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Evocations of Nicolae Gane (1838-1916), owner of the Vârnav-Gane House (presently the “Nicolae Gane” Museum) and Constantin Șt. Gane (1885-1962) by Mihai Negruzzi (1873-1958), general in the Romanian Army, writer, memorialist and political figure.
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The article discusses the works of two Polish writers of the youngest generation – Tomasz Bąk and Olga Hund – in terms of what role humor plays in the descriptions of mental illnesses and disorders they present. An essential assump-tion for this paper is that recent Polish literature is developing a model of narratives about mental illnesses and disorders that clearly departs from the conventions and traditions of presenting the aforementioned as a subjective confession of an indivi-dual’s struggles or creating a cultural myth about a disturbed person as one who has insight into metaphysical spaces inaccessible to others. Instead, psychiatric narrati-ves are framed in a non-individual context: social, economic, political. One strategy for moving away from confession and romanticizing illnesses and disorders is humor – in the article analyzed mainly through Sigmund Freud’s theory of tension release. The point of arrival of the analysis is an attempt to answer the question of the purpose of humorous textual strategies, by analyzing their community-forming (affiliative) and critical (aggressive) potential.
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The start of the third decade of the 21st century marks twenty years of the existence of the verbatim technique in the Russian dramatic space. This article describes the history and specificity of the Russian verbatim theatre, as well as different ways of using and adapting this technique in the plays of the authors associated, permanently or occasionally, with the Moscow-based Teatr.doc. Using the example of texts such as Nord-Ost: Forty-First Day (2002) by journalist and theatre critic Grigory Zaslavsky, New Antigone (2017) by journalist Elena Kostyuchenko, and 67/871 (2017) by dramatist Elena Gremina, it can be concluded that the main differences between verbatim plays are primarily related to the degree of the author’s processing of documentary material. Nord-Ost: Forty-First Day is a transcript of the event that took place in the Teatr.doc, a literal recording of the statements of their participants; New Antigone – the montage of fragments of transcripts of the trials, conversations, life stories of the heroines, and quotes from Sophocles’ Antigone; 67/871 – a montage of fragments of the characters’ monologues united into thematic blocks, quotes from statements from Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, and letters from a German soldier. The variety of ways to create verbatim texts influences the expansion of the boundaries of the concept of “play” and indicates that the traditional sequence of the emergence of a dramatic text and its theatrical embodiment has lost its relevance. It is concluded that the specificity of verbatim plays fits into the modern trend of the democratisation of theatre and drama, since their rootedness in the world of reality and documentaries opens the way to dramaturgy for those authors who had not been engaged in this type of activity before.
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Sergei Yesenin is one of the most popular Russian poets in Poland. Interest in his poetry has been undiminished ever since the first translations of Inoniya (Otherland) and Tovarishch into Polish appeared in 1922. Although the literary heritage of Yesenin has been professionally researched by Polish scholars and has attracted a large following of Polish readers for a century, there are gaps in his poetry that need to be filled. The author of this article investigates the role of scents in the poems of Sergei Yesenin, taking into account their changes throughout the creative process, from his juvenile works to his final texts. This approach allows us to present not only the poet’s worldview and his deep connection to the Russian culture, but also to trace the reflection of his individual linguistic worldview in his works. The article also presents a relatively new perspective on the reception of Yesenin’s poetry in Poland, namely the peculiarities and difficulties of translating into Polish the olfactory images used by the poet to convey profound emotions.
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The window in Victor Pelevin’s works has numerous connotations, i.e. it is an element of the living space shaping the protagonist’s relationship with the outside world, defining his (i.e. the protagonist’s) position towards the world; it is a border (both spatial and ontological), as well as it is a link and a passage. Thus, the ambivalent characteristics of the window, its perception and feature all depend on the stance of a human beholder (or using literary terminology: a character, protagonist, and narrator) towards the window and his attitude towards the space with the window being its element. In Hermit and Six-Toes, the confined space in which the protagonists spend their entire lives is an oppressive territory, with the protagonists seeking a way to escape. The road to freedom leads, quite surprisingly, through a broken window, followed by a flight towards the sun. Thus, in this work, the window is treated as a threshold (liminal) zone, because a specific rite of passage and transformation of the characters takes place there or within. They grow to learn the truth and, rebelling in defence of their own lives, realise that they will either save themselves or succumb to the disastrous rhythm imposed on them by the world.
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The subject of the article is a poetic text from the manuscript in Tikhonravov’s collection, which is presented in the Russian State Library. It was created under the influence of medieval books, related to the theme of memento mori (Theatrum mortis humanae tripartitum). The poem describes three curious deaths, as an author qualifies them. Aegeus dies out of cowardice and the lack of wisdom when he saw the decrepit sails on his son’s ship, although Theseus came away from Crete with a victory. Aeschylus was killed because of his naivete when he was trying to avoid a prophecy saying that he would be killed by a falling of someone’s house, but an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. Samson kills himself of excessive courage and the lack of wisdom. These stories, given in a poem as an exempla, are borrowed from the book Ifika Hieropolitics. When comparing these texts, one can see the technology of transcribing a prose text into a poetic text, which was used at the beginning of the 18th century. Lots of historical anecdotes about curious deaths have been known since antiquity. In the Middle Ages, they are grouped in literature on the theme of death. In Russia, this model was realised in the poetry of Simeon of Polotsk and flourished during the Baroque period. Such plots subsequently appeared in works of fiction and non-fiction, and not only in historical anecdotes, but also for characterising the absurdity of life and creating existential horror. Similarly to baroque texts, they still combine elements of the terrible and the curious.
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In its most general form, Mikhail Epstein is outlined by such a vast circle of spheres as philology, philosophy, cultural studies, literary criticism, or linguistics. Currently, Epstein’s method is classified by researchers as “analytically-oriented”. The purpose of the article is to determine the set of methods of philosophical essayism by Mikhail Epstein, which will be achieved based on the material of the book The Paradoxes of Novelty. Despite the fact that the author’s self-reflection extends over a large number of articles (“Laws of the Free Genre (Essay and Essayism in the Culture of the New Time)”, “On the Soul. Four Essays”, “Essays on Essays”, “God of Details”, etc.), features of the poetics of essayism such as the author’s principle, imagery, and digressions are revealed in a more focused way, i.e. based on the opening book. The book is notable for its freedom of presentation, its being full of aphorisms, and its lengthy philosophical sayings. Essayisation can be considered the leading genre-forming principle of the book, affecting the way of presenting thoughts. The author’s task is to clarify the meaning of tradition in literature, which is associated with the author’s central interest, namely “culture in its borderline situations”. The factor that holds the texts together is the author’s desire to propose a way to solve the “problem situation”: what is criticism and how to look at literature? The plot of the book is built upon the author’s own questions and personal preferences. The task is to analyse what was written earlier and summarise the milestone results of creative activity. The book has a character of a manifest as the first major work of the author. It contains a programme for Epstein’s future activities, which is confirmed by the subsequent addition and reprint of the publication. It is essential that Russian classical literature was chosen as the material.
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Prior to the change of regime in 1989, Bucharest-based publishing house Kriterion was the largest Hungarian publishing house outside Hungary and the most significant German publisher outside the German-speaking countries. The aim of this paper is to examine the activity of Kriterion from the point of view of the literary translations it published. Kriterion focused on the literature of the main ethnic groups in the country and made it available in Romanian, thus allowing the different ethnicities to better know each other, considerably increasing mutual tolerance. The first part of our paper focuses on the various hindrances imposed by the ruling Communist Party of Romania that had a negative impact on the activity of Kriterion. In the second part, we seek to illustrate the role of Kriterion in achieving cultural proximity through translations in the face of adversity. The third part presents another attempt to unite authors of various languages.
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Szkic prof. Tadeusza Bujnickiego poświęcony parodii "Powsinóg beskidzkich" Emila Zegadłowicza, autorstwa Tadeusza Łopalewskiego związanego z z wileńskim klubem literacko-artystycznym "Smorgonia". Tekst parodii pojawił w audycji radiowej z 27 stycznia 1934 r. pod tytułem "Parada parodii" z wyodrębnioną częścią "Podparnasie polskie".
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