“A HUMAN IS AN ANIMAL AND AN ANIMAL IS A HUMAN”: TRANSFORMATION FROM HUMAN TO ANIMAL IN SLOVENIAN BALLAD TRADITION

Author(s): Marjetka Golež Kaučić / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

The most famous authors on topic of transformation from human to animal in the tradition of European literature were Publius Ovidius Naso (Metamorphoses) and Franz Kafka (Metamorphoses), both of whom conceptualized the parallel worlds of reality and mythology. In the Slovenian ballad tradition we can trace several mythological ballads with thematic transformations from human to animal and back, as well of animal brides and grooms. This paper focuses on the question of the parallel worlds of animal and human and about the fluid boundaries between them as represented in ballad stories. By analyzing a number of ballads and incorporating theoretical perspectives from folkloristics, psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, critical animal studies and zoofolkloristics, I will uncover the purpose of mythological transformations and their imagery. The underlying question is whether these mythological stories represent a notional duality of human versus animal and nature versus culture, or to what degree the stories may transcend this conceptual juxtaposition.

“Music, much as people take snapshots during vacation”: An Outline of Mimetic Prospects in Musical Modernism

Author(s): Andraž Jež / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

It has often been said that after 1900 formal modernism diminished the role of the mimetic (i.e., imitation or representation) in all arts. This article opposes such a general conclusion. Formal modernism in art did not represent any general relationship to the mimetic; rather, it questioned the traditional relationship to forms of representation within each particular art form. Although a traditional notion of mimesis indeed makes it possible to see a good deal of literature and the visual arts as less mimetic after 1900, twentieth-century music discovered unprecedented representational possibilities, which are illustrated with the case of musique concrète. In the last section, the article reflects on its thesis with a comparative perspective on the postmodernist turn in various arts.

“Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted”. Vladimir Bartol’s Novel “Alamut” – Belated Entry in the Modern Balkan Context

Author(s): Malamir Spasov / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2015

“Alamut” (1938) is a novel by Vladimir Bartol (1903 – 1967) – Slovene author from Trieste. It has been defined as both “marginal literature” and “brilliantly written work”. However, only in the 1980s and 1990s Bartol’s novel became the most internationally successful and bestselling work of Slovene literature, partly due to its strangely contemporary relevance. And yet there has been surprisingly little comparison between “one of the most original works of Slovene literature” and the modernistic literary creativity of contemporaries of Bartol’s generation elsewhere in Southeast Europe – for instance authors such as Bulgarian Boris Shivachev, Romanians Camil Petrescu, Anton Holban and Mircea Eliade, and even Serbian Miloš Crnjanski. Regrettably, “Alamut” is not translated in Bulgarian or Romanian yet. Apart from the fact that it is a gap which needs to be filled, such a juxtaposing seems to be quite alluring, loquacious and valuable. This study represents an attempt to commence similar comparison and to initiate a broader discussion between both extremities of the Balkans.

„Избрисани“ између политике порицања и егземпларности савременог словеначког романа

Author(s): Marko Juvan / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 169/2019

Soon after Slovenia’s proclamation of independence in 1991, the Slovenian authorities removed about 25,000 people (designated the “erased”) from the registry of permanent residents. They thus disenfranchised and turned this group into illegal aliens reduced to “bare existence” (Agamben). The removal resulted from the ethno-nationalist concept of the Slovenian state and became an instrument of its biopolitical governmentality. The powers that be sought to minimize the size of the ethnically non-Slovenian population, suspecting it of disloyalty and stamping it with the Balkanist stereotypes typical of “nesting Orientalism” (Bakić-Hayden). The distancing from the “Southerners” allowed the Slovenians to perceive themselves as holders of a pristine work ethic and the (central) European democratic culture, suitable for entry into the global empire of late capitalism. After a decade of silence, the topic of the “erased” flooded the media as a response to verdicts by the Slovenian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, which demanded that the state correct the injustice done to them. The political debate on their removal from the registry (the “erasure”) reached its peak during the 2004 referendum on this problem. Moreover, those that were “erased” organized themselves to fight for their rights in 2002 and their campaigns were supported by the international leftist activists and civil society. However, a discourse of “organized innocence” (Jalušič) prevails in relation to this group, similar to the denial of war crimes in the post-Yugoslav countries.

„Некропол“ на Борис Пахор и световната литература

Author(s): Alenka Koron / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2021

The present contribution addresses the question of how the novel Necropolis (1967) by Boris Pahor, a Slovenian minority author (with Italian citizenship) born in 1913 and living in Trieste, is placed in world literature. It sheds light on the novel’s path from the semi-peripheral Slovenian literary system to the canonical works of Slovenian (national) literature via various actors in the informal social networks of the globalised literary market and through its consecration in one of the prestigious intellectual and artistic centres of the world literary system (Paris), as well as through the mediation of translations into the dominant world languages. Attention is also given to the uniquely poetic character of this novel of memory about life in a concentration camp, which is a glocalised version of one of the world’s major literary testimonies of the Shoah.

ИСТОРИЈА И ДРУШТВО У ПРИЧАМА И РОМАНИМА ДРАГА ЈАНЧАРА

Author(s): Gojko Božović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 533/2022

Јанчаров роман Те ноћи сам је видео и етика репрезентације

Author(s): Tomo Virk / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 169/2019

The article discusses the novel I Saw Her That Night, written by the prominent Slovene writer Drago Jančar. The plot of the novel is based on the documentary reports about the brutal execution of the spouses Hribar in January 1944. The Hribars were killed by the communist intelligence service and recently rehabilitated. Jančar’s novel is built against the background of WWII, yet the main focus remains on the personal fate of Hribar’s wife (her fictional name is Veronika). She is depicted (in tune with the documentary records) as an emancipated, attractive, rich young woman with a strong desire for an intensive life. The same personal qualities that make her attractive also prove to be fatal for her and her husband in the circumstances of the cruel war. The simultaneity of the liberation struggle, revolution, and civil war in Slovenia during WWII are still subject to conflicting interpretations and ideological appropriations, yet Jančar with his novel doesn’t want to enter into this dispute. He is interested in a personal tragedy caused by the larger, unavoidable, unforeseeable, unmanageable fatal circumstances. In order to avoid the ideological commentary, he chooses five personal narrators (Veronika’s voice, her point of view, is absent), all of the parts of the heroine’s life, who give their own accounts about Veronika’s life and about what happened to her. In this way, we are faced with a polyvocal, “Rashomonic” structure that avoids authorial, authoritative voice and offers various perspectives instead. This enables Jančar to represent the unrepresentable. The article juxtaposes this kind of artistic representation to the ideological approach, exemplified by A. Zupan Sosič’s reading of Jančar’s novel. Such a reading remains on the level of a pre-established perspective and remains unsusceptible to the advantages of artistic representation and to the ethical potential of literature.

Књижевно-дарвинистичко поређење Антигоне Доминика Смолеа и Касандре Бориса А. Новака

Author(s): Igor Žunkovič / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 170/2020

Antigone by Dominik Smole is a literary text which gave rise to a question of the possibility of reconciliation in Slovenia. I understand reconciliation as the process of easing the social tension, the main consequence of which is the re-establishment of connections within a community or between individuals. The same question arises in relation to Cassandra by Boris A. Novak, although his play focuses on a different, personal aspect of reconciliation. Literary Darwinism and neurocognitive literary studies open up a theoretical possibility to understand individual and collective confrontation with difficulties in establishing and maintaining interpersonal relations, social cohesion, and the role of an individual in a community. It is on these theoretical foundations that I set up a literary Darwinian model of analysis for both plays, which I employ analyzing the bases of both heroines’ actions. On the other hand, by applying the proposed analytical model, we can better understand which cognitive mechanisms are at the bottom of the similarities between Antigone and Cassandra and why there are indelible differences and tensions between them.

Комиссия эмигрантологии славян Международного комитета славистов

Author(s): Lucjan Suchanek / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2015

Международна конференция „Маршрути на книжовно общуване на източните и южните славяни през XI–XX век

Author(s): Andriana Spasova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 39/2019

Национални и сравнителни литературни истории в Словения: история, настоящ статус и бъдещи изгледи

Author(s): Marko Juvan / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 26/2021

The article interprets literary history as a discourse involved in the identity policies of nations. From this point of view, the author presents the relations between national and comparative literary history in Slovenia. The paper outlines the origin and development of both disciplines, especially with regard to their implicit or explicit ideological underpinnings–cultural nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Until the end of the 20th century, national literary history as a “great genre” has interiorized the 19th century thrust of cultural nationalism, which also marked the institutionalization of literary historiography as a university discipline after 1919. Even though comparative literature has countered the apparently autarkic national conceptions of literary and cultural development, it produced another kind of “master narratives” through which it affirmed national identity–by providing records on the participation of Slovene literature in the “general European” currents and developmental stages. In this context, the article draws attention to the problem of belatedness of so-called small literatures, especially in relation to the world literary system. In conclusion, the article addresses current dilemmas of literary historiography in Slovenia, which are partly specific (reticence to attempts to “reform” the discipline) and partly connected with the changes of literature and literary studies in the era of postmodern and globalization.

ОД ФОНЕТСКО-ФОНОЛОШКИТЕ ОСОБЕНОСТИ ВО МАКЕДОНСКИОТ И ВО СЛОВАЧКИОТ ЈАЗИК

Author(s): Veselinka Labroska / Language(s): Macedonian Issue: 10/2012

Macedonian and Slovene are two related languages that belong to the South Slavic family of languages. They have phonetic-phonological features that on one hand are similar, but on the other hand are different. This research will show the right image of the direction of their mutual developments. The main subject of this study is a comparative analysis of the phonetic system of both languages, with emphasis on phoneme /v/. Phoneme /v/ is the most complex phoneme in the Slovene spoken literary language, with the most allophones and normative deviations. On the other hand, in the Macedonian literary language this phoneme is an obstruent but the distribution features are specific according to the sonant character of /v/. The appearances that should be explored are the features of the consonant groups in both languages as well as their assimilative and dissimilative processes manifesting in the frames of these groups. In the usage of the standard language speech forms in different language areas, deviations from the normative form are attested in both languages (Macedonian and Slovene). Hence in Macedonian, the deviations from regular pronunciation of the vocals and of the right prosody are emphasized. While in Slovene there is a distinction in speech forms, especially of the sounds in some positions of the phoneme /v/. These remarks point out the need of making a solid analysis on the situations and regulations of the orthography norms that at the present time are missing from both languages.

ПЛАНИНА ЋУТЊЕ

Author(s): Bojana Stojanović Pantović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 527/2021

Дане Зајц: Доле доле, превео са словеначког Иван Антић.

Преоткриване: Супрасълски сборник, старобългарски паметник от Х век/ Rediscovery: Bulgarian Codex Suprasliensis of 10th Century

Author(s): Dilyana Radoslavova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 25/2012

Рибајев Идиотикон као доказ о словачком лексичком фонду с краја 18. и почетка 19. Века : Miroslav Dudok. 2017. Ribayov Idiotikon. Báčsky Petrovec: Slovenské vydavateľské centrum, 212 strana.

Author(s): Jasna Uhlarik / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 8/2018

Словенский язык и словенская национальная, региональная и локальная идентичность

Author(s): Danila Zuljan Kumar / Language(s): Russian Issue: -/2014

Language constitutes an important part of identity; therefore, a definite relationship can be established between the stages of development of the national language and forms of identity. The formation and development of the Slovenian national language, starting in the late seventeenth century, during the period of National Awakening, and of Slovenian national identity can be divided into six stages or periods, all of which saw the social functions of the Slovenian language change. In the 1990’s, emphasis on Slovenian national identity reached its peak, at the same time that the effects of globalization became noticeable in Slovenia, increasing the attention of the Slovenians to their regional and local particularities and the diversity of their local dialects. The article focuses on the different forms of national, local and regional identities that have emerged during this period in Slovenia.

Словенско-български театрални контакти: постановки, преводи, рецепция

Author(s): Mateja Pezdirc Bartol,Lyudmil Dimitrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1 (5)/2017

The aim of this text is to show the historical intersections of the cooperation between Slovenians and Bulgarians in the field of drama and theater, including translations, staging, guest appearances, as well as receptive and imaging aspects. The reasons that provoked the theatrical contacts between us as well as the prospects for future cultural dialogue are clarified.

Травелоги югославских писательниц первой половины ХХ века: в поисках идентичности

Author(s): Anna G. Bodrova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2019

The paper considers travelogues of Yugoslav female writers Alma Karlin, Jelena Dimitrijević, Isidora Sekulić, Marica Gregorič Stepančič, Marica Strnad, Luiza Pesjak. These texts created in the first half of the 20th century in Serbian, Slovenian and German are on the periphery of the literary field and, with rare exceptions, do not belong to the canon. The most famous of these authors are Sekulić from Serbia and the German-speaking writer Karlin from Slovenia. Recently, the work of Dimitrijević has also become an object of attention of researchers. Other travelogues writers are almost forgotten. Identity problems, especially national ones, are a constant component of the travelogue genre. During a journey, the author directs his attention to “other /alien” peoples and cultures that can be called foreign to the perceiving consciousness. However, when one perceives the “other”, one inevitably turns to one’s “own”, one’s own identity. The concept of “own – other /alien”, on which the dialogical philosophy is based (M. Buber, G. Marcel, M. Bakhtin, E. Levinas), implies an understanding of the cultural “own” against the background of the “alien” and at the same time culturally “alien” on the background of “own”. Women’s travel has a special status in culture. Even in the first half of the 20th century the woman was given space at home. Going on a journey, especially unaccompanied, was at least unusual for a woman. According to Simone de Beauvoir, a woman in society is “different /other”. Therefore, women’s travelogues can be defined as the look of the “other” on the “other /alien”. In this paper, particular attention is paid to the interrelationship of gender, national identities and their conditioning with a cultural and historical context. At the beginning of the 20th century in the Balkans, national identity continues actively to develop and the process of women’s emancipation is intensifying. Therefore, the combination of gender and national issues for Yugoslavian female travelogues of this period is especially relevant. Dimitrijević’s travelogue Seven Seas and Three Oceans demonstrates this relationship most vividly: “We Serbian women are no less patriotic than Egyptian women… Haven’t Serbian women most of the merit that the big Yugoslavia originated from small Serbia?” As a result of this study, the specificity of the national and gender identity constructs in the first half of the 20th century in the analyzed texts is revealed. For this period one can note, on the one hand, the preservation of national and gender boundaries, often supported by stereotypes, on the other hand, there are obvious tendencies towards the erosion of the established gender and national constructs, the mobility of models of gender and national identification as well, largely due to the sociohistorical processes of the time.

Эминрантология. Научно-исследовательский вклад польской русистики

Author(s): Izabela Kowalska-Paszt / Language(s): Russian Issue: 150/2015

Based on the literary and cultural material, the article discusses two functions played by the term of emigrantology as a legacy of three waves of Russian emigration in the 20th century. The term was introduced by Lucjan Suchanek to the research space of Slavic emigration. It has systematized the area of intellectual and scientific self-reflection (including literary studies, historiography, philosophy and theology, and cultural studies), which developed in the community of Russian emigration. Additionally, the term provides modelling of the need for interdisciplinary and in the nearest future trans-disciplinary studies on the complex cultural phenomenon of Slavic emigrations. In this particular context, the article presents major research directions and achievements of Russian studies in Poland.

Южнославянското сравнително литературознание днес – посоки и контексти.

Author(s): Ina Hristova / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2019

The article examines current trends in the development of South Slavic comparative literary studies. The discussion revolves around the reviewing of the notion of a South Slavic literary community and a unified South Slavic literary process. Interpretation focuses on the comparison of the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav literary contexts. Reference is made to the affiliation of South Slavic literatures to various cultural regions. The author comes to the conclusion that there is a need for a reviewing of South Slavic literatures as an open construction and a dynamic field of identities.