The Concept of Time and Identity in the Bulgarian Literary Modernism of the 1920s

Author(s): Ivan Hristov / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2015

This paper examines how the concept of time and identity in Bulgarian literary modernism changed during the 1920s. The conditions for as well as the results of this change are also analyzed. In 1920, the concept of time in Bulgarian literary modernism was still cyclical. In his article “Native Art”, the Bulgarian expressionist Geo Milev proclaimed the postulates of the new art. Milev called for a representation of a mythical time and mythical space in art, favoring the past. The paper pays particular attention to the influence of Oswald Spengler’s book “The Decline of the West” (1923) upon the formation of Bulgarian modernists’ concepts of time and identity. Modernists from the Sagittarius Circle, influenced by this book, gave preference to the 19th century, the time of the Bulgarian Revival, exchanging cyclical time for historical time. Being contra-modern, Bulgarian modernism transformed into a modern project in 1925 – 1927. Concepts about time and space are examined in detail, while the concepts of continuity and tradition, as well as cyclicity and historicity are analyzed within the context of Bulgarian modernists’ writings.

Tematska ozbiljnost dijaloga Branka Ćopića i teatra

Author(s): Jakov Amidžić,Predrag Nešović,Srđan Vukadinović / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 3-4/2015

Trideset godina od smrti je bilo 2014. a 365 dana kasnije sto godina od rođenja Branka Ćopića. Ta činjenica je plod dvije čudne simbioze u nastanku i samo fizičkom nestanku pisca, koji je obilježio jedno i književno, a i teatarsko vrijeme. Dijalog između literature i teatra uspostavlja predstava kao kolektivni čin i scensko ovaploćenje djela. Ispoljene ≪opasnosti≫ po konačnu pozorišnu umjetničku kreaciju postoje ako se radi o dramatizacijama velikih djela i značajnih autora. Vrlo realna je mogućnost da neko veliko djelo svojom grandioznošću nadvlada teatarski čin. U takvom stanju se ogleda i dominantno prisutna tematska ozbiljnost dijaloga Branka Ćopića i teatra. Komadi koji su producirani na bosanskohercegovačkim profesionalnim scenama, a koji su rađeni po djelima Branka Ćopića imali su svoj intenzivan kazališni život sve do devedestih godina XX vijeka. Pslije toga gotovo dvodecenijski zastoj. Život i djelo Branka Ćopića su se negdje podudarali, tako da je moguće sačiniti kratku Ćopićevu biografiju gotovo isključivo da se bude vođeno naslovima njegovih djela. Ćopić poetskim realizmom, a kazališni stvaraoci teatarskim znakom su Bosansku krajinu ≪čehovljevski zapečatili≫, a Grmeč učinili velikim poetskim, odnosno dramskim simbolom.

Kako je radio Čehov

Author(s): Zinovy Samoilovich Paperny / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3-4/2015

У познатом писму Д. В. Григоровичу, 28. марта 1886. године, млади Чехов простодушно признаје: Као што репортери пишу своје чланчиће о пожарима, тако сам и ја – махинално – писао своје приповетке... Он се жали на посао везан за рок, на књижевно надничење, где нема времена да се о делу добро промисли: не памтим ниједне своје приче над којом сам радио више од двадесет и четири сата...

Priča kao samolegitimirajuća i samorefleksivna forma

Author(s): Larisa Softić-Gasal / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2015

The short story, as a new literary genre of Bosnian and Herzegovinian literature of the transitional period, has found its way to enter the market of recipients. The role of the reader as a member of a specific cultural group is very important when trying to define the short story. The reader is one of the participants of a contextual network that makes all literary works “open”, thus offering enormous possibilities of detailed reading, rereading and reflection. Previous attempts to define the short story depict it as a modern, contemporary and intensive prose form and a response to the internal raptures of modern recipients. Engaging readers in the process of creating has been achieved by the well-known Brechtian waking up to reality which breaks, to some extent, both the narrative and theatrical illusions. By comparing the so called open forms of stories/dramas, a particular pattern of linguistic behaviour of characters is observed that reflects their difficulties to articulate their feelings, to express them and to reveal them to themselves and to others. Most of the compared short stories/dramas of open forms are characterized by impaired communication between characters. Their statements barely follow one another or, in turn, come with hesitation and have the characteristics of intellectual disability. Zlatko Topčić’s stories Garib and Hasanaginica present the social problem of accepting the allegorical morality/mentality of male society, while promoting the characters as carriers of both the burden of otherness and their own immanent perspective of resistance. Games of signifiers (God, ownership, state) represent the power of the ideology of modern class society. Many short stories from the period of transition of Bosnian and Herzegovinian society are a valuable challenge to the reader’s sensibility to grasp the relativity of the perspective of all socially assumed standards of evaluation.

Trend distopijskog u suvremenoj Hrvatskoj Prozi

Author(s): Igor Gajin / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2015

In contemporary Croatian prose from 2010 to the present day, there has been an abundant series of novels with dystopian content that has introduced, so to speak, a new genre in the Croatian literary tradition, since in the diachrony of this national literature the dystopian themes have barely been represented. The paper intends to construe the cultural context of the cause of this phenomenon and point to the link in the structure of feelings formed by the processes of transition, globalization and neoliberal capitalism with the manifestation of the intensification of the dystopian genre as a motivated discursive manoeuvre by which social criticism is moved from the present “realistic prose” to “fantasy” imaginings of the future.

Mi ég a takaród alatt? Ladik Katalin szervetlen Metaforáiról

Author(s): Roland Orcsik / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2015

The paper will present the art of one of the most interesting authors of Hungarian literature, Katalin Ladik – from the aspect of creating the inorganic metaphor. The Voivodinian and Ex-Yugoslavian neoavantgarde scene will be discussed, especially the authors and relationships of the magazine Új Symposion from Novi Sad (Újvidék). The parallel with the Hungarian experimental art is important as well. The paper analyses the private mythology, autonomous artworks, and mystical anarchy of Ladik from the aspect of perversion, “not hygienic” and transgression. In conclusion, the paper will analyse the works of some young contemporary authors, in whose works the explosion of trope figures excites similar vibrations as in Ladik’s works.

Jedna molitva i urota: proturječja u dramama na zrinsko-frankopansku temu

Author(s): Marijana Ivić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 2/2015

This paper starts from an uncommon place in Frankopan’s prayer book, which is, uncharacteristically for prayer, permeated with a vengeful tone. Katharina’s prayer is followed from that sacred paradigm and Kumičić’s literarization through later dramatizations of the zrinski-frankopan theme. On the one hand, this draws attention to prayer in general in the literarization of this historical theme, which was necessary, because despite the fact that prayer is a particularly foremost component in that framework, it has not been mentioned in previous literature. On the other hand, it is indicated that the prayer, starting from Kumičić, cannot be read solely as a way of (over)emphasizing piety, but that it should be looked at from the negative point of view as well. The paper is expanded in this way and it highlights places in literarization that look askance at the implied signifiers of the prayer such as piety or giving the sense to the existence of one’s own nature. It can be noted that with the return of the zrinski-frankopan theme in 1915., we note that not only a poetical movement occurs, but also the one in relation to the prayer. More daring authors appear that revalorize its concept. We note its relation with “eternal darknesss” (Strozzi), unmasking of hypocritical prayer (Ogrizović, Šop) and the process of desacralization Zrinski and Frankopan (Raos, Gavran). A series of texts that decentralize the prayer from its stereotypical meaning to the liberal aspect expand to Gavran’s The Conspirators (1984).

Poslat ću ti što ti srce bude htjelo: Iva Pleše, Pismo, poruka, mejl: etnografija korespondencije

Author(s): Izabela Pleša / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 2/2015

Review of: - - - - - - - - - - - - Iva Pleše, Pismo, poruka, mejl: etnografija korespondencije, Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, Zagreb, 2014., 277 str.

Есе за писача на есета

Author(s): Romeo Popiliev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2003

Proza rusă antitotalitară

Author(s): Antoanela Oltean / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 3-4/2015

The paper presents a general survey of Russian literature from the point of view of its antitotalitarian approach. The dissidence and protest in Russian literature is not for sure a event of 70s of 80s; but a sort of tradition from Imperial age. The paper aims to present esepecially the newest works published nowadays; which mark a sort of continuity of this process.

Karczmy i zajazdy. Literackie opisy przestrzeni wielokulturowej

Author(s): Andrzej Fabianowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2010

In dem Artikel wird eines der wichtigsten Elemente des (reise)literarischen Nachlasses im XIX. Jahrhundert, nämlich das Wirtshaus, dargestellt. Charakteristisch für die damalige kulturelle Wirklichkeit war die Tatsache, dass diese Gasthäuser von den Vertretern der jüdischen Gemeinde geführt wurden. Diese Situation war ein Ergebnis der im XIX Jahrhundert herrschenden Gesetzgebung, die die Ausübung von anderen Berufen als den des Gastwirtes für Juden verbot. Gasthäuser wurden im multikulturellem Polen und später nach dem Verlust der Unabhängigkeit eine Schnittstelle von Interessen folgender drei ökonomischer Instanzen: der polnischen Gutsbesitzer, der jüdischen Pächter und polnischer Bauern. Bei einer Gelegenheit der ökonomischen Verhältnisse kam es auch zu einem spezifischen kulturellen Austausch. Für den polnischen Bauer war ein Wirtshaus nicht nur eine Anlaufstelle, an der er sich nach aktuellen Informationen erkundigen konnte, sondern auch ein Forum, in dem Wissen über die weite Welt ausgetauscht wurde. Die Bilder der ländlichen, von Juden geführten Wirtshäuser, wurde ein Thema vieler Werke der polnischen Literatur. Folgende Autoren sind zu erwähnen: F. Kowalski, S. K. Potocki, W. Wiącek, E. A. Odyniec, J. I. Kraszewski. Das ländliche Wirtshaus in einer typischen Beschreibung ist meistens ein Ort, an dem die Juden die polnischen Bauern ans Trinken gewöhnen und mit Krediten oder anderen Verpflichtungen abhängig machen. In einem kleineren Ausmaß wird auch eine gute Seite des Charakters und nationaler Eigenschaften der Juden gezeigt. Es wird aber darüber geschwiegen, dass die Juden zur Ausübung von Funktion des Pächters von dem damaligen Recht und polnischen Gutsbesitzern gezwungen wurden.

Du silence à l’oubli : la mémoire séfarade

Author(s): Elisabeth Schulz / Language(s): French Issue: 14/2014

« Nous ne voulons pas que notre histoire soit oubliée ! » » Ceci résume bien les motivations d’un bon nombre d’écrivains juifs francophones originaires des pays arabes. Or pendant longtemps, l’oubli menaçait d’une seconde disparition la civilisation séfarade. Aujourd’hui pourtant, cette mémoire resurgit comme jamais. “We don’t want our story to be forgotten !” This statement sums up the motivations of many French-speaking Jewish writers from Arab nations. For a long time, loss of memory threatened to make Sephardic civilisation disappear for a second time. Today,however, these memories are flourishing like never before. Keywords : Forgetting, silence, Sephardic memory, literature, Sephardic history Giovanni Rotiroti, « Perspectives psychanalytiques du regard : Gherasim

Калейдоскоп от интереси. Елисавета Мусакова на 60 години

Author(s): Nona Petkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2016

Из “Печални тропици”. V. Намбиквара. По телеграфната линия

Author(s): Claude Lévi-Strauss / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 84-85/2016

Reprodukcja jako jeden ze sposobów na osiągniecie ekwiwalencji formalno-estetycznej w przekładzie (na materiale wierszy księdza Jana Twardowskiego)

Author(s): Beata Edyta Dworakowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15/2015

The object of analysis are Jan Twardowski’s poems translated into Russian in comparison with original texts. The aim was to check whether formal-aesthetic equivalence had been achieved in the translation of stylistictropes. The author presents their linguistic description and specific techniques, used by translators in the process of translation. As a result, the Russian texts of poems are aesthetically equivalent to the original texts.

Бiблейскiя алюзii ў беларускай паэзii пачатку ХХI стагоддзя (на матэрыяле кнiгi вершаў Леанiда Галубовiча «З гэтага свету», 2012)

Author(s): Eva Lâvanova / Language(s): Belarusian Issue: 7/2015

In the article Leanid Galubovich’s collection of poems “З гэтага свету” is analyzed. Their deep semantic content results from a dialog with the Bible. Various forms of perception of biblical material (poems directed to God, interpretation of biblical plots, motifs and images) are discussed.

O sławnych prawodawcach w wierszach Adama Mickiewicza

Author(s): Krzysztof Szczygielski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

Adam Mickiewicz is regarded as the greatest Polish poet. His works have a timeless value, providing an inexhaustible source of inspiration for subsequent generations of readers. In the works by Adam Mickiewicz, we can find many references to ancient laws, including the famous lawgivers. In the poem Warcaby, the poet notes that lawgivers often did not obey the laws which they themselves had established. He reminds the reader of the story of the Greek ruler Zaleucus, who lived in the 7th century B.C. He punished adulterers with the loss of both eyes. When his own son committed the crime, Zaleucus violated this law. He decided to have one of his son’s eyes taken out and one of his own. Another lawgiver mentioned by Adam Mickiewicz in the poem is Appius Claudius. He was a member of a special commission composed of ten men (decemviri legibus scribundis) who wrote in the years 451–450 B.C. the Law of the Twelve Tables (lex duodecim tabularum). Shortly afterwards, however, he was guilty of violating the law in an attempt to deprive a beautiful plebeian girl, Verginia, of her freedom. Another of the famous lawgivers mentioned by the poet, in his poems Walka miodowa and Jamby [Na imieninach Onufrego Pietraszkiewicza], is byzantine emperor Justinian the Great. In Jamby Adam Mickiewicz mentions the Digest (Digesta), the main part of the codification of the Roman law written during the reign of Justinian. The Digest was published in Latin in 533 A.D., and later translated into Greek, so it’s also known as the Pandects.

Mälupaik sinepigaas. Esimene maailmasõda, keemiarelv ja kirjandus

Author(s): Jaan Undusk / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 17/2015

The article discusses World War I as one of the most influential factors in the modernisation of European society that brought about rapid advances in total warfare and modern technology. Weapons of mass destruction were used and “higher forms of killing” deployed,among which the technologically most innovative was poison gas or, more generally, chemical weaponry. It was mustard gas, used for the first time at Ypres in July 1917, that would acquire the most notorious reputation among the war gases, and become almost a symbol of the Great War. Even the gas mask, which was invented during the war, could not lend protection against mustard gas.Due to World War I, a turn towards a less elevated depiction of war occurred in literature. The German word Materialschlacht (“material battle”) denoted the dispatching of an immense amount of “dead matter” (metal, explosives and gas) on both sides of the front, which resulted in the indiscriminate extermination of organic life (e.g. people, horses and the natural environment). The article provides a survey of the early motifs of gas warfare in literatures written in French, German and English (by GeorgesDuhamel, Roland Dorgelès, Ernst Jünger, John Roderigo Dos Passos,Ludwig Renn, Richard Aldington and Erich Maria Remarque),as well as in Estonian literature (by August Gailit and Richard Roht)and memoirs (Heinrich Laretei, and Estonian soldiers serving in the Russian army). A new reading of the short story by Friedebert Tuglas “The Shadow of a Man” (1919) is given, drawing on a discussion260of injuries caused by gas warfare. The foundation of the Russian gas mask industry in Warsaw in 1915 is witnessed via Oskar Luts’s memoirs.The article focuses on the paradoxical transformation of the original deployment of chemical weapons on the fronts of World War I into the genocide that occurred in the death camps of World War II. Active preparations for another, even more extensive chemical war were made during the inter-war period, yet this did not occur as expected. Adolf Hitler, the leader-to-be of the German Nazis, had suffered from severe mustard gas poisoning in the final months of World War I. This triggered the revenge formula directed against Jews he developed in his autobiography Mein Kampf (I-II,1925–1927), gegen Giftgas mit Giftgas (“poison gas against poison gas”), apparently based on the fact that the most enthusiastic ideologist of chemical warfare had been the German chemist of Jewish origin Fritz Haber, the Nobel prize laureate of 1919. During World War II, Hitler’s regime continued the elaboration of the means of gas warfare, exercising it secretly and in a way safe for the aggressors. In1942 gas chambers went into operation in the extermination camps built in the Polish territory (Auschwitz, Treblinka etc.). Thus, a new total war employing gas could not be avoided.

Kui kirjandus jäi aega kinni: sõjast ja kirjandusest Johannes Semperi loomingus

Author(s): Marit Karelson / Language(s): Estonian Issue: 17/2015

The current paper focuses on the Estonian writer, translator, essayist and social actor Johannes Semper (1892–1970), on the ways he considered relations between literature and time before and after the First World War. Semper understood time, through the philosophy of Henri Bergson, as spatial, divisible and measurable in terms of speed or slowness. In Semper’s opinion, the speed of “time”reflected the speed of changes in society, including technical progress,travel, communication and human gestures. Speed and slowness,in Semper’s view, also characterized literature: literature could be created or received at different speeds.At the beginning of the 1920s, Semper stated that “time” carried the speed of the war years, and that the rhythm of literature closely reflected the speed of those years. He believed that literature needed to be separated from “time”, since this enormous speed did not allow for creating “slow” works of literature. Slow works of art,in Semper’s view, were necessary to build up Estonian culture. In1926, nearly ten years after the war, Semper found that Estonian literature was still stuck in the wartime speed. However, by that time Semper believed that “time” in society had lost the speed of the war years. Now “time” offered a suitable rhythm, so that slow works of literature could be created and received by readers. Consequently, Semper encouraged writers to create works which would reflect again the rhythm of “time”. 283I consider Semper’s way of understanding the interactions between literature and “time” through Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of“literary field” and his views on the renewal of the “literary field”as a “space of possibles”. I also analyse, besides Semper’s theoretical essays, the representations of war in his poems and short stories of the 1920s, in which the war years’ “time” is shown to belong to the past.

Dźwiękochłonne dramaty Janusza Krasińskiego

Author(s): Agnieszka Kramkowska-Dąbrowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 5/2015

This article describes the world of sound in Janusz Krasiński’s plays Wkrótce nadejdą bracia [Soon the Brothers will Arrive], Czapa, czyli Śmierć na raty [The Hat, or Death by Instalments] as well as Śniadanie u Desdemony [Breakfast at Desdemona’s]. The rich soundscape, rooted in these plays’ origin as radio drama, represents more than a mere acoustic background – it contributes to the creation of meaning. Carefully planned sound signals create an absorbing acoustic space, influencing the plot and becoming a point of reference in the dialogue. Thus the sounds gain a dramaturgy of their own, affecting the audience’s emotions and understanding. This sound construction suggests that the author created his drama in a way that in some ways echoes the technique of avant-garde composers.