Introduction

Author(s): Ana Țăranu,Teona Farmatu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

This introduction aims to frame the texts it predates, to highlight their common theoretical and thematic concerns, and to set them against what we envision as a relevant common backdrop for the issues they raise. To this end, we begin from how insufficient acknowledgement of the current genocidal violence carried out against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by Western feminism is symptomatic of its enmeshment with colonial rationales and imperialist violence. We question the extent of its liberating and emancipatory politics, reading them against the semiperipheral iterations of what Adam Tooze describes as the “polycrisis.” Focused on the gendered aspects of democratic backsliding - broadly understood as a weakening of faith in liberal democracy and the electoral invigoration of the far-right -, the articles included here trace cultural negotiations of gender justice, as it wanes or strengthens across the region. Variously located within broader networks of transnational transfers and global concerns, the articles included here complement relevant work conducted outside the bounds of academic writing. We gesture towards such feminist, anticolonial and antiracist movements which have emerged in Romania, specifically in the literary field, and to their contestation of the patriarchal and deeply unequal national cultural system.

Feminism and Antifeminism in Romanian Theatre Criticism in Interwar Years

Author(s): Miruna Runcan / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

In Romania, during the interwar years, it seems that theatre reviews – much like theatre criticism in general, narrowly as it was and sometimes continues to be defined in Romania – was only considered legitimate if signed by men. There were but two timid exceptions, two female voices whose writings were partially recovered as late as 1978-1983 and have been insufficiently explored since: the poet and memoirist Otilia Cazimir, who worked as an inspector for the Ministry of Arts’ Theatre Directorate for a decade, and the aesthetics professor Alice Voinescu. This paper is an attempt to turn the spotlight not onto the two writers’ theatre-related activity, but rather to the way they engaged, in writing or in action, with the thorny issues of feminism. Their opposing standpoints – a feminism of emancipation vs. an anti-feminist type of feminism – still proves emblematic to our day for the specific way in which socio-cultural mentalities and perceptions on women’s condition in 20th-century Romania were preserved; it appears that post-socialist theatre criticism, especially from the decade 2000-2010, coalesced around the same positions.

„Lupul din Țara Huțulilor” de Mircea Streinul și extremismul stereotipic în cadrul grupului etnic Huțul din Bucovina

Author(s): Constantin-Andrei Pătrăuceanu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2023

The Hutsul minority from Bukovina represents an area of interest for researchers from several points of view: historical, literary, linguistic, ethno-folkloric. The present study is an analysis of the cultural extremism that appears in the relationship between Romanians and the Hutsuls, but also within the Hutsuls society, known as an isolated, conservative group and preserver of old traditions and rituals. Due to the fact that stereotypes about the features of a collectivity were constantly developed in the collective mind of the archaic world, they eventually led to the formation of sometimes false ideas or prejudices by which ethnic communities lived in conflict. Mircea Streinul is a writer from Bukovina who in the novel The Wolf from Hutsul Land (Lupul din Țara Huțulilor) presents the ethnic specificity of the Hutsuls group and analyzes the mythical valences of an archaic civilization that manifests through an extremist identity, with its own laws, without subordinating to anyone.

Ex Ponto – tri putopisne razglednice Vesne Parun

Author(s): Sanja Knežević / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 31/2023

In the work “Ex Ponto – three travel postcards of Vesna Parun”, three travelogue postcards of Vesna Parun are interpreted in which she discusses her stay in Bulgaria. These are the travelogues „More bez sunčevih zalazaka”, „Djevojčica i vjetar” and „Probuđeni bakrorez” published in the book of selected Works of Vesna Parun „Nedovršeni mozaik” in 1990. In the paper, these travelogues are defined as travel postcards (Duda, 1996) and the dominant thematic-motive sequence as well as the stylistic procedures of each travelogue are interpreted separately. The travelogues are also contextualized in Parun’s prose discourse with regard to their mosaic composition and lyrical-reflexive determinants.

България в пътеписите на Весна Парун

Author(s): Antoaneta Balcheva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

The article sheds light on Vesna Parun’s meetings with Bulgaria, reflected in her travelogues. Her works are seen as a cultural text that accompanies her entire life and opens up new possibilities for interpreting her attitude towards “otherness”, personal and community self-representations. The poet’s journey is interpreted as a mental construction in which the dialogue about borders and identities, about overcoming time and space, about its physical and metaphysical dimension, about escape and return are intertwined. The fruit of her deep self-reflection and philosophical insights, her contact with Bulgarian topos, artists, historical and cultural realities is perceived as an ontological route, which is the basis for creative inspiration and a condition for spiritual resurrection.

Slikovita refleksija u pjesničkoj zbirci „Vjetar Trakije” Vesne Parun

Author(s): Tin Lemac / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 31/2023

Vesna Parun’s collection of poems The Wind of Thrace was published in 1964. It is related to the Bulgarian part of Parunica’s civil and creative biography. It abounds in longer poems and miniatures united by Parunica’s poetics of Mediterraneanism and symbolism. As one of the stylistic markers in poems, we have singled out an imagenary reflextion that shapes parts, and sometimes entire songs. She is one of the bearers of poetic discourse, its content and style. In this paper, we will analyze reflextion as a statement that as such is not represented in traditional theories of literature, but is derived from philosophy (Cassirer) and partial literary theory analyzes (Freidenberg, Stamać). Her imagenary performance rests on imagenary syntax and semantics, and her meaning is grounded in the mental representation of the subject world in the poem. We divide it by subject fields and content, and analyze it with literary stylistic procedures.

Метафизически съответствия в поетическата книга на Весна Парун „Вятърът на Тракия“

Author(s): Liudmila Mindova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

The text is an academic reading of the ‘Bulgarian book of poetry’ written by the poetess Vesna Parun who, in the 1960’s of the 20th century, linked her road of life and oeuvre to Bulgaria in which she sojourned almost a decade. Similarly to the poets of her generation, Parun took profound interest in metaphysic topics and succeeded in original way to combine Catholic, East-Orthodox, Bogomil, Islamic, Thracian and even socialist symbolism in her poetry. “Wind of Thracia” was an impressive expression of this poetic essence in her lyric poetry and drew the attention because the above-mentioned work outlined the analogues between the two homelands of Vesna Parun – Croatia and Bulgaria – where she made long lasting friendships and discovered many sources of inspiration.

Диаболичното в романа „Ян Бибиян. Невероятни приключения на едно хлапе“

Author(s): Aleksandar Dimitrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

The following text explores Elin-Pelin’s novel “Jan Bibiyan. The Amazing Adventures of a Kid” in relation to diabolism. Although it is defined as literature for children, the novel bears many of the characteristics most typical of diabolic literature. This paper discovers and analyzes these features in order to offer an additional and unusual reading of the book. In doing so, the article, on the one hand, examines the extent to which the novel can be conceived only as a children's book, and, on the other, demonstrates that Elin Pelin is an author who can also be considered as part of the dynamics of the interwar period in Bulgarian literature.

Митологични измерения на художествения свят в разказите от сборника „Ръж“ на Ангел Каралийчев

Author(s): Samuil Radilov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

This study examines the debut collection of short stories by the Bulgarian writer Angel Karaliychev in the context of the interwar ideological upheavals, as a result of which the latter acquired ambiguous evaluations in post-war Marxist criticism. The analysis of the stories aims at placing them in a broader ideological context, shying away from political definitions, without ignoring their undeniable leftist slant. The chosen interpretative angle establishes Angel Karaliychev as a writer with a distinctly mythographic approach to the evaluation of the tragic events of September 1923, which were a central point of development in the writer's creative path, as well as in that of many other writers of leftist persuasion.

„Мир вам“ на Емилия Дворянова: Антиутопия на надеждата и пре-сътворението

Author(s): Teodora Petrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

The article tries to read Emilia Dvoryanova’s seventh novel – a book that is very different from her previous ones and that uses new language and imagery. The novel introduces us to a dystopian and post-realistic world. Is this a magical dystopia? Is it a metaphor for the search, for the journey to the Other and to Oneself? For the re-creation of the world, which has already become impossible and does not give birth to anything. About the rebirth of language and its use not only to explain being, but also to create world and meaning. A different postmodern novel, filled with biblical intertextuality and a transcendental reading of the world.

Любовта като посвещение и интерпретативно изпитание: за сборника от конференцията „Българската любовна лирика ‒ прочити и контексти“

Author(s): Martin Kolev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

Book Review: Ангелова, София, Елица Дубарова-Петкова (съст.). Българската любовна лирика ‒ прочити и контексти. Сборник с доклади от научна конференция, посветена на 60-годишнината от рождението на Петя Дубарова, Бургас 2022 г. Бургас: Либра Скорп, 2022. 204 с. ISBN 978-954-471-898-5.

Литература на децата

Author(s): Margarita Staneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

Book Review: Стоянова, Юлияна. Едно дете разказва (Детският път към литературното творчество). София: ХуЛите, 2023. 168 с. ISBN 978-619-7068-46-7.

Dimenze nezáměrnosti: Jan Mukařovský — Julia Kristeva — Georges Didi-Huberman

Author(s): Piotr Gierowski / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2024

This article focuses on the concepts of intentionality and unintentionality introduced into the semiotics of the Prague Structural School by Jan Mukařovský. These terms are considered in the context of two other conceptual pairs: 1) the semiotic (le sémiotique) and the symbolic (le symbolique) by Julia Kristeva; and 2) the visual (le visuel) and the visible (le visible) by Georges Didi-Huberman. These concepts, created on the basis of French humanities, can be treated as a development on and complement to Mukařovský’s aesthetic theory.

Pohyblivé kánony. Češi ve světě aneb kam s migrační literaturou?

Author(s): Alfrun Kliems / Language(s): Czech Issue: 3/2024

In this paper, Brigid Haines’s remarks on the Eastern Turn of German-speaking literature will be considered in questioning the Czech literary canon concerning what is known as migration literature. Foremost among my working analyses will be terminological differences between migration literature, the poetics of nomadism, writing between worlds, as well as general observations on switching languages and multilingualism among Czech writers. Not least, the authors under study present the difficulties for literary scholars, at least those that operate with classification systems, in allocating works of national literature in whose language or under whose conditions they have not been written.

Тематични доминанти в текстовете на южнославянския хип-хоп

Author(s): Lech Ceran / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

The article presents the most common themes in the hip-hop music on the basis of material from Bulgaria and other South Slavonic countries (more specifically, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia). Even though individual hip-hop scenes may differ significantly in comparison with each other, they share many common features. Hip-hop artists describe the surrounding world in their songs – that includes the physical world like nature or the city, as well as intangible phenomena like feelings. Even in this field there are some common and divergent features. Some of the themes are universal for the whole genre, so regardless of different language systems their execution can be similar to a certain degree. The reason for that is mainly the slang vocabulary which in most of the countries shares a large number of identical units.

ON MIGRATION, HIĞRA, IN AL-FĀRĀBĪ’S MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Author(s): Grete Tartler Tabarasi,Grete Tartler / Language(s): English,Arabic Issue: 15/2015

Contemporary debates on the increasing role of migration are seldom seeing this as a question of ethics and a religious duty. My article intents to point out the religious motivation of migration, as mentioned inal-Fārābī‟s Fuṣūl al-madanī (The Aphorisms of the Stateman). The Medieval political philosopher is using theword hiğra in its classical meaning (from the times of the Prophet), connecting it with war and the qualities ofthe city‟s chief (king, philosopher and warrior). It is a virtuous man‟s duty to leave a corrupt city for a virtuousone, otherwise he will feel like a “stranger in this world” (ġarīb fī l-dunyā); migration being thus seen also in terms of methaphysical survival.

Юлиуш Словацки. Генезис от Духа

Author(s): Juliusz Słowacki / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 30/2022

Translation from Polish by Dimitrina Hamze

Зинаида Гипиус. Съучастници. Бяла дреха (Стихотворения)

Author(s): Zinaida Gippius / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 30/2022

Translation from Russian by Tanya Neycheva, Zhorzheta Cholakova

La letterarura bulgara nella luce del convegno internazionale “Le letterature slave nel XXI secolo tra regionalismi e globalizzazione”

Author(s): Tatyana Lekova / Language(s): Italian Issue: 4s/2024

Anatomia aliteracji. J.R.R. Tolkien jako tłumacz poematu Pan Gawen i Zielony Rycerz

Author(s): Tomasz Markiewka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 41/2023

The article presents a short comparative analysis of two versions of the English romance in verse Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – the original text from the 14th century and its modern translation by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Middle English source text uses a North-West English dialect and is an interesting example of a late revival of alliteration originally rooted in the old English tradition. Alliteration as a formal organizing principle is combined with end-rhymes which complete the structure of the poem; this is both sophisticated and rare. Tolkien’s modern rendition of the romance recognizes and respects its dominant structural elements and attempts to recreate all the formal aspects of the text as adequately as possible. The modern version, while being a translation, acquires the semi-authorial signature of Tolkien, both a translator and scholar who creates a highly competent and historically informed rendition. The translator’s craft is particularly visible when Tolkien’s version is juxtaposed with the Polish translation by Andrzej Wicher. The linguistic and cultural distance between Polish and English is larger than the distance between the original and the modern rendition in English, and, as a result, the translation of Andrzej Wicher manages to reproduce only a limited number of alliterations and hence loses many artistic features that were essential components of the original text.