The analytical methodology employs both theoretical studies on identity in the context of travel, and critical essays on the respective novels.

Rêveries Minerali in George Sand e Ioan Petru Culianu

Author(s): Valentina Sirangelo / Language(s): Italian Issue: 65/2016

The aim of the present comparative study is to focus on the parallelisms between George Sand’s novel Laura, Voyage dans le cristal (1864) and Ioan Petru Culianu’s short story Jocul de smarald (1989) through a hermeneutical mythocritical approach. Both works are modelled upon a type of rêverie that Gaston Bachelard specifically defines an «amplifying play of minerals». Initially the article will investigate the geode and the emerald, lithic containers which emerge as two explorable and marvellous microcosms. Like the Earth which generates them, the two lithic-mineral examples participate in the Central Symbolism of the Feminine: for this reason, both Laura and the Emerald Goddess, impetuses and supreme goals of the initiatory journeys the two main characters undertake, dwell at their centre. Furthermore, the geodic stone and the green stone lead back to the participation mystique with the Feminine. The second part of this study will identify in both works the anima-image, as guide and mediator of the initiation to the Feminine mysterium, and the sparagmos, i.e. the gory dismemberment informing the perilous aspect of the Mother Archetype. As a result, the suave Laura and the omnipotent Emerald Goddess can be read as two reformulations – the former romantic, the latter mythopoeic– of the Great Mother of Initiation.

Alexandra Vrânceanu, Angelo Pagliardini (a cura di), Rifondare la letteratura nazionale per un publico europeo. Da un'idea di Giuseppe Mazzini, Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warzsawa, Wien, Peter Lang, 2015

Author(s): Laura Dumitrescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 64/2015

Constructing the natural. A few remarks on the flower list as a descriptive device in modern literature

Author(s): Oana Fotache Dubălaru / Language(s): English Issue: 63/2014

This paper investigates comparatively the ways in which the flower list functions as a descriptive device in several modern literary works across different cultures, genres, and styles. These include Stéphane Mallarmé’s Les fleurs (The Flowers), Henry Van Dyke’s poem Flood-Tide of Flowers, the novel La Faute de L'Abbé Mouret (Abbé Mouret’s Transgression) by Emile Zola, and Mircea Cărtărescu’s novella REM. Each of these literary works creates a remarkably unitary topos, that of a locus amoenus evoking a long and prestigious tradition of representation in myth, literature, and painting

Egy gyakran említett párhuzam nyomában

Author(s): Tibor Gintli / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 06/2021

The paper investigates the limits of the frequently noticed analogy that associate the memory technique of Gyula Krúdy’s works with the narrative of Proust’s major novel. The author argues that the differences between the two narrative worlds interpreting memory and discussing its operation are considerably more significant than the analogies. The comparative investigation shows the differences in the perception of personality, the content of memory, the literary self-reflection on mnemonics and in the narrative composition, and also tries to identify the difference between the stakes of representing memory in the works of the two authors.

Desde la disidencia: Lucía Etxebarria e Izabela Filipiak en reclamo de la autonomía

Author(s): Magda Potok / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 31/2020

The article presents a comparative analysis of two novels published in Spain and Poland almost at the same time: Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas (1997) by Lucia Etxebarria and Absolutna amnezja (1995) by Izabela Filipiak. Both the Spanish and Polish writers construct their narrations around the problem of cultural violence, asking about the ways to resist it. The two novels resemble each other in that the authors feel free to approach taboo subjects, such as institutional oppression, male violence, female sexuality and absence of memory. Both writers also strive to shape dissident attitudes. Questioning the existing order allows the female protagonists to break the established norms, yet, at the same time, results in unstable identity and confusion. Importantly, both authors avoid clear-cut social classifications and portray their protagonists in a heterogeneous way with maximum ambiguity. Both novels undoubtedly present an original contribution to literature due to their esthetic qualities and the themes they touch upon. Their value is also political and ethical as both texts reflect the age of sudden social changes. The comparative analysis reveals the universal character of the observed processes but also distinguishes some unique cultural features of the two novels.

Visiones del capitalismo en algunas novelas polacas y españolas posteriores a la transición hacia la democracia

Author(s): Marcin Kołakowski / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 31/2020

Although the transition to capitalism in Poland was undoubtedly more radical than in Spain, the two literatures seem to have supplied a series of texts that consider the capitalist economic system from a relatively similar critical perspective. The objective of the present article is to determine how capitalism was codified in narrative works published after the transition to democracy in both countries. The analysis encompasses novels in which capitalism constitutes one of the central themes and is the object of criticism both explicitly and implicitly. The research covers four works: Małż (2005) by Marta Dzido, Snow White and Russian Red (2002) by Dorota Masłowska, Historias del Kronen (1994) by José Ángel Mañas and Lo verdadero es un momento de lo falso (2010) by Lucía Etxebarria. The text reflects on the possibility of establishing a comparison framework in terms of correlation between the capitalism theme and the use of specific literary techniques applied to represent it.

En los caminos literarios de la memoria: Soldados de Salamina de Javier Cercas y Sońka de Ignacy Karpowicz desde una perspectiva comparativa

Author(s): Małgorzata Gaszyńska-Magiera / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 33/2021

In the article two novels are confronted, a Polish one, Sońka by Ignacy Karpowicz and a Spanish one, Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas, which belong to the so-called narrative of memory. Both in Poland and in Spain, the third generation of writers is confronted with the traumatic experiences that affected an entire generation in the 20th century and persist in the individual and collective memory of their descendants. Although the historical circumstances to which they refer are very different, certain parallels can be found: in both cases the nations experienced bloody warlike conflicts and then had to suffer several decades of authoritarian regimes. The analysis is carried out in the light of the theoretical premises formulated by Birgit Neumann on the characteristics of the prose of memory, which this researcher considers universal. A comparative study of the two novels allows us to observe that, although it is possible to identify common features of a general nature, the solutions chosen by the writers differ considerably. The differences are observed at the level of the narrative model, at the level of techniques that question the veracity of the story, and also when the novelists introduce various temporal planes.

Configurations poétiques de l’ennui dans l’espace culturel de la Romania

Author(s): Luciana Penteliuc-Cotoșman / Language(s): French Issue: 1/2020

Much more than a state of mind, the ennui crosses time and space, connecting individuals and cultures around an existential suffering born of the acute awareness of the "disenchantment" of the world and declined in a wide variety of nuances and forms, which find expression and fulfillment (in the sense of sublimation or conjuration) in literary and artistic works. From antiquity to modernity, of which it is the emblematic sign, this indefinable and polymorphous sentiment says the pain of living and the discomfort in civilization, the deep tear of being and its disagreement with the world. It is, paradoxically, a source of despair and a vector of lucidity and clairvoyance, of reflection and creation. Placed at the crossroads of knowledge, ennui appears as a true anthropological structure of great versatility, which allows the meeting and the confrontation of sensibilities and poetic imaginaries. The present article aims to revisit this complex theme and to reflect on the different ways in which the poets of Romania have seized it over time, trying to illuminate the affective nuances that it covers, symbolic images, recurring patterns, landscapes, scenarios, and thus identify, from these particular poetic experiences, the elements of an imaginary of the ennui.

Esther y Fortunata, dos heroínas de Balzac y Galdós respectivamente, dos víctimas de la sociedad decimonónica

Author(s): Lavinia Similaru / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 1/2020

Esther and Fortunata, two heroines of Balzac and Galdós, two victims from nineteenth century society. The critics had always bought Galdós with Balzac, being recognized as the two illustrious represents of European realism. Furthermore, Galdós himself confessed his admiration for the French writer. Esther is the heroine of the novel “Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes”, written by Balzac and Fortunata is the heroine of “Fortunata y Jacinta”, written by Galdós. The two protagonists fall in love with selfish and hypocrite men who are going to give up on them when they will be useless. Lucien and Juan are unfriendly and self-possessed, they only believe in themselves y they sacrifice these two women for growing up in stature in this society. Not only Esther, but also Fortunata fall in love and become mistresses of the men who love them. Lucien and Juan preffer to get married with women who have a superior social class and they don’t want to get married with these two women because they come from a low social class, even though they love the women. The two women have good feelings, but they have to prostitute because the nineteenth century society doesn’t offer them the possibility of survive. The two writers don’t judge their protagonists, it is better if they only feel sorry for them and show them sympathy. In this article we propose showing the attitude of the two writers well-known before the destiny of the women of his era.

Leopardi come fonte d'ispirazione per la poesia di Ivo Andrić

Author(s): Tamara Stanić / Language(s): Italian Issue: 2/2020

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) and Ivo Andrić (1892-1975) are two great European personalities in the world of world literature, two thinkers with many similar aspects in their way of feeling, almost contemporaneous with each other. Reading the works of Leopardi and Andrić I noticed a profound similarity in some parts of their works and I could not be indifferent. In this summary, comparing certain verses, reflections and poetic considerations of both writers, I tried to find the strong poetic and philosophical traces of Leopardi's poetry and his reflections in the work of Ivo Andrić, especially in his early early works. Leopardian thought starts from the soul, from the strong intimate and personal sadness and it is appropriate that dominant thought from which Andrić was attracted in his youth. Andrić gathered the themes of anxiety as a central experience of life and the melancholy that comes from an imagination capable of seeing clearly the disparity between real and possible. This research should, once again, shed light on the important poetic influence that, one of Leopardi's most important works dealing with Zibaldone's philological-scholarly, linguistic, literary and philosophical questions, had on the poetry of Ivo Andrić as well as illuminating their own pessimism that put them out of the common feeling of a century and that bound them strongly.

(De)scrivere Roma nell’Ottocento: alla ricerca delle radici culturali europee, a cura di Angelo Pagliardini e Alexandra Vrânceanu, Berlin, Peter Lang, 2020, 207 p.

Author(s): Pierre Musitelli / Language(s): Italian Issue: 70/2021