Maurice Blanchot and Space as Opening: Revelations of the Impossible

Author(s): Caroline Sheaffer-Jones / Language(s): English Issue: 01/2015

In describing literature and writing, from his early publications collected in Faux pas to some of his later texts, Maurice Blanchot evokes, from many perspectives, the limits of textual space, where it might reveal an opening. It would be this textual space as opening, which writers like Rilke, Broch and many others would pursue in an experience which is extreme, in a sense impossible. Such would also be the case of the poet Orpheus, who, in search of Eurydice in L’Espace littéraire, is dispersed. However, in L’Entretien infini, with reference to Emmanuel Levinas, Blanchot revisits the opening of language, in writing about radical alterity and the ethical relation to the opening of infinite transcendence. In L’Entretien infini, Blanchot also discusses Nietzsche’s limit-experience and fragmentary writing, as well as a paradoxical space relating to Nietzsche’s eternal return and revelation. What is the importance of these changing spaces in Blanchot’s trajectory of writing? Might they trace an opening beyond metaphysics, such as Jacques Derrida has elaborated in many texts?

Rotprávka bratov Grimmovcov Žabí kráľ (ATU 440) v interetnickom kontexte

Author(s): József Liszka / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2015

Poetica imaginii - o hermeneutică fenomenologică

Author(s): Dorin Stefanescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1-2/2015

The paper discusses the so-called matrix-images, as a veritable genetic code for the developed images, in which the significant is yet an incipient form. At this level one can speak about neither manifestation, nor representation, because it is an unapparent image hidden in the form it shows. But in this primary form, that what signifies gives already something to see and to understand. The paradox is the following: the form of this infra-image is a diaphanous medium, through which one can see as if it doesn’t contain anything. Because it is an absent image, hidden in its own transparence, it may be seen and understood only by means of a pre-interpretative hermeneutics, strengthened in its comprehensive capacity with the contribution of the phenomenology of the unapparent. As for the religious images, the study points out the meanings of the “figure” in Pascal’s Thoughts.

Псевдо-Златоустовото слово „За лъжепророците“ (CPG 4583) в сборника „Златоструй“

Author(s): Aneta Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2015

The sermon “De pseudoprophetis” (CPG 4583), traditionally falsely attributed to St. John Chrysostom, was translated very early into Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) and at the time was very popular in the Slavic literary tradition. It was included in all known versions of the Chrysorrhoas collection (Zlatostruy) where it underwent many changes, transformations and abridgements. In most copies of the full translation of the sermon there is a large interpolation of several folia from the previous homily in the Chrysorrhoas collection. This interpolated version of “De pseudoprophetis” became also the source for one of the readings in another, later collection of edificatory texts, the so called Izmaragd. The article examines in detail the presence of the sermon in Zlatostruy, especially the relationship between the different versions, and discusses in brief the language and the specific features of the translation

Frazemi sa komponentom face/lice u engleskom i bosanskom jeziku

Author(s): Jasmina Stuhli / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 10/2013

Balada si Mjet për Njohje Ndërkulturore

Author(s): Lumnije Kadriu / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 44/2014

In the age of great mobility recognized as an age of globalization, and ascertained as postmodern condition, phenomena are intertwined in very interesting and often un-foreseen ways. Very often we see the past and the present being reorganized in most amazing ways. In this paper I will try to describe how a novel “Kush e solli Dorunt-inën” written by famous Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, based on Albanian folk ballad on Konstandin and Doruntina is used by theater troops of New York and Prishtina, and brought into a play, as a means of intercultural acquaintances and understanding. The ballad has to do with the kept brother’s promise to his sister even after death, a concept of “besa - a given word - a promise” being among Albanians as quite peculiar and rec-ognizable cultural feature and also presented as such to “others”. If, according to Raymond Williams, “work of cultural analyses should be the ‘clarifica-tion of the meanings and values implicit and explicit in a particular way of life, a particu-lar culture’”, then this is certainly one way to do so.

ЗАГАТЛИВИОТ БИСЕР ШТО ЈА ЗАТВОРА РАНАТА: КОН ПОЕТСКАТА КНИГА ДНИ, ГОДИНИ ОД ДИМИТАР БАШЕВСКИ

Author(s): Ivan Dodovski / Language(s): Macedonian Issue: 83/2024

For his book Days, years Dimitar Bashevski has received the highest 2023 Macedonian national poetry award Miladinov Brothers, given by the International Festival Struga Poetry Evenings. In spite of the common critical perception of Dimitar Bashevski as a primarily fiction writer, his seven books of poetry published in the past 35 years demonstrate a coherent poetic model which seems illustrative of the principles of imagism as charted by Ezra Pound. This paper analyses Bashevski’s latest title Days, years as probably the most exemplary of the two contrasts – nature vs. the city and yesterday vs. today – that define his poetry. He creates a vision of plants, insects, birds and animals which together with people connect and celebrate life in the microcosm called “the village”. The latter is opposed to the ironic image of the city of people alienated by technological devices. Bashevski’s images often come through a child’s perspective, through memory, but are refracted through the wisdom that comes later, in old age. And so, poetry, like a precious pearl, appears as a sublime experience that heals the wounds of the life journey.

„Сва мјеста једнако туђа”: компаративно читање „Беспућа” Вељка Милићевића и „Туђинца” Динка Шимуновића

Author(s): Sofija Todorović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 4/2024

The paper comparatively examines two South Slavonic modernist novels, Dinko Šimunović’s (1873–1933) “The Stranger” (Tuđinac, 1911) and Veljko Milićević’s (1886–1929) “The Pathless Land” (Bespuće, 1912), with an emphasis on different manifestations of the phenomenon of alienation. A special attention is paid to the analysis of the novels’ specifically shaped, estranged protagonists, Milićević’s Gavre and Šimunović’s Stanko. These existentially “homeless”, resigned melancholics are characterized by a particular kind of uprootedness: they cannot determine themselves, neither in relation to their native soil (which remains factual, but not emotional “homeland”), nor in relation to any other place, or any other aspect of life that could potentially gain satisfaction and a sense of belonging. Firstly, interpersonal relationships and love (Made in “The Stranger” and Irena in “The Pathless Land”) prove to be insufficient to overcome the feeling of estrangement; secondly, the protagonists are alienated from their own memories and personal history; and, finally, in the case of “The Stranger”, the weak will of the aesthetically sensitive protagonist prevents him from creatively producing his intuitive artistic ideas. The novels’ endings with the “self-exile” to America form a kind of circular structure, leaving the protagonists with the same feeling of detachment. Through a parallel analysis of the indicated semantic layers, the aim of the paper is to offer the possibility of a comparative reading of the novels “The Pathless Land” and “The Stranger” and to point out the similarities and peculiarities of the modernist treatment of the uprooted protagonist in the South Slavonic literary context.

BAUDELAIRE FAIT SON CINEMA

Author(s): André Guyaux / Language(s): French Issue: 2/2024

Baudelaire Makes His Cinema. This paper proposes a cross-interpretation of Baudelaire’s links with the world of theater. On the one hand, it is about the writer’s fascination with the world of the stage, the actors and actresses he knew or whose acting he commented in his literary reviews, or his attempts to write plays. On the other hand, things are also looked at from the other side of the coin, providing valuable insights into how Baudelaire was regarded by the theater professionals he encountered throughout his career. The article argues that Baudelaire did not complete any play projects due to both procrastination and the infusion of theatrical elements into other dimensions of his writing. In fact, Baudelaire was dreaming of a theatre too modern to be materialized on stage in the conventions of the nineteenth century, but at the same time he was shifting the boundaries of artistic representation towards a new art, which was to be the seventh: cinematography.

ABSORPTION AND THEATRICALITY IN THE STAGING OF CONTEMPT: FLAUBERT, BAUDELAIRE, HUYSMANS

Author(s): Julien Zanetta / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2024

Drawing on two categories suggested by art historian Michael Fried – absorption and theatricality –, this article suggest a specification relative to how we feel and express a particular emotion: contempt. To better understand the distinction between absorbed and distanced contempt, and all the emotional consequences that ensue, three specific and contrasting examples taken from Flaubert, Baudelaire and Huysmans are analysed here.

Encounter with(in) Other Times. On Two Novels by Olga Tokarczuk

Author(s): István Berszán / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Olga Tokarczuk’s novels take place in the mazes of time. This paper explores what disjunctions and connections her novels such as Primeval and Other Times (2010 [1996]) or House of Day, House of Night (2003 [1998]) reveal and how we can navigate between the events of a time, the resonances between times, and the attempts to encounter different times. To what extent do the practices of reading and writing the Tokarczuk novels correspond to art theoretical thinking based on the historical regimes of aesthetics and the notion of historicity, and where do they raise questions that prompt a rethinking of these paradigms? The practice-oriented physics and eco-rhythmology proposed by me should also be put to a similar test in order to see what support they provide for research into the practical orientation of Tokarczuk’s novels in times and where the art of writing under examination prompts new/further hypotheses.

J. M. Coetzee, W. G. Sebald, and Jacques Rancière. An Encounter in Time. (The Jesus Trilogy and Austerlitz)

Author(s): Georgiana Bodeanu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Coetzee’s reading of Sebald is significative for his writing of the Jesus trilogy. The very thesis of the trilogy relates to the existence of a world where all references to the past are lost in oblivion, which, according to Coetzee, would have been a possible salvation for Austerlitz, Sebald’s protagonist. This paper will analyse to what extent Coetzee’s encounter with Sebald determined the conception of time that is found in the three Jesus novels. Furthermore, the two authors share the same preoccupation with the issue of time regarding “the anxiety expressed by Rainer Maria Rilke inhis letters about the duty of the artist as bearer of cultural memory” (Coetzee2008), which I would filter through Jacques Rancière’s exploration of time and temporality (The Politics of Aesthetics, 2004; The Edges of Fiction,2020; Modern Times: Temporality in Art and Politics, 2022). Finally, their conceptions of Chronos differ in relation with Topos: if Sebald’s prose is suffocated with the texture of a collage of historical materials, in Coetzee’s prose the materiality is diluted. However, in the two experimental narratives, there are certain institutions that guard over a specific rendering of time which reveals the complexity of the encounter. Moreover, Jacques Rancière is also a reader of Sebald’s prose, a fact which motivates the endeavour to explore this threefold relationship.

Only by Knowing The Other Shalt Thou Know Thyself: Americanness and Britishness as Defining Forces for Canadianness in Hugh MacLennan’s Early Novels

Author(s): Maximilian Rhys / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

In the aftermath of World War II, Canada stood at a crossroads marked by mutual incomprehension and a lack of willingness to understand The Other on the part of both Anglo- and Franco-Canadians. At that time, its identity was only in the process of forming itself into a prospective national conscience. Hugh MacLennan was one of the few writers of that period to try to understand the full depths and intricacies of the historical burden characterizing the difficult coexistence of the two “Founding Nations.” In his specific, personal way, MacLennan tried to show and prove that these national, linguistic, social, as well as religious barriers should be finally abandoned as a matter of the past. Communicating his sympathies and understanding for the French-speaking “minority” within the whole of Canada through his novels may seem to be, yet is not, his primary goal. Another significant objective of his frequently didactic novels was to show the undeniably influential role of Britishness and Americanness in the process of “defining Canada’s Canadianness.” This issue was even more important than attempting to solve the endless, insoluble skirmishes between the English and French Canadians. Not only were the striking differences between Canadians, and Americans and the British a way to help define Canadianness, but the encounter(s) with The Other on the outside presented a potential prospect of solidifying and strengthening the “internal Canadian bond,” with MacLennan’s oeuvre contributing to the very definition of the modern Canadian nation’s identity. Taking into account views related to the post-colonial theories, the article (re)confirms the position of MacLennan aspiring to be the nation’s first true post-colonial (or non-colonial) writer.

Exorcizing the Ghost of Herder: A Community-Based Approach to Translating Hungarian Literary Texts

Author(s): Zénó Vernyik / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Hungarian literary texts in translation have been consistently successful in the Czech Republic in the past 25 years, as the Magnesia Litera prize for the best translated book in 2024 awarded to Marta Pató’s translation of László Szilasi’s A harmadik híd [The Third Bridge] and a whole range of other Czech prizes awarded to translations of Hungarian texts illustrate. This decades-long success story contests assertions that Hungarian literature is relatively unknown internationally due to its weak translations, untranslatable expressions, and cultural specificity. The essay revisits Mihály Szegedy-Maszák’s (2003) article on this topic as a text that is symptomatic of a range of persistent beliefs about the factors that hinder the successful translation of Hungarian literary texts. Besides criticizing several such claims about translation quality and national specificity, however, it also advocates for a change of focus on supranational and subnational communities and the multilingual, multicultural, and multiethnic nature of cultural spaces, and it calls for a new approach to both studying and translating “small” literatures.

From Dustings of Snow to Wax Tablets. Forms of Remembrance in Selected Poems by Krisztina Tóth

Author(s): Vilma-Irén Mihály / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

The present study aims at discussing memory and remembrance through their relationship with literature, more precisely, poetry. The analysis reaches back to Plato’s dialogue about the primacy of orality over literacy. Relying on the myth of Mnemosyne and Lethe, it then flows over to look at poetry as a special type of remembrance. Poems seem to remain ambiguous in nature, concealing and revealing truth at the same time. However, through this constant hide-and-seek with the audience, as far as their interpretations are concerned, they unravel the art of creation itself. They bring the reader back to the origins, to the source of memories. The practical part of the study consists of presenting and analysing contemporary Hungarian poems by Krisztina Tóth. The poems were selected arbitrarily, but they refer to or hint at Mnemosyne and/or memory.

On the Margin of the Web: The Story of Briseis

Author(s): Andreea Petre / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Pat Barker’s novels Silence of the Girls and Women of Troy are part of some female authors’ successful approach, which emerged after the 1980s, to rewrite Homer’s fundamental texts from the perspective of the female character. Without changing the fate of the Homeric heroes, the author proposes a reassessment of the relationships between the characters by adopting an internal point of view of Briseis, the queen who became Achilles’s slave. Constantly contrasted to the glorious androcentrism in Homer’s epic, Pat Barker’s texts aim at shifting women’s place from the margins to the centre, from the insignificant status of a slave to that of a generator of powerful conflicts in the dominant world of men. Exposed and humiliated, Briseis understands that the major danger is not death but the loss of identity, the brutal reduction of a woman to a mere object. Thus, a different perspective on the events in Homer’s Iliad emerges, a different angle, able to question the central, seemingly indestructible status of the male collective. The present study aims at discovering how, after the protagonist’s encounter with the strong, powerful characters of the epic, their hidden aspects are brought to surface and a fine weave of correspondences that the author creates between periphery and centre, the dominator and the dominated, the vanquished and the victor, meaning and nonsense is highlighted.

Encounters: Word and Image, Speech and Body

Author(s): Alice Jedličková / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

The paper analyses two pieces of multimodal storytelling that represent the genre recently labelled as artistic document (Lupínková2022, Jirků 2022). The narratives feature sensitive topics such as eating disorders, coming of age, and accepting oneself and the other. These publications also reflect the trend of independent publishing houses to produce slow-read book-artefacts. For this reason, the enquiry draws on the methods of intermedial studies and correlates the observed phenomena with the changing understanding of literariness employing the concept of post-autonomous literature, and with the transformation of cultural communication in general. The analysis focuses on the relation of factual and fictional strategies of the texts and on the interplay of the verbal and visual components, as well as the potential impact of the particular material qualities of these books on the process of reception.

Ekphrastic Poetry on the Venus de Milo

Author(s): Orsolya Milián / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Within literary studies, the interaction of ekphrastic poetry and painting constitutes a frequently examined topic, but the intermedial relationships between poetry and sculpture have been more rarely explored. Contributing to the scholarship on literary ekphrasis and on the interrelations between poetry and sculpture, the paper focuses on strategies of description and narrativization, paying homage and developing a rivalry, and the account of the viewer’s activity and their aesthetic evaluation. The essay examines these issues via the case study of the ekphrastic lyrical tradition of the Venus de Milo. Firstly, it lays out a sketch of nineteenth-century art historical and lyrical approaches to the Venus de Milo. Secondly and predominantly, it analyses some examples of twentieth-century ekphrasis (such as the Hungarian Gyula Juhász’s “Milói Vénus,” the Romanian Alfred Moşoiu’s “Venus din Milo,” the British Alfred Noyes’s “The Venus of Milo,”and the Hungarian György Rónay’s “A milói Vénusz”), which all respond to the statue of Venus de Milo, and either continue or break the art historical and lyrical traditions developed during the 1800s. Therefore, on the one hand, the study demonstrates how ekphrastic literary traditions, while participating in the canonization of visual works of art, show the traces of the changing approaches and appreciations of their artistic object (in this case study, the Venus de Milo) over a long period of time, and, on the other hand, it sheds light on how the ekphrastic literary tradition itself is shaped.

Intersecting Visions: The Symbiotic Relationship of Literature and the Arts in the Antiquity and the Romantic Age

Author(s): Petru Ionescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

This paper presents the complex and dynamic relationship between literature and the arts, exploring how these two domains have symbiotically interacted, especially in the Antiquity and the Romantic Age. By examining the mutual influences, thematic resonances, and aesthetic convergences between literature and the arts, this study seeks to expose some of the complex intermedial dialogues that have enriched cultural expressions throughout history. Through a comparative analysis that spans mainly two key historical epochs – each marked by distinctive socio-cultural and philosophical currents –, this research highlights how literature and arts have not only reflected but also shaped and propelled each other’s evolution. The paper employs a dual methodological approach, combining theoretical frameworks with specific case studies, to demonstrate the way these artistic synergies have manifested. This approach allows for amore detailed understanding of the roles that art and literature play in both mirroring and constructing the human experience, thus offering insights into the broader cultural and aesthetic implications of their interplay. The study underscores the enduring power of artistic collaboration and influence, revealing how these intersections have contributed to the development of complex cultural narratives and the continuous redefinition of aesthetic and philosophical paradigms.

DICHOTOMY BETWEEN BODY AND SOUL/MIND IN THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH AND THOMAS MANN’S THE TRANSPOSED HEADS

Author(s): Gözde CAMKIRAN DÜZ / Language(s): English Issue: 65/2025

Given the complexity and awkwardness of human beings both physically and psychologically, human nature is equally difficult to comprehend. This has made it a significant topic of discussion throughout history. This article examines the struggle between body and soul/mind predicated upon Plato’s theory, which delves into their differences. The primary question explored is whether the body or soul is the determining factor. Plato argues for the supremacy of the soul over the body, using metaphors and logical arguments presented in dialogues to reinforce his points. In terms of body and soul, Plato addresses issues of justice, virtue, goodness, morality, and truth, all of which contribute to the ideal soul necessary for achieving philosophical knowledge. According to Plato, the body, bound by the deceptions of the physical world, hinders the soul's ability to reach the realm of the Forms or Ideas. This conceptual framework is extensively analyzed in Plato’s Republic, where all these terms and ideas are thoroughly explored. Plato’s theory is examined through a comparative analysis of the ancient myth The Epic of Gilgamesh and its modern reinterpretation, The Transposed Heads by the German author Thomas Mann. The study investigates the dichotomy between body and soul by analyzing the distinct yet complementary characteristics of the main characters (Gilgamesh-Enkidu and Shridaman-Nanda) in both works, drawing parallels to the relationship between body and soul.