This article aims to determine a close "polyphonic" connection between lyrics and music in choral music. The subject of this research is the synergism of literary-textual sources and polyphonic form. The object of this research is the consideration of polyphonic works for a cappella chorus by the contemporary Russian composers. Using the synthesis of research methods, which includes musicology, poetics and choral studies, the author reveals the parameters of a musical composition: literary-textual source and musical form. (...) Detailed analysis is conducted on the dialectical interaction of constructive and destructive formants of the architectonics of musical form of polyphonic compositions for chorus. Special attention is given to differentiation of the structure of the literary-textual source and attribution of the polyphonic forms of motet, madrigal, fugue, and fugato. The main conclusion lies in the paradigm of artistic correlations between the literary and musical text as paralinguistic means that are the bearers of heterogeneous information and add additional colors to the content of the composition. Emphasis is placed on the need to explore the problematic associated with the architectonics of modern choral composition, substantiated not only by the general artistic-historical potential of choral culture, but its crucial importance for modern musical art as well. The novelty lies in the analysis of polyphonic forms of a cappella choral works as multimodal texts, synthesizing the scientific achievements of linguistics and musicology. The author’s special contribution consists in examination of the compositions for a cappella chorus of A. Koroleva and Y. Evgrafov that have not previously been the object of special research, and their introduction to modern scientific discourse. (shrink)

The article presents literary, sociological and cultural points of view on the problem of the literary canon, describes the mechanisms of canonization and defines the boundaries of the Russian classics. The author discovers a connection between the texts claiming the status of the canonical hierarchy and the question of ethnicity. The article establishes that the construction of both a national self-portrait and the image of a foreigner (the Other) are the most important functions of the classical (...) canon. The object of this research is a unified discursive field of Russian classical literature. The subject is the generalized image of the German that forms in this field. The author, resorting references to current research practices of discourse analysis, establishes that the portrait of a German is based on such conceptual categories as: 1) the connection with the soil and nature, 2) the connection with roots, 3) reliance on reality and "mundanity", 4) planning, 5) positivism and subordination, 6) perception of life as a mechanism. The construction of the Other creates an opposition to the "Russian" in the structure of the classical text and builds a series of binary pairs: heredity / freedom, stability on the ground / ability to jump, clear planning / dreaminess, legalism / Paschality, self-aggrandizement / self-abasement, godlessness / Orthodoxy. The article reveals that the German hero acts as a constituent of the Other, provoking self-determination and self-identification. (shrink)

Viacheslav Ivanov, the central intellectual force in Russian modernism, achieved through his work an original synthesis of Christianity, Platonism, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His powerful intellect exerted an immeasurable influence in modernist Russia and the early Soviet Union, and after emigrating to Italy in 1924 he played an important role in intellectual debates in Western Europe between the wars. In recent years, Ivanov's manifold contributions have been recognized in all major aspects of Russian culture, including poetry, (...) literary theory, philosophy, and theology. In _The Russian Prospero_, Robert Bird uncovers the foundations of Ivanov's poetic and theoretical universe, traces its evolution, and explores its connections to cultural and intellectual currents in international modernism. Blending a close reading of Ivanov's work with a thoughtful analysis of his place within twentieth-century thought, Bird finds that Ivanov's ecstatic creative psychology leads directly to a consideration of history as a continuum of human interpretive activity, and to a conception of art as a historical force. He emphasizes and dramatizes Ivanov's quest to harness the power of art and apply it to concrete life-situations. It is the dilemma of Prospero, who must liberate his attendant spirit Ariel in order to restore full sovereignty over his own creative self and to regain ethical agency. The productive tension that resulted from Ivanov's struggle was a remarkable force in Russian modernism and remains a powerful spur for our own reflections on modernity. Outstanding Academic Title, _Choice_ Magazine “[Bird’s] clear explanations of Ivanov’s ideas and his informed, insightful, astute readings of the poetic works make this book required reading for anyone interested in modern poetry, intellectual history, cultural studies, and philosophy of early 20th century Russian and European thought.... Essential.”—_Choice_ “[Bird] makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of Russian modernism in its broader European context.... In this undertaking he has not only succeeded admirably, but will undoubtedly inspire others to follow him.”—Pamela Davidson, _The Russian Review_ “The most comprehensive overall treatment of Ivanov’s work to date.”—David N. Wells, _The Slavic and East European Journal_. (shrink)

The article is devoted to present Polish research on the literary work and philosophical thought of Hryhorii Skovoroda. The scientific reflection on Skovoroda’s legacy was initially carried out on the historical and literary level. It was initiated by Adam Honory Kirkor in 1874. In the context of the history of Ukrainian literature, Józef Tretiak, Ivan Franko and Bohdan Lepkyi presented the general characteristics of Skovoroda’s work, seeing in it only the original style and compilation character of thoughts. (...) Ivan Mirtchuk started his research on Skovoroda’s thoughts from the history of national philosophy, seeing in Skovoroda’s philosophy the features charac- teristic of Ukrainian philosophy, differing it fundamentally from Russian philosophy. As part of the research, it was possible to find an extensive article by Jarosław Ulwański, Philosophy of G.S. Skovoroda, published in 1930, in which the author presented arguments for a pantheistic interpretation of the Ukrainian philosopher’s thoughts. A breakthrough event was the publication of a monograph by Dmytro Tschižewskij, who formulated a view on the mystical philosophy of Skovoroda similar to the Western European mysticism of the 17th and 18th centuries. The interwar period ends with the work of Czesław Jastrzębiec-Kozłowski, in which the work of Skovoroda was analyzed against the background of Józef Hoene-Wronski’s messianic philosophy. After World War II and the 1990s, research on Skovoroda’s legacy was conducted primarily by philologists. Ryszard Łużny and Włodzimierz Mokry treated Skovoroda’s work as a Christian philosopher. In the 21st century, Polish research increasingly refers to philosophical interpretation. Denys Pilipowicz researched the ancient and patristic sources of Skovoroda’s mystical thought and compared it with the teachings of Paisij Velyczkovskyi. Iryna Betko analyzed his poetry from the perspective of Jung’s theory of archetypes. Michał Handzel conducted an in-depth historical and philosophical analysis of Skovoroda’s philosophy, seeing Skovoroda as a representative of the panentheistic trend, and Pavlo Snopkov examined the concept of Skovoroda’s self-knowledge from the perspective of Jung’s and Maslow’s psychological theories. (shrink)

Profesor Andrzej Walicki, born in 1930, is a historian of philosophy and social thought connected with the so called „Warsaw School of the History of Ideas" prevalent during the 1960s. His field of specialization is the history of Russian and Polish thought and also that of Marxist philosophy. Until 1981, he was professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology PAN. During the time of martial law, Walicki was in Australia as a visiting professor of the Australian National (...) University of Canberra. In 1986, he started working at the University of Notre Dame in the USA as chief of the chair of the history of ideas, where he continued to work until 1999, the vear of his retirement. (shrink)

The subject of the research is that the article attempts to create a summary portrait of the cultural and linguistic personality of a Chinese student in modern Russian universities. The connection of the Chinese cultural and linguistic personality with the archetypal elements of the national image of the world determines its constant components with all changes in individual properties and qualities. At the same time, existing explicit or implicit stereotypes may be only part of a generalized portrait. The (...) Chinese cultural and linguistic personality is based on a property that is often formulated by Sinologists as vitalism. The vitality of the modern Chinese audience is explored in connection with such phenomena as "gelotocentrism" and "phagocentrism", dating back to the traditional Chinese worldview. "Gelotocentrism" allows us to understand why laughter becomes one of the dominants of the psychological atmosphere in the classroom, as well as to identify the effectiveness of "laughter didactics" at various stages of learning. Various methods were used in the course of the research, including observation, literature analysis, historical and literary research, comparative and discourse analysis. "Phagocentrism" is not just "filling the stomach", but a peculiar form of possession of higher knowledge, a mental "orientation in the space of Being". In addition, for Chinese living in Russia, food is one of the most effective ways to solve adaptation problems and relieve psychological stress. The relevance of the research is determined by the novelty of the approach, since the novelty shows that phage therapy and gelotherapy are considered as the most important modes of human existence, and their significant role in the philosophy of education is emphasized. Tracing the connection between the history of Chinese culture and its current state in the aspect of international education, the study demonstrates that associative-sympathetic thinking is directly related to the vitalistic perception of the world. Vitalism, in turn, presupposes "holism" as an integral form of mastering reality. (shrink)

Playing with the reader is one of the main characteristics of V. Nabokov’s creativity. His books is a ‘literary crossword puzzle‘, charade, and mystification that demand parity, intellectually equal, and with the similar art preferences reader. Reader equally participates with author in an esthetic process. The reader follows the writer-‘wizard‘ in the text, and first, enters game process to take esthetic ‘pleasure from the text‘; second, he is getting involved in the ‘composite games by rules‘. The main means of (...) the organization of literary game in Russian-language novels of V. Nabokov is a play with ‘someone else’s word‘. V. Nabokov addressed to someone else’s texts to mock social writers or to degrade a certain hero in parodic and ironic ways. The writer in ‘someone else’s word‘ did not mock predecessors similar to his own spirit, but discredited a modern person who disappeared from the world of the real culture. One of the important composition elements of game in V. Nabokov’s novels is symbolics of key. The theme of keys obviously or indirectly sounds both in the debut Nabokov’s novel ‘Mashenka‘, and in later books: ‘Invitation to execution‘, ‘Luzhin’s Protection‘, ‘Feat‘, and ‘Gift‘. A number of motives is connected with the theme of keys and the closed doors: wandering, homelessness, downtime, initiation, and crossing. The process of searching for those keys is an attempt to find answers to ontological questions, and this is essential for V. Nabokov. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the early, Paris period of life and literary work of Nikolay Gumilyov (1906–1908), which is still insufficiently studied and understood by scholars. The paper aims to study the influence of this period on shaping Gumilyov’s personality and his spiritual values and aspirations, polishing of his literary taste, gradual gaining of an independent ideological and aesthetic platform and development of his inimitable poetic style. – The research for the paper was based on the comprehensive (...) historical and cultural approach, with application of literary and historical analysis techniques. This approach was used to consider the memoirs of his contemporaries, Gumilyov’s letters to Valery Bryusov, as well as his poetry, prose and art criticism during that period. Particular attention is paid to the history of publishing Sirius magazine and to such poorly studied aspects as the symbolic meaning of the magazine name and the first manifestations of acmeism in its aesthetic platform. The authors emphasize the fruitful and creative character of Gumilyov’s friendship with Sirius co-editor, artist and art critic M.V. Farmakovsky, whose name is unfairly forgotten. – They come to the conclusion that the “first Paris period” was not only the novice time for Gumilyov but also the start of his personal and creative self-identity. It was in Paris that the strong and persistent character of the poet was formed, his skills honed and his inimitable style created, with the colour-sound synthesis of the striking romantic picturesqueness and a clear strong word. Paris was the place of polishing the artistic taste, developing a comprehensive system of views, finding main poetic motifs and setting life goals of Gumilyov, a rising star of the Silver Age. (shrink)

The article is a comparative analysis of the philosophy of the Russian Religious Renaissance and the views of Marian Zdziechowski (1861–1938), a Polish religious thinker, historian of ideas, and historian of literature. Zdziechowski was also an expert on and promoter of Russian religious thought. As a thinker, he was influenced by it and attempted to cope with the same problems that were plaguing the Russians: the Bolshevik revolution, the decline of Christian religion and culture, and the imminent (...) catastrophe of the whole civilization. The paper describes the affinities between Zdziechowski and the Russian thinkers in detail, yet its main task is to grasp the differences between them, i.e., the distinctive features of Zdziechowski’s thought. The conclusion is that Zdziechowski, who—in contrast to the Russians—was not interested in the recent currents of Western philosophy, as a critic of historical Christianity and an eschatological thinker was less radical than the Russians, but as a philosopher of history he turns out to be a greater pessimist. An important part of the analysis is confrontation of literary styles typical for the Polish thinker and the Russians. A specific feature of Zdziechowski was his tendency to express his own views not in a straightforward manner, but rather by commenting and reconstructing other authors’ ideas. (shrink)

This article is framed by a wider interest in how literary careers are made: what mechanisms other than the personal/biographical and the text-centred evaluations of scholars influence a writer’s choices in persisting in building a succession of works that are both varied and yet form a consistently recognizable “brand.” Translation is one element in the wider network of “machinery” that makes modern literary publishing. It is a marker of success that might well keep authors going despite lack of (...) sales or negative reviews at home. Translation rights can provide useful supplementary funds to sustain a writer’s output. Access to new markets overseas might also inspire interest in countries and topics other than their usual focus or the demands of their home market. The Australian novelist and playwright Thomas Keneally achieved a critical regard for fictions of Australian history within a nationalist cultural resurgence, but to make a living as a writer he had to keep one eye on overseas markets as well. While his work on European topics has not always been celebrated at home, he has continued to write about them and to find readers in languages other than English. Poland features in a number of Keneally’s books and is one of the leading sources of translation for his work. The article explores possible causes and effects around this fact, and surveys some reader responses from Poland. It notes the connections that Keneally’s Catholic background and activist sympathies allow to modern Polish history and assesses the central place of his Booker-winning Schindler’s Ark filmed as Schindler’s List. (shrink)

The study of literature from the point of view of the search for archetypal images and the study of artistic creativity from the standpoint of structuralism are two important trends. Both of these trends have emerged in the contexts of different scientific paradigms. The origin of archetypal criticism is associated with the figure of Herman Northrop Fry, and the basis of archetypal criticism is psychology, namely the concept of psychoanalysis, founded by Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. While the origin (...) of structuralism is associated with linguistics and the name of Ferdinand de Saussure, who first began to consider language as a system of signs in which each element defines other elements and is itself determined by them. With all the difference in origin, in general, both theories do not contradict each other - on the contrary, they complement each other. Archetypal literary criticism and structuralist theory of art have deep internal theoretical connections in several ways: both theories look for repetitive elements in literature, both consider literature as a space of memory about the past. Archetypal literary criticism and the structuralist theory of art direct the appeal to the psychology of man as the creator of works of art. Both directions are also largely based on the idea of binary oppositions: within the framework of the archetypal criticism of the pair, many archetypes are grouped into pairs, whereas within the framework of structuralism, the idea of structure itself is based on elementary concepts opposed to each other; finally, both methods have been criticized for the same shortcomings, such as the denial of author subjectivity and the denial of human progress. This article attempts to show that the theory of archetypes in literature and the structuralist theory of art complement each other, and how exactly this complementarity is achieved. (shrink)

The article aims to explore the ways in which scholars from Poland and Ukraine engage with Graham Harman’s philosophical work1. The introductory part briefly describes Harman’s ontology and demonstrates the link connecting Harman with Polish and Ukrainian intellectual environments. Harman’s object-oriented ontology (OOO) states that objects are the fundamental building blocks of reality and cannot be reduced either to what they are made of or to what they do, that is, either to their constituents or to their effects. The (...) connection with Poland and Ukraine goes back to the theory of objects suggested by the Polish philosopher Kazimierz Twardowski, whom Harman names among the predecessors of his ontology and who influenced both Polish and Ukrainian intellectual milieus. The next part of the article examines the history of the reception, identifying its key events and publications. The reception in Poland proves to be much more substantial than in Ukraine. A common tendency is determined: a conflation of Harman’s OOO and speculative realism by mistakenly ascribing the features of the former to the latter (broader concept), which suggests that speculative realism is being received through the lens of Harman’s project. The next part establishes the key discursive points that are used to map Harman’s ideas within the contemporary philosophical landscape. They can be summarised by the terms antianthropocentrism and antireductionism. The final part analyses the strategies for applying Harman’s theory showing that it can become the lens for interpretation and direct our attention to nonhumans and the hidden, inexplicable dimension of things or provide an ontological grounding for semi-literary and literary discourses. The methodology of this application, though, needs further development and clarification. Overall, in Poland, two of Harman’s books and two articles have been translated, and at least two books, one Ph.D. dissertation, and around two dozen articles discuss or apply his ideas. Apart from philosophy, his OOO is used for discussing literature, video games, films, humanities in general, education, management processes, antique studies, and ecocriticism. In Ukraine, one of Harman’s articles has been translated, and around ten articles and one collective monography engage with his philosophical project. Some of the Ukrainian works also apply Harman’s OOO in contexts that are not strictly philosophical, namely, in literary criticism, urban studies, film studies, and humanities in general. This paper can be of use to researchers studying OOO and its reception in different countries. In addition, it can help Ukrainian and Polish scholars who want to discuss or use OOO to familiarize themselves with the previous reception in their countries, thus facilitating domestic philosophical interaction. (shrink)

Roman Ingarden published his two major works in aesthetics in the 1930’s. The Literary Work of Art was published first in a German edition in 1931 and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art was published first in a Polish edition in 1937. A revised and enlarged edition of the second book was published in Germany in 1968 and it is the German edition translated into English in 1973 which is the subject of this review. Ingarden’s (...) two works, founded on the antipsychologism of Edmund Husserl are intended as companion volumes, the first responding to the question, "How is the object of cognition, the literary work of art, structured?" and the second answering the question, "What is the procedure which will lead to knowledge of the literary work?" In The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, Ingarden is concerned with the mode of cognition which corresponds to the necessary structures of the literary work of art which he has analyzed in his earlier study. He sets out to show that such a cognition is composed of heterogenous but closely connected processes and that it is accomplished in a temporal process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mikhail Bakhtin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, and the Rhetorical Culture of the Russian Third RenaissanceFilipp SapienzaAlthough Mikhail Bakhtin figures centrally in multiculturalism, community, pedagogy, and rhetoric (Bruffee 1986; Welch 1993; Zebroski 1994; Zappen, Gurak, and Doheney-Farina 1997; Mutnick 1996; Halasek 2001, 182; see also Bialostosky 1986) many of his major ideas remain enigmatic and controversial. The elusive aspects of Bakhtin's theories exist in part because rhetoricians know little about Bakhtin's (...) own rhetorical culture. Theorists recognize this problem and call for a reworking of Bakhtin more on his own terms. This call has been made to resolve concerns about Bakhtin's ambivalence toward rhetoric. Since Bakhtin disliked rhetoric, any use of Bakhtin in rhetorical theory is largely a hybrid synthesis of his distinct ideas on poetics, prose, satire, the epic, the novel, and so forth. John Murphy proposes a reconception of Bakhtin closely built around his ambivalence and guided by the question, "what do we [rhetoricians] mean by the concept of a rhetorical tradition?" (2001, 259). The suggestion encourages rhetoricians to take Bakhtin more on his own terms than has been done in the past. Unfortunately, as the word "we" indicates, Murphy reworks Bakhtin primarily in terms of Western ideas about rhetoric. Slavists and "Bakhtinologists" in Russia argue that when talking about Bakhtin, "we" has often meant Western, obscuring the Russian cultural roots of his theories (Kozhinov 1993; Miller and Platter 1993, 118). The privileging of Western perspectives has also been criticized by scholars of other discourse cultures. Discussing American Indian rhetoric, Malea Powell argues that "we" means a Rhetorical Tradition that begins "with the Greeks, goes Roman, briefly sojourns in Italy, then shows up in England and Scotland, hops the ocean to America and settles in" (2002, 397). Differences in interpreting Bakhtin also proceed from translation difficulties between Russian and English. The Russian reader views Bakhtin in more essentialist ways as opposed to the "post-modern give-and-take" theorist of many Western [End Page 123] interpretations (Emerson 1990, 113). Read in the Russian language and from that cultural context, Bakhtin's vocabulary contains "conspicuous" elements of Orthodox Christianity and Slavic nationalist ideas (Kozhinov 1993; Mihailovic 1997) that reveal a Russian theological subtext to his ideas about community and dialogue.In this essay, I provide a reading of Bakhtin against the background of his own rhetorical culture. More specifically, I offer an analysis of an intertextual dialogue about language and community between Bakhtin and the symbolist writer Vyacheslav Ivanov. Scholars identify Ivanov as a poet, philosopher, and teacher who profoundly impacted Bakhtin (Mal'chukova 1992, 55). The Russian symbolists upheld strong nationalist ideals and a linguistic theory rooted in metaphysics (Mirsky 1972, 188). Many Slavists and Russian readers of Bakhtin suspect that Ivanov strongly influenced Bakhtin's rhetoric even though, for reasons unknown but that are suspected to be political, Bakhtin understates his debt to him (Ivanov 2001, 3). Bakhtin was not unlike his contemporaries in sharing an interest and vocabulary that addressed the major threads of symbolism. Read side by side with Ivanov's essays in Russian, Bakhtin's rhetoric displays a mixture of the European, Slavic, and Christian ideals that were in parlance among many Russian theorists in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin and Ivanov give us a glimpse of this rhetorical culture. More specifically, they help us to better understand our appropriations of Bakhtin based on an elucidation of the meaning of specific terms as they existed among Bakhtin's contemporaries.The method that I use requires translation of specific Russian passages into English. Terms and phrases are interpreted against the usage background of others in early twentieth-century Russia. Bakhtin's Slavic-theological connections become evident through the elucidation of these intertextual references. Through this method, a common and accepted practice in Slavic literary studies, the use of key words and phrases are traced in and among texts to identify a discourse among authors and explicate its meaning.1 As Steven Mailloux points out, a "rhetorical hermeneutics" focuses on "the historical sets of topics, arguments, tropes, ideologies, and so forth" that give meaning to rhetoric (1988, 15-16). The approach is necessary due to the unique political and artistic circumstances during the early... (shrink)

Since the Accession 8 (A8) of the European Union in 2004 the United Kingdom has experienced a significant influx of European Union Member State migrants. Although the A8 migration has been studied widely, gender and gender roles are still in need of further research in particular in relation to older Polish women migrants. The focus of this paper is to provide an insight into the experiences of mobility as reflected by older women migrants from Poland. The findings are crafted (...) into a multivocal account composed around the theme of ‘the embodied experience of migration – age, invisibility, social and economic exclusion’ by drawing on reflections from a life-story interview as well as literary accounts interwoven with ‘authorial stiches’ and connected to the wider migration discourse. The different women’s voices presented in this article point to the fact that the experience of migration can have an empowering and emancipatory effect in relation to gender subjectivity. In contrast to previous studies on female migration with a focus on economic factors, this paper demonstrates that the experience of mobility could be understood as an opportunity to redefine gender subjectivity and offer a route to escape undesirable gender ideology in Poland. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetics As First EthicsLevinas and the Alterity of Literary DiscourseHenry McDonald (bio)1Notwithstanding the considerable amount of scholarly attention paid since the 1980s to Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical philosophy of “the other,” critics and theorists have generally approached the relation between ethics and aesthetics in his work warily. Although readings of poetry and fiction inspired by Levinas’s philosophy continue to grow at a rapid rate, arguments applying that philosophy to (...) literary and aesthetic theory have been few and tentatively advanced. Some critics have contended that Levinas was something of a Platonic moralist who “disparaged” and “denounced” art and literature as failing to conform to his idea of what was “ethical.”1 If there is a critical consensus on the issue, it would seem to be that Levinas believed that art and ethics are incompatible.2Based on the aesthetic writings that Levinas produced over a four-decade period, as well as on the role literature played in the genesis and development of his ethical philosophy, such assessments seem puzzling. A Lithuanian Jew who studied with Husserl and Heidegger in 1929–30, Levinas (1906–95) came to philosophy initially through literature, especially Russian literature and Shakespeare: “the whole of philosophy,” he said, “is only a meditation of Shakespeare.”3 In the first work of his philosophical maturity, Existence and Existents (1947), discussions of aesthetics and literature introduce and develop the notion of being as il y a (there is), an account which, in giving emphasis [End Page 15] to being’s “horror” (horreur), simultaneously critiques ontology and places ethics on a tragic basis.4 The il y a, along with its temporal counterpart, the entretemps (between times), introduced just one year later in “Reality and Its Shadow” (1948), are of particular importance to his writings on aesthetics, produced during a period from the 1940s through the 70s.5 The latter provide abundant evidence of the potential for ethical meaning, indeed transcendence, he attributed to the artwork, as in “The Poet’s Vision” (1956), in which he asserts: “Literature is the unique adventure of a transcendence beyond all the horizons of the world... the authenticity of art must herald an order of justice” [“The Poet’s Vision” 134, 137]. Although Levinas never completed anything approximating a “system of aesthetics,” it is nonetheless true that in pieces ranging from developed essays on literary theory and aesthetics to brief commentaries on dozens of literary figures and works, he gave substantive indications of the ways in which his radically nonconceptual, nonontological account of ethics might alter our understanding of the status of “the literary artwork.”Most crucial among those indications is the close connection he posited between the alterity, or otherness, of the artwork and its tragic nature, which he defined in terms of his antiontological accounts of “being” and especially “time” (entretemps, “between times”). As early as “Reality and Its Shadow,” Levinas proposed the thesis, extended in his later essays, that the alterity of art and literature was located not in any ontological or conceptual “beyond”—in a spiritual dimension “which sets itself up as knowledge of the absolute” [1]—but in the “interstices” of language [3], in the “between times” (entretemps) of its modes of temporality: which can be accessed only by way of “the tragic” in art. Time in Levinas’s aesthetics is signified diachronically, from within a region of diaspora. What Levinas terms “alterity,” or otherness, points not toward a privileged, interpersonal dimension freed from the problematics of modernity, but strives to expose the complicity between the West’s concept of rationality and its history of barbarism exemplified by the Holocaust, its history, as Levinas put it, of “National Socialism, Stalinism, the camps, the gas chambers, nuclear weapons, terrorism and unemployment.”6 Art and literature demonstrate a utopian, emancipatory potential in revealing the fissures and hidden pathways that run through the hegemonic structures and totalizing frameworks of modernity.A central aspect of such an aesthetics is its privileging of music and musicality, which Levinas shares with a more recent thinker and critic, Paul Gilroy.7 Like Gilroy, Levinas deploys “musicality,” which he characterizes as “writing in its significance without signifiers” [157] not just to “refute,” as Gilroy... (shrink)

1st English translation: "The Philosophy of Inequality" is a significiant and passionately intense work by the eminent Russian religious philosopher, Nicholas Berdyaev (1874-1948), written in the early months following the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia. It was published only later in 1923 in Berlin, following his expulsion from Russia. With his perspective of a personalist existentialism and philosophy of freedom, Berdyaev voices a powerful critique of societal myths and mentalities that lead to a crushing totalitarian control over life, not (...) only Russia then, but now also for our contemporary world. The present volume also includes the 1st English translation of Berdyaev's 1918 article, "Spirits of the Russian Revolution: Gogol/Dostoevsky/L. Tolstoy," which traces the prophetic literary motifs reflected in the Soviet Communist Russian Revolution. The present volume likewise includes the addition of an intensive chapter by the translator, addressing Berdyaev's Religio-Philosophic thought in its connection to aspects of Orthodox Christian theological insights, in an attempt to validate N. A. Berdyaev as indeed verymost an Orthodox Christian philosopher. (shrink)

This article explores the question of literary criticism in the context of interactions between literature and philosophy. The best example of such interaction is the legacy of the early twentieth century Russian literary critic, Yuly Aykhenvald. This article gives a brief overview of his works of literary criticism and their thematic repertoire. Aykhenvald’s philosophical background, professional education, and personal connections with renowned Russian thinkers, including Vladimir Solovyov, Fyodor Stepun, and Semyon Frank, are included in an (...) evaluation of Aykhenvald’s position on one of the most discussed relationships in Russian culture—that of Russia and the West. The issue of relations between the West and Russia acquired a particular urgency after the October Revolution of 1917, when Russian culture split into two realms—Soviet and émigré. This article analyzes Aykhenvald’s position on this issue, which is present in both his philosophical responses to the Eurasianists and in his essays written on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth. Throughout the mid-1920s Aykhenvald wrote that Pushkin was the ideal of spiritual and aesthetic balance. In Pushkin’s work Aykhenvald found the embodiment of his own historiosophical aspirations—the harmonious fusion of Russia and the West. (shrink)

The article discusses the relationship between the concepts of humanitarianism and humanity, which the author dissociates from each other, also separating them from the concept of humanism. The author believes that these concepts are often confused, they form a “semantic cloud,” intuitively comprehended as integrity and referring us to the image of man as the center of the world and the subject matter of discussion in ethics, aesthetics, psychology as well as philosophy and other “free arts.” However, these concepts need (...) to be distinguished. Humanism represents a conceptual theoretical setting for considering a person as a free, independent and active being, while, in the author’s opinion, humanitarianism is a literary form of statements about a person. At the same time, humanity is meant as a characteristic of behavior and attitudes that motivate this behavior, such as the motives of kindness, philanthropy, benevolence. The article reveals the main features of humanitarianism and also shows that humanitarian texts are not always texts originating from attitudes of humanity and pursuing humanity. Literary reflection on the subject of a man does not necessarily need kindness and benevolence. The article provides examples of both the coincidence of humanitarianism and humanity and their divergence. The author draws attention to the existence of humanitarian but not humane texts, some of which cannot be attributed as philanthropic and other ones – as optimistic. The author considers it necessary not to confuse closely related concepts, denoting different aspects of human life and culture. (shrink)

Polish-Russian Economic Relations Under the Conditions of System Transformation The rapid economic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe, modelled on Western economies and based, in some aspects, on neoliberal principles, has found the region's countries to a bigger or lesser degree unprepared. The resulting economic recession, especially in Russia, has had an adverse effect on mutual trade between Poland and Russia. In order to improve economic relations with Russia and increase the trade volume, Poland, remaining within the bounds (...) of EU standards and regulations, needs to adapt the commodity structure of Polish exports to the needs of the Russian market. (shrink)

Proceeding from the insights of Petrażycki, Polish-Russian legal realists distinguished legal theory, legal dogmatics, and legal policy. Legal theory describes legal phenomena in a value-free way and formulates causal laws concerning those phenomena. Legal dogmatics and legal policy are, by contrast, value-laden sciences involving the subject's—i.e., the scientist's—own attitudes toward existing or imagined phenomena: Dogmatics evaluates behaviors based on the subject's adoption of given normative sources as binding, while legal policy evaluates the effects produced by given NSs based (...) on causal laws and on the subject's goals. PRRs then conceptualize custom as a representation of people behaving in a certain way : We have a custom on the threefold condition that Rc is believed true by a given X, Rc causes the existence of a given normative psychical experience in X, and X expressly refers to—or would refer—to Rc in justifying an NPE. PRRs use the term customary law to refer to legal experiences caused and justified by an Rc. From a theoretical perspective, both the subject's adoption of custom as a binding NS and its truth are irrelevant. It is only the presence of a customary NPE in the X under study that matters. From a dogmatic perspective, by contrast, what matters is whether the dogmatician—qua subject—adopts custom as a binding NS, whether it is true that people behave in a given way bw, and whether bw resembles the behavior that is deontically qualified in the norm under dogmatic evaluation. Finally, from a legal-political viewpoint, PRRs hold that customary law in modern societies, owing to its conservative nature, should be eradicated for the goal of removing inequalities and fostering benevolence. (shrink)

To date, critical engagement with Arnold Hauser’s sociology of art has been confined to the field of art history. This perspective has ignored Hauser’s interest in literary history, which I argue is essential to his project. Hauser’s dialectical model, composed of conflicting realist and formalist tendencies, extends to the literary sphere. In The Social History of Art, these two traditions are epitomised by the Russian social novel and German idealism. Anti-enlightenment tendencies in German intellectual culture provide Hauser (...) with evidence of idealism’s propensity for escapism and reaction. Conversely, he extols the Russian social novel as the naturalistic art form par excellence. Because the intelligentsia is central to Hauser’s understanding of the formation of literary culture, this paper provides an outline of his sociology of intellectuals. Through a comparison of the German and Russian literary intelligentsia, this paper shows that Hauser’s analysis of literature is often more complex than his sociological interpretations of the visual arts. (shrink)

The famous Russian historian V. O. Kluchevsky had been constantly interested in literature. In this article, the author considers Kluchevsky’s observations on M. Yu. Lermontov’s creativity through the analyses of sadness motives in the article ‘Sadness‘ published in the journal ‘Russian Thought‘. Kluchevsky tried to understand how sadness motives were appeared in the Russian literature and how these motives influenced Lermontov’s self-reflection. Literary analyses is constructed on famous Lermontov’s lyrics, such as ‘Sail‘, ‘The golden cloud slept…‘, (...) ‘Dream‘ and ‘July the 11th of 1831‘. Analyzing the lyrics ‘I go out alone on the road…‘ the author of this article paying attention to ‘hidden sadness‘, which is expressed impressively in melodious Lermontov’s lyric without ‘arrangement for notes‘. Kluchevsky had expressed it on the 50th anniversary of Lermontov’s death. The position of the historian reflected in his comparison of sad Lermontov with meek and devout Russian tsar Alexey Mikhailovich. For this comparison, he was reproached by writer and literary critic N. M. Mikhailovsky, but Kluchevsky thoroughly considered sadness motives in poet’s creativity based on examples from the lyrics and disagreed literary critic’s reproaches. The origins of sadness motives studied in the historian’s article are in lesser degree connected with the biography of young Lermontov and rooted in the ‘moral history‘ of all Russian society. (shrink)

The article is an attempt to outline a long-neglected issue and relate a general category, usually placed outside the achievements of “traditional” art, to stricte literary phenomena. The first chapter, Na tropach kiczu (On the trail of trash), concentrates on establishing the range of meaning of the term discussed. It is not aimed at constructing an unambiguous definition but at producing a brief outline of the complex character of the issue. The author does not limit herself to a negative (...) understanding of the phenomenon, but also emphasizes its multi-aspect presence in widely termed culture. The second chapter, О kiczu literaturze (On trash in literature), deals with the general ways in which the phenomenon functions and the ways of revealing the phenomenon in literary works and discusses various manifestations of the problem in particular texts. It presents instances of plain trash as well as pieces of writing where trash appears at the level of the world presented and where it is often subject to all sorts of tricks and many kinds of mystification. Chapter third, entitled Kicz opisany i sparodiowany: proza Manueli Gretkowskiej (Trash described and parodied: the prose by Manuela Gretkowska), is directly connected with the issues raised in the title of the article. The subjecl of this part of the publication is the literary output of this contemporary Polish writer, particularly her first three novels: My zdies' emigranty [1992], Tarot paryski (The Paris Tarot) [1993] and Kabaret Metafizyczny (Metaphysical Cabaret) [1994]. However, the aim of this chapter is not to characterize the novels but to comprehensively present the issue of trash in actual practice; that is, to give examples of the problems briefly discussed above. In the prose trash manifests itself at various levels of meaning and is subject to parody, the aim of which is not only to discredit or mock the phenomenon, but also to reach its essence and reveal its unique mechanisms. In the texts discussed here trash seems to lead to parody and parody to trash, which means that both the categories are closely and inseparably linked with each other. This is especially visible at the level of the strategy of reception, which is part ol the novels. The issue is discussed in the fourth chapter, entitled Gdzie jest czytelnik, gdy go nie ma? Strategia odbioru według Manuell Gretkowskiej (Where is the reader when there is no reader? The strategy of reception by Manuela Gretkowska). The last chapter, with the title Wokół postmodernizmu (On postmodernism), is an attempt to summarize the above issues and place them in a wider context. It presents the three novels against a background of the achievements of contemporary literature and art, which are usually regarded as postmodernist, makes them part of aesthetics, using a specific sort of style called camp-art by Susan Sontag, which consists in deliberate staggering on the borderland between bad and good tastes, an apotheosis of exaggeration as well as exhibiting trash perceived as a cultural element, a symptom of “new sensitivity” and an absolutely ambiguous phenomenon. (shrink)

In his novel “Dolina Radości” [“Valley of Joy”] Stefan Chwin tackles the subject of metamorphoses. In this article I will talk about the issue of transformations in “Dolina radości”. The hero of the novel is a makeup­-artist and that is why metamorphoses are at the center of the action. Noteworthy are also transformations connected with the most important political events and the most important places in Europe in the 20th century for example in the Polish city of Gdańsk which (...) Chwin writes about. The events of December 1970 are described in an episode of the novel but are a very important element of the whole book. This article first presents references to German literary works which are the part of the literature of German­-Polish dialogue. (shrink)

The volume starts with the paper of Lynn Maurice Ferguson Arnold, former Premier of South Australia and former Minister of Education of Australia, concerning the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life) that was held from 25 May to 25 November 1937 in Paris, France. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the Nazi German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Many papers are devoted (...) to the interpretation of this opposition. Arnold’s paper considers the differences in the two totalitarian states’ architectural and design discourse styles. Although each of them communicated a totalitarian language of purposes, permissions, and boundaries, they essentially differed in the styles of discourse represented by the architecture and design of their respective pavilions. They were opposites of each other and the liberal ideals they contested. The internationalist viewpoint reflecting the multi-ethnic mix of the USSR is contrasted to the ein Volk homogeneity represented in the German pavilion. The Soviet pavilion opted for a utopian future to be arrived at by “benign” leadership, whereas the German pavilion anchored itself in the myth of Teutonic history with the nostalgic pride protected by the swastika-bearing eagle. Jean-Yves Béziau is best known as a logician and founder of Universal Logic. However, in this paper, he poses a new philosophical question: why philosophical discourse does not use images? The paper begins with a general analysis of different types of philosophical discourses. Then, he focuses on why images have been and are still rejected in philosophical discourse. He explains various ways to use images in a fruitful way to develop philosophical thinking and discourse and illustrates his view by providing several examples. He concludes with a promising programmatic declaration about founding a new journal entitled World Journal of Pictorial Philosophy to stimulate the usage of images for developing philosophical thinking. Although complaints about the obscurity of many philosophers’ discourse are widespread, Tatiana Denisova, ex-professor of the Surgut University and a research associate of the University of the Aegean undertakes a positive attitude to this problem. She explains that the reasons for the obscurity of philosophical texts, the subsequent complexity in communicating philosophers’ meanings and their eventual incomplete understanding is not a sign of their inferiority. On the contrary, it is a sign of the fruitfulness of philosophical discourse, which can generate new meanings. Thus, the darkness of philosophical discourse is like the life-giving chaos, and the obscurity that it inevitably contains can be the keeper of implicit meanings and even their generator. Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszyńska and Piotr Leśniewski, authors of a monograph on Polish philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890 – 1963), make a comparative analysis of his educational style with that of Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (1921 – 1997). The authors highlight that these scholars have distinctly different backgrounds. The former was an educator, philosopher and a leading advocate of critical pedagogy connected with the dialogical Latin-American tradition. The latter was a philosopher and logician, a notable representative of the Lwów–Warsaw school of logic with significant contributions to semantics, model theory and the philosophy of science. Despite their apparent difference, the authors identify some striking similarities regarding their attitudes towards education; notably, their approaches are essentially dialogical. Gilah Yelin Hirsch is a multidisciplinary artist who works as a painter, writer, curator, educator, and filmmaker. In her experiential paper, he explains how and why she uses four channels of communication in her creative expression: writing, painting, filmmaking, and teaching, as dialogic inquiry. She considers that these channels compose a continuum of discourse styles, each reaching a different facet of kaleidoscopic consciousness. She claims that her choice of medium is prompted by a need to communicate her insights profoundly. Thus, for instance, she created painted allegories to express narratives based on dreams and visions emerging from her subconscious. Art and healing is another Tibetan-rooted type of discourse practised by the author. Creating and observing a healing image produces a positive psychophysiological change in both the artist and the viewer. The discourse here is tripartite between creator, image, and viewer. Filmmaking is another type of discourse she practices between the filmmaker/artist as shaman or healer and the viewer as respondent or participant. These films are meant to be experienced frame by frame, physically and emotionally in both the body and mind. Jocelyn Ireson-Paine is a cartoonist and programmer. His paper offers an original attempt to use category theory in cartooning. Category theory is a branch of mathematics that provides concepts and methods to describe general abstract structures in terms of a labelled directed graph called category, whose nodes are called objects, and whose labelled directed edges are called arrows (or morphisms or transformations or mappings). The author explores different ways to define “style” in art using category theory and a relational view of art. Moreover, he examines how “translation” (transformation) between styles could be defined and reveals the difficulties of how it could be implemented in a computer using special software. Jens Lemanski is a philosopher who has revived research in Arthur Schopenhauer’s legacy by exploring his work on mathematical evidence, logic diagrams, and problems of semantics. In this paper, he advances a new approach to eristic as an art of protecting oneself from the one who deliberately violates norms of discourse ethics to win an argument. The author attributes the origins of this view to Schopenhauer, suggesting a new reading of his work. According to the author, eristic is a prohibitive technique that takes effect when the norms of discourse ethics are transgressed and violated. Thus, eristic is viewed as a discipline of Enlightenment philosophy and a correlate of discourse ethics. Roshdi Rashed is an authority on the history of Arabic mathematical sciences. Proceeding from Gilles-Gaston Granger’s definition of mathematical style, he studies the question of whether a mathematical work can be characterized by a single style or by a multitude of styles. This question is explored within the style of a single work, namely Menelaus’s Sphaerica, and through the study of the development of a single problem over time, namely the isoperimetric problem. He indicates Menelaus’s divergence from the Euclidean style of (plane and stereometric) geometry caused by the drop of the Parallel Postulate, which associated it with hyperbolic geometry. Hence, the author concludes that Menelaus’s Sphaerica incorporates the well-known Euclidean style with a variation of the non-Euclidean one. On the other hand, examining the isoperimetric problem reveals another interesting historical picture. A succession of different styles (cosmological, geometric, infinitesimalistic, style of the calculus of variations, of synthetic geometry) can be observed due to the transformation of the research object over time. Boris Shalyutin, a Russian social philosopher, and Ombudsman for Human Rights in the Kurgan Region, explores the origins of discourse in combination with the birth of society and law. He claims that legal discourse marks the historical emergence of discourse in general. Homo Juridicus generated Homo Sapiens, which have created new spheres of discourse, notably moral discourse and further philosophical, political, and scientific discourse. Petros Stefaneas, a logician, computer scientist and novelist, suggests an alternative to the traditional narratology approach for studying (interactive) social media discourse. He claims that style describes how the parts of a narrative are blended into a whole. The author relies upon Goguen’s and Harrel’s concept of style as a choice of blending principles and transfers to the study of the social media narratives elements from the methodology of studying Web-based collaborative search for mathematical proofs like those implemented within the Polymath project. The last paper belongs to Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, a linguist, language revivalist, and proponent of a model of the emergence of Israeli Hebrew, according to which Hebrew and Yiddish were the primary sources of Modern Hebrew. This paper explores the fascinating and multifaceted Yiddish language and its survival in Israeli. Yiddish is characterized by a unique style that embeds psycho-ostensive expressions throughout its discourse. The author highlights the cross-fertilization between Hebrew and Yiddish as it manifests itself in any aspect of the Israeli language. He claims that Yiddish survives beneath Israeli phonetics, phonology, discourse, syntax, semantics, lexis, and even morphology, although traditional and institutional linguists have been most reluctant to admit it. (shrink)

The formation and circumstances of Ukrainian military emigration in Germany in 1918-1939 are taken into consideration in this article. Ukrainian emigration in Germany between the wars had different origins and diverse character. By origin it can be divided into three groups. The first group consisted of Ukrainian soldiers released from German POW camps for the former Russian army, who for various reasons had not returned to Ukraine. The second one included military men of Ukrainian National Republic, Ukrainian State and (...) Galician Army who emigrated to Germany after the defeat of the national liberation struggle of 1917-1921. The third group contained deserters from the Polish army who did not want to serve in the hostile armed forces. The Ukrainian military emigration conventionally included former officers of the Ukrainian army, who were of German origin but born in Ukraine. They went to Austria and Germany for permanent residence, where they maintained contacts with the Ukrainian liberation movement. Former Ukrainian soldiers who lived in Danzig were in close connection with emigration in Germany. In the interwar period that city had the status of "free", but it was under serious political and economic influence of Germany. In general, military emigration in Germany was not numerous and consolidated. But former Ukrainian soldiers who were there, created separate environments related to their new professional status, different political orientations or participation in military organizations. Some of them, especially officers of the Ukrainian army, rallied around Hetman Pavlo Skoropadski, dictator Ieuhen Petrushevych and Colonel Ieuhen Konovalets, in various ways, were involved in the continuation of Ukrainian national liberation struggle in exile in the interwar period. (shrink)

The Russian philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has traditionally been seen as the leading figure in the group of intellectuals known as the Bakhtin Circle. The writings of other members of the Circle are considered much less important than his work, while Bakhtin's achievement has been exaggerated in proportion to the downgrading of the thinkers with whom he associated in the 1920s. This volume, which includes new translations and studies of the work of the most important members of (...) the Circle, sets out to correct the distortions in the established representations of its activity. The original contributions to literary and linguistic theory made by Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev (but frequently credited to Bakhtin) are assessed, and the distinctiveness of their approaches is highlighted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse InscriptionsJane Bailey ThigpenCourtney, E[dward], ed. Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Pp. x 1 457. 4 maps. Cloth, $41.95; paper, $27.95. (American Classical Studies, 36)Latin verse inscriptions have often been mined for philological, metrical, grammatical, and socio-historical data, but neglected as poetry worthy of study in and of itself. This oversight limits literary study (...) to the generally upper-class, cultured milieu of literary texts. Epigraphical verse, in contrast, allows the study of material from all levels of society and expertise—from highly literary to barely literate. Musa Lapidaria shows how rewarding in-depth literary study of epigraphical material can be. Although the book was written with graduate students and young professors in mind, it can also be read profitably (and enjoyably) by preparatory-level teachers and advanced undergraduates.Of the nearly twenty-three hundred inscriptions collected by Buecheler and Lommatsch in the Carmina Latina Epigraphica (the verse complement to CIL), most are highly formulaic and lack individuality and intrinsic literary worth. A few of these poems, however, are creative endeavors. In Musa Lapidaria, E. Courtney has picked some of the best from CLE and added thirty-four choice specimens from other epigraphical sources. He translates his collection of 204 inscriptions into literal but elegant prose and adds a commentary which provides bibliography for each inscription as well as a line-by-line analysis of significant linguistic, metrical, literary and historical features. As the commentary is written for literary non-specialists rather than epigraphers, the author only briefly describes the physical characteristics of inscriptions and archaeological features when pertinent and includes no pictures.The collection spans the centuries, running from the early Republic to a [End Page 152] fifth-century inscription on the Golden Gate of Constantinople. Although Courtney includes many inscriptions from late antiquity, he refrains from including those which are openly Christian. Republican inscriptions include Saturnian verse, the Scipio epitaphs, and a few other notable epitaphs. Imperial inscriptions are organized by topic: 1) emperors and notables, matters of state and public buildings; 2) baths and springs, private buildings, works of art, and furniture; 3) literary, educational, and philosophical connections; 4) inns, travel, and tourism; 5) erotic; 6) municipal politics and institutions; 7) games, public performances and performers; 8) trades and professions; 9) religion (mostly Hercules, Hermes, Aesculapius, Athena, the Vestals, Silvanus, and Priapus, hunt trophies to Liber Pater or Diana, and examples of late syncretism); 10) epitaphs, including several for horses and dogs.The resulting melange is a colorful, earthy slice of life. The reader encounters, among other things: graffiti from the pyramids, dinner etiquette from Pompeii, poetic complaints about the lack of chamber pots at an inn, a hash of elegiac “door-poem” cliches actually written on a door, an ad for a snake charmer, a clay theatre ticket, a braggart soldier who could have stepped off the Plautine stage, and lurid descriptions of peculiar deaths—including an accident with a play javelin à la Antiphon and an attack by witches.The inscriptions themselves show a broad range of literary styles and expertise. The offering of Republican verse runs from the austere, well-wrought dignity of upper-class Saturnian and elegiac epitaphs to the chatty wit of a Saturnian dedication by a collegium of cooks, who, as Courtney says, “know their Plautus, and play up to their traditional comic type-casting as pretentious boasters” (205) but are less competent in their handling of meter. The Imperial material runs from the coarse wit and vulgar Latin of obscene Pompeiian graffiti to the highly polished, elusive style of a second-century North African epitaph (199A) which spends most of its 110 verses describing the three-storey mausoleum—complete with weathercock—which it adorned. (If anyone wants to read the longest extant Latin epitaph, this is it.) Five epitaphs are bi-lingual (Greek/Latin): 112, 159, 160, 170b, 180. Courtney omits the famous epitaph of Allia Potestas because it has already received a thorough commentary by N. Horsfall, ZPE 61 (1985) 251.The commentary deals with all of this disparate material thoroughly and well, and is particularly informative regarding material... (shrink)

This article contains a review of contexts used in school-didactics of literature. The definition of intertextuality, context and other theoretical problems are considered in the first chapter. Second chapter contains a review of each kind of contexts. At the beginning the author describes the literary contexts related to the analyzed by the means of allusion. He also writes about Bible and mythology. The following part consists of a review of auxiliary contexts, which belong to other sciences: history of literature, (...) history, philosophy, ethics, psychology,’ sociology and geography. The next part covers the texts of culture: aesthetics, theatre, film, music, painting, sculpture, architecture and museum-exhibitions. The last chapter contains suggestions of how to use contexts during Polish language lessons: their place teaching programs as well as presence on various educational stages. The final part of this work contains a description of problems and advantages connected to the usage of contexts in literature didactics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scriptural AuthorityA Buddhist PerspectiveShi ZhiruLike gold that is melted, cut, and polished, So should monks and scholars Analyze my words [before] accepting them; They should not do so out of respect.1As other papers in this volume have already noted, there is a crisis of authority in modern religion, particularly in the West. One defining characteristic of modernity is a deep sense of rupture from the old, from the traditional, (...) which is compounded by a heightened awareness of the subjectivity of self.2 Therefore, in the age of modernity, or postmodernity, critical and skeptical questioning of forms of religious authority is almost inevitable. While the crisis of religious authority is certainly enhanced in modernity, I would argue that the crisis of authority has always been part and parcel of religious innovation and transmission in Buddhist history. Critical self-reflection and skepticism of scriptural authority were present already in early Buddhism; at various junctures throughout Buddhist history, attitudes toward scriptural authority were often renegotiated in connection with major religious changes that in turn were usually prompted by larger social and historical changes. As the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas points out, “the term ‘modern’ again and again expresses the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new.” 3 Defined in this manner, the bridging of the “modern” and the past is not unique to the so-called epoch of modernity or postmodernity, but has occurred repeatedly throughout different historical periods.This paper discusses different junctures in Buddhist history when scriptural authority was problematized as part of self-reflection and criticism of the “tradition.” Rethinking the authority of scriptures often involves juxtaposing it against the authority of religious experience, and such reconsideration typically took place as part of religious change that unfolded in different sociocultural and geographical environments. It is tempting to immediately equate “religious experience” in the early Buddhist texts to the prevalent understanding of this term in the modern world, but one must caution that modern definitions and discourse on the topic are largely shaped [End Page 85] by post-Enlightenment ideals and rhetoric in Western religious history, which may not be applicable to traditional Buddhist cultures.4 Hence, it is necessary to unpack the range of premodern Buddhist understanding of “religious experience” according to its contextual references, and not hasten to assume a necessary polarity between the unmediated experience and scriptural exegesis that is generally assumed in modern discourse. Rather than a singular voice for the Buddhist position on scriptural authority, it is important to acknowledge the polyphony of voices and perspectives, sometimes even contradicting one another, in different forms of Buddhism. It is thus critical to contextualize the multiple voices within the different historical and religious circumstances that engendered a particular perspective.It should be noted that my discussion is hardly intended to be a comprehensive survey, but focuses on three examples: early Buddhism, early Mahāyāna, and Chan Buddhism. They are chosen because they aptly illustrate how Buddhists reconceived scriptural or textual authority as part of a critical rethinking of Buddhist thought and practice. Moreover, while religious experience was regularly invoked to undermine the normative scriptural authority of the time, nevertheless, in all the examples considered in this paper, the undermining of “old” scriptural authority gave way to new scriptural or literary authorities. This prioritization of religious experience in reality rarely excludes scriptural or textual authorities, but was often adopted for polemical and rhetorical purposes. The paper concludes with an attempt to broaden the understanding of Buddhist scriptural authority by highlighting the authority of scriptures as material objects, a perspective that has been largely neglected in comparative cross-cultural studies of scriptures.5 On a cautionary note, I am using the word “scripture” in a broad sense to mean the body of sacred texts accepted as the authority by a given religious tradition. As historians of religion have noted, it is necessary to dissociate sacred texts (particularly those of Asian religions) from the concept of “scripture,” which in its literal sense, as used to discuss Abrahamic religions, means the “written word... (shrink)

Since 1997, FORUM has been an integral part of the landscape of European studies. In addition to contemporary history, it offers insights into the history of ideas and reviews books on Central and Eastern European history. It offers more than just history--for instance, interdisciplinary discussions by political scientists, literary, legal, and economic scholars, and philosophers. FORUM sees itself as a bridge between East and West. Through the translation and publication of texts and contributions from Russian, Polish, and (...) Czech researchers, it offers the Western reader access to the scholarly discourse of Eastern Europe. The 'short' 20th century is one of the best-documented eras in history. Nevertheless, it holds more mysteries than many periods of antiquity or the Middle Ages of which we have only sparse relics. One of the biggest mysteries is the question of the causes of the collapse of civilization in the first half of the century. In Germany as well as in Russia, regimes came to power invoking the implementation of utopias that had been dreamt up during the 'long' 19th century yet which had been considered unrealizable. Now, it turned out, even the most radical utopian blueprint could be put into place. This development, intertwined with an extraordinarily deep crisis of European democracy, did not happen overnight. It had been looming for a long time. There had even been several prescient voices heralding the upcoming crisis--trailing away without being noticed. Volume 19, Issue 1 of FORUM recognizes some of these unheard prophets and scrutinizes their writings. (shrink)

Andrzej Szczypiorski (1928–2000) was a writer and journalist. As a journalist he made his debut in 1947 in “Gromada” and then he cooperated with “Życie Warszawy” and “Film". In 1951 he was a member of literary editor’s office of Polish Radio in Katowice, where he was engaged in reportage and radio’s adaptations of literary works. After short period of work in Teatr Śląski in Katowice and departure to embassy in Copenhagen (Denmark) he arrived to Warsaw and he (...) engaged in cultural journalism. Every week’s feuilletons-commentary in radio and numerous texts printed for example in “Przegląd Kulturalny”, “Życie Warszawy". “Za wolność i lud”, “Nowa Kultura”, “Tygodnik Demokratyczny”, “Tygodnik Kulturalny” made him famous journalist. He was reckoned to be a journalist, who supported obligatory political system. Since 1968 his connections with radio and official press have started to come loose. After next few years he cooperated to “Polityka”, “Odra”, “Problemy Alkoholizmu” and “Literatura". Formation independent press made him publicity in “Zapis”, “Biuletyn Informacyjny", "Bez tytułu". During being internee in the state of war he became concentrated on literary activity. In 1989–1991 years he was a senator. Till his death he published very much (e.g. “Gazeta Wyborcza”, “Wprost”, “Polityka” and “Hustler”) and he took part in television and radio programs, symposiums and cultural meeting in the country and foreign countries. (shrink)

In postwar Western culture, the myth of Antigone has been the subject of noted literary, literary-critical, dramatic, philosophical, and philological treatments, not least due to the strong influence of one of the key plays of the twentieth century, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. The rich discussion of the myth has often dealt with its most famous formulation, Sophocles’ Antigone, but has paid less attention to the broader ancient context; the epic sources (the Iliad, Odyssey, Thebaid, and Oedipodea); the other tragic (...) versions (Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes and his lost Eleusinians; Euripides’s Suppliants, Phoenician Women, and Antigone, of which only a few short fragments have been preserved); and the responses of late antiquity. This paper analyses the basic features of this nearly thousand-year-long ancient tradition and shows how they connect in surprising ways – sometimes even more directly than Sophoclean tragedy does – with the main issues in some unique contemporary traditions of its reception (especially the Slovenian, Polish and Argentine ones): the question of burying the wartime (or postwar) dead and the ideal of reconciliation. (shrink)

Laskaris Kananos's Greek description of a journey around the Baltic was first published in 1881. Nicolaus Busch argued that the journey was probably made in 1438 and that Kananos might have been connected to the Russian delegation that travelled to the Council of Ferrara. On the basis of neglected literary and archival evidence, this article proposes a later date of around 1468 and suggests that Kananos may not have been a merchant or diplomat as has been supposed but (...) a refugee who was gathering alms to pay ransoms. (shrink)

The paper discusses for the first time the “philosophy of life” of the famous literary critic and philosopher of the first quarter of the twentieth century Yuly Isaevich Aykhenvald (1872–1928) in connection with his interpretation of Russian history and literature. The article examines the publications of Yu.I. Aykhenvald in the newspaper “Rul’” in the first half of the 1920s, stimulated by his participation in various philosophical discussions that took place at that time in Berlin (F.A. Stepun’s lecture (...) “Tragedy and Modernity”, S.S. Olden­burg’s report “Russian Literature and Revolution”). Special attention is paid to the report of Yu.I. Aykhenvald “On the question of the meaning of history”, read in the Russian Scien­tific and Philosophical Society on April 14 (1), 1923. It is shown that for a critic-philosopher, any revolution is always opposed by the “progressive force of history”, the temple of human existence built on the basis of everyday life for centuries. It is demonstrated that for Yu.I. Aykhenvald, daily life is full of great meaning and a special “metaphysical height”. At the same time, Aykhenvald’s attitude to everyday life is the basis of his literary preferences, due to this, the “natural symbolism” of Alexander Pushkin, Apollon Grigoryev, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Bunin, Boris Zaitsev unexpectedly, but quite logically, turn out to be consonant with ideas of Vladimir Solovyov in his service to the beauty of world life, “overcoming flesh, spiri­tualizing matter, idealizing objectivity”. It is proved that the interpretation of everyday life is associated in the worldview of Yu.I. Aykhenvald with views both religious (the idea of “natu­ral Christianity” as the “imperishable myth of nature” underlying the entire natural world, the “real miracle” of dying and resurrection, which finds “refraction in the religious feeling of people”) and historiosophical (Russia’s destiny and its attitude towards Europe). (shrink)

A literary debate occurred during 1969 and 1970 as Soviet society stepped into the holistic transition to conservatism. In the debate process, liberals in the journal Novyi Mir interpreted Soviet patriotism based on cultural pluralism and censured Russian nationalists of the journal Molodaia Gvardiia for deviating from Lenin’s ideas on the nationality question and obscuring the demarcation between patriotism and Russian chauvinism. Conversely, nationalists in Molodaia Gvardiia emphasized their validity in reviving the Russian tradition to defend (...) the national culture from Western cultural penetration and responded that Western cosmopolitanism was the innate character behind the words of Novyi Mir. The contention gradually stirred up so much public attention that Soviet authorities decided to quiet down the contestation. Eventually, the editorial boards of Novyi Mir and Molodaia Gvardiia were reshuffled, although the Soviet authorities sheltered Molodaia Gvardiia to some degree. The result of the debate was affected by a combination of synthesized factors: the background of rising Russian nationalism, the ideological rhetoric of the debate, and the influences of the opinions of international media and officials toward either side. Whatever individual preferences the authorities had, the principles of the Era of Stagnation (Zastoi) were the guidelines in dealing with the debate. (shrink)

In the article, the author studies the Russian influence on the literary, philosophical and critical works of Mikhail Naimy, the world renowned figure in modern Arabic literature. His writings contributed to changing its topics, language and style. Numerous researchers have studied the impact of British, American and French cultures and literatures on the writings of Naimy and his colleagues from the Pen Association, the literary league founded in New York by several young Arab-American emigrants. Meanwhile, it was (...) Russian literature that had the most important impact on Naimy, especially at the earliest stages of his world formation. Scholars have only studied this influence superficially, or bring up specific Russian writers’ influence, without generalization of all the Russian factors. The current work shows how Naimy incorporates Russian viewpoints on critical social reform, anticlericalism and mysticism as well as Russian literary criticism into his works. The author sums up the previous researches, generalizes all the factors, and significantly deepens the materials of the previous researches. This paper has an important methodological value, as it identifies the typology and significance of cultural contacts between the East and the West. It also contributes to an important topic that has received renewed interest from the academy - Russian influences on the Arabic world in general and on Arabic literature in particular. (shrink)

The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture investigates the emergence and meaning of the cult of death. Over the last three decades, Halloween has grown to rival Christmas in its popularity and profitability; dark tourism has emerged as a rapidly expanding industry; and funerals have become less traditional. "Corpse chic" and "skull style" have entered mainstream fashion, while elements of gothic, horror, torture porn, and slasher movies have streamed into more conventional genres. Monsters have become pop culture heroes: vampires, zombies, (...) and serial killers now appeal broadly to audiences of all ages. This book considers, for the first time, these phenomena as aspects of a single movement, documenting its development in contemporary Western culture. Previous considerations of our fixation on death have not developed a convincing theory linking the mounting demand for images of violent death and the dramatic changes in death-related social rituals and practices. This book offers a conceptual framework that connects the observations of the simulated world of fiction and movies--including The Twilight Saga, The Vampire Diaries, Night Watch, Hannibal, and the Harry Potter series--to social and cultural practices, providing an analysis of the specific aesthetics and the intellectual and historical conditions that triggered the cult of death. It also considers the celebration of death in the context of a longstanding critique of humanism and investigates the role played by 20th-century French theory, as well as by posthumanism, transhumanism, and the animal rights movement, in the formation of the current antihumanist atmosphere. With its critique of movie and book blockbusters and the death-related social rituals, festivals, and fashions that have coalesced into the cult of death, this timely volume will appeal to anyone hoping to better understand a defining phenomenon of our age. Scholars and general readers of cultural studies, film and literary studies, anthropology, and American and Russian studies will find this book thought-provoking. (shrink)

The early 18th century saw the beginnings of Russian military occupation of Poland, followed by a secret agreement by the neighboring countries, meant to maintain a political status quo in the internal affairs of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Then, the dynamics of the economic transformations of the European continent led to a permanent economic deadlock, particularly in the regions with large agricultural areas, such as Poland. Five years from the turn of the 18th century the Polish polity disappeared (...) from the map of Europe for 123 years. Analyzing the relationships and causes of a number of phenomena related to Old Poland is made all the more difficult by some historical processes which blow some ritual events of limited importance out of proportion, such as theadoption of the Constitution of 3 May ; these also glorify the past of the society and the state as a “golden myth” of social harmony in relationships obtaining within the classes and between them. (shrink)

With the global spread of Chekhov’s plays in the 20th century, his works have transcended their literary origins to become foundational texts in modern theatre, influencing both dramatic realism and avant-garde experimentation. Beyond their structural and thematic innovations, Chekhov’s plays engage deeply with existential, metaphysical, and spiritual questions, making them fertile ground for religious and philosophical inquiry. His dramatic texts possess a _meta-theatrical_ quality, not only reflecting the human condition but also serving as a medium for grappling with themes (...) of faith, meaning, and transcendence. This study examines Chekhov’s plays as philosophical theatre, exploring how they resonate with religious and metaphysical thought in their engagement with fate, suffering, and the search for purpose. Through an analysis of theatrical interpretations—including Stanislavsky’s psychological realism, the metaphysical dimensions in productions by the Koriada Theater, Red Torch Theater, and Alexander Linski Theater—this research reveals how Chekhov’s works have been adapted to reflect contemporary existential and spiritual concerns. His dramas often evoke a sense of waiting, disillusionment, and silent prayer, mirroring theological reflections on divine silence, existential uncertainty, and the search for redemption in a seemingly indifferent world. By examining the interplay between _theatrical realism_, _meta-theatrical awareness_, and _philosophical reflection_, this study highlights Chekhov’s enduring influence as a dramatist whose works not only depict reality but also invite meditations on the sacred, the absurd, and the metaphysical. This research contributes to the broader discourse on religious philosophy and dramatic arts, arguing that Chekhov’s theatre functions as a _metaphysical space_ where philosophical and theological themes—such as the confrontation with mortality, the longing for transcendence, and the ethical dilemmas of human agency—are staged and explored. Future studies should further investigate how Chekhov’s dramaturgy engages with religious existentialism and the spiritual dimensions of theatrical performance, deepening the connection between theatre, philosophy, and metaphysical inquiry. (shrink)

The article analyzes the historiographical work connected with the study of various aspects of the Roman Catholic Church's activities on the Right Bank and its impact on the Ukrainian population, socio-political and economic situation in the region. An analysis of the historical heritage will make it possible to summarize and systematize the works of Ukrainian, Russian and Polish researchers, to determine the main approaches to the study of this problem.

Since 1997, FORUM is an integral part of the journal landscape of European Studies. In addition to facts of contemporary history, it offers deep insights into the history of ideas, reflects current discussions, and provides reviews of books on Central and Eastern European history. Especially on the history of ideas and contemporary history it offers more than ›just‹ history--e.g. interdisciplinary discussions by political scientists, literary, legal, and economic scholars and philosophers. FORUM sees itself as a bridge between East and (...) West. Through the translation and publication of documents and contributions from Russian, Polish, and Czech researchers it offers the Western reader insight into the scientific discourse within Eastern Europe.In his classic book on the history of Russian philosophy, Vasilij Zenkovskij singled out Simon Frank as the most influential Russian philosopher of all times. Frank's oeuvre is informed by two main sources: Russian-Orthodox spirituality on the one hand and Western, mainly German, philosophical traditions on the other.To honor Frank's impact and significance, the Institute for Central and Eastern European Studies decided to translate his most important writings into German in 1996. 17 years later, an edition of eight volumes had been completed, which served as the occasion for a symposium on Frank's work. This issue of Forum collects the research presented during that symposium. (shrink)

I soon discovered that I was quite isolated in my attempts to pursue the sociology of literature. In any case, one searched almost in vain for allies if one wanted to approach a literary text from the perspective of a critical theory of society. To be sure, there were Franz Mehring’s articles which I read with interest and profit; but despite the admirable decency and the uncompromising political radicalism of the author, his writings hardly went beyond the limits of (...) a socialist journalist who wrote in essentially the same style about literature as about political and the economy. George Lukács had not yet published his impressive series of essays on Marxist aesthetics and interpretation of literature. Of course, I was deeply touched and influenced by his fine little book, The Theory of the Novel , which I practically learned by heart. Besides Levin Schücking’s small volume on the sociology of literary taste, the only other major influence I can recall was George Brandes’ monumental work on the literary currents of the nineteenth century.Nonetheless, I had the courage, not to say hubris, to plan an ambitious, socially critical series on French, English, Spanish, and German literature, the beginning of which was to be formed by the above-mentioned studies. My attention was especially focused on the writes and literary schools which the German literary establishment either punished by total silence or raised up into the clouds of idealistic babble or relegated to quasi-folkloric anthropology .In these studies, I limited myself to the narrative forms of literature; for reasons which I hold to be sociologically and artistically valid, I believe that novels and stories represent the most significant aspect of German literature in the nineteenth century. While I in no way feel ashamed of these documents of my youth, I am conscious of their weaknesses. If I were to write them over again, I would certainly be less sure of some of the direct connections I drew between literature and writers on the one hand, and the social infrastructure on the other. In later publications I attempted to analyze with greater circumspection the mediation between substructure and superstructure, between social currents and ideologies; but my views on the social world and the necessity to combine social theory and literary analysis have not changed in any essential way. In the last decades the sociology of literature has become progressively more fashionable. The writings of my contemporaries have often amazed me because some—frequently in unnecessarily complicated and esoteric language—are so concerned with “mediation” that the connections between social being and social consciousness became almost obscured. Leo Lowenthal is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany. His collected works have been published in five volumes in German and in a parallel English edition. Lowenthal’s autobiographical writings, edited by Martin jay, will appear in the fall of 1987 under the title An Unmastered Past. Lowenthal’s present studies deal with German postmodernism. Ted. R. Weeks is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in imperial Russian history. (shrink)