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From literature to ecocriticism: Siberian dams and their impact on the natural and human environment
Views:273Written with an ecocritical perspective, the present paper is devoted to the analysis of affinities and differences between two major works of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century, Proshchanie s Materoy [Farewell to Matyora, 1976] by Rasputin (1937–2015) and Zona zatopleniya [The Flood Zone, 2015] by Senchin (b. 1971). Forty years later, these novels enter a dialogue, starting from some key themes and the common subject: the real flooding of several Siberian rural villages due to the construction of dams and hydroelectric power plants. The first part of the paper introduces and contextualizes the construction of what has been called “great dams”, outlining their main aims and characteristics, as well as the environmental consequences for neighbouring territories and populations. The second section focuses on the parallelisms between the two literary texts, examining, in particular, the image of nature and the peculiar “Siberian chronotope” which emerges from them. In both novels, in fact, the conflict between humans and nature plays a central role. The last part of the study provides a comparison between the contents and the main thematic issues of the narratives, taking into account the traumatic psychological impact of evacuation and resettlement on the characters. The rather marked stylistic differences between the works of the two authors make it possible to propose some final reflections on the profound relationships entertained by their literary works which go beyond a mere ‘remake’ or actualization.
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On the Reception of the Poem The Twelve by Aleksandr Blok in German Criticism and Literature Studies of the Past 50 Years
Views:307The article examines the German reception of Alexander Blok’s poem “The Twelve” based on selected criticism and works of literary history published by Slavists, poets and translators during the last fifty years. Analyses and interpretations of the poem are presented in detail, while other post-1917 writings and statements by Blok are also mentioned in order to provide context.
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Intimacy or exposure: Ukrainian artists and the camp wound in relations with Russia
Views:389The aim of the paper is to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of cultural testimonies of the unique wound left by the camps in Ukrainian–Russian relations. Gulag literature, explored for decades in philology, is perceived mainly through the prism of the heritage of totalitarian systems and creative attitudes in the face of suffering, as extreme physical and mental experience. The aim of the paper is to analyze the works of Ukrainian artists of recent decades created as a result of imprisonment. Their literary and film creations make up the image of a wound inflicted in the name of achieving imperial goals while imprisoned in a camp. The juxtaposition of their diverse artistic reactions to the suffering of testimonies help to highlight the power with which the unsettled, forgotten, silenced, and now and unexpectedly updated wound of the camp past is reflected in today's attitudes of Ukrainians towards Russians.
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The Hungarian reception of Dostoevsky until the 1920s in the context of European and Hungarian Modernism
Views:313This paper deals with the questions Dostoevsky’s reception in Hungary in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author investigates the growing interest in Dostoevsky in the context of the new trends of art and literature and gives a detailed survey of the most characteristic reactions (i.e. reviews, studies, introductions to books) about the new translations and editions of Dostoevsky’s works. Among the most relevant questions addressed arestereotypes about Russian culture and people, living in Hungary duringthe past centuries, the various interpretations of Crime and Punishment, and some comparative aspects in the analyses of this novel.
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«Doktor Zhivago» and Leonid Pasternak
Views:304In this article, we analyze the transformation of values in the literature and art of the first half of the 20th century through the creative strategies of two closely linked people: the poet Boris Pasternak and his father, the painter Leonid Pasternak. An academician of painting, Leonid Pasternak renewed the traditions of realism, being in close contact with Leo Tolstoy while working on the illustrations for Tolstoy’s novel “The Resurrection”. Having made a creative journey from the movement of “peredvizhniki” (“the Itinerants”) toward Impressionism, he did not accept the newest trends, as opposed to his son who had undergone a long period of fascination with Futurism, as well as the influence of Modernism. This conflict of aesthetics lost its poignancy with the passing of the years and with the geographical distance (Pasternak the father having emigrated in the beginning of the 20s). Thus, Boris Pasternak returned to the poetics of the classical Russian prose in his novel “Doctor Zhivago.” But the Christian values on which the conceptual basis of the novel rests, remained unknown to the father, who had passed away just before his son began working on the novel. The result was the novel itself with its covert subtextual influence and the polemics of the son and the father, the poet and the artist.
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Aglaya Returns Home, The Mystery of The Apocryph of Aglaia. Ed. by Elena Kozmina. INTMEDIA, Yekaterinburg 2020, 231 pp. ISBN 978-5-6040560-8-0
Views:263This collection of studies is a unique example of a collective monograph written by Russian, Polish and Hungarian scholars on a contemporary Polish literary work. The novel by Jerzy Sosnowski entitled Aglaia’s Apocrypha is an ideal subject of analysis because of its complicated narrative structure, multilevel composition and genre complexity. The authors of the studies describe the connections between the storytellers and the author, define the context of the novel both in high and popularculture. Some of them represent the best traditions of Russian poetics of prose. Jerzy Sosnowski began his career as a literary critic and literary historian, he was an influential interpreter and promoter of the new tendencies in the Polish literature of the eighties.When he became a prosewriter, he followed the new aesthetic trend of Polish postmodernism. Jerzy Sosnowski as the author of a novel written about an erotic cyborg, its/her admirer and the operator was a forerunner of posthumanism.
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On the Mystery of Interpretation: Studia Humanitatis. Ars Hermeneutica. Metodologie A Theurgie Hermeneutické Interpretace IX. Kolektiv autorů. red.: Jan Vorel. Ostravská univerzita: Ostrava 2022., 148 p., ISBN: 978-80-7599-333-5
Views:175The aim of this review is to introduce the ninth volume of the publication series Studia Humanitatis, Ars Hermeneutica, published by the Department of Slavonic Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava in the Czech Republic. The monograph is an output of proceedingsfrom conferences which are regularly organized by this department. Attention to the art of interpretation and the related need to situate works of art in a complex web of cultural and historical connections is an important part of the effort to understand the deep context of artistic creation as such and the possibility for recipients to gain the most accurate understanding of the message conveyed by a work of art. The monograph highlights a number of aspects of artisticcreation: it notes the circumstances of the creation of the artwork, the ability of the interpreter to place the artwork in the context of the historical conditions in which it is created, and the theoretical concepts that can be used for its interpretation.
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Identity Problems from Historical, Cultural and Literary Aspects
7 p.Views:414This critique focuses on the latest part of the publication series by the Slavic Historical and Philological Association entitled “Individual and Collective Identities”, which is of great importance for the field of Russian Studies in Hungary as it provides a regular platform for academics with annual conferences. In the three main chapters of the book, identity is approached in different contexts from a historical, cultural, and literary point of view. For this reason, we can say that this collection stands out due to its interdisciplinary nature and complexity serving as a useful resource for those who deal with identity issues.
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The Theory of Metaphors in Contemporary Literary Studies
17 p.Views:348This article is designed as a brief overview of the methods of how metaphor is defined in contemporary scholarship. In the discussion of the similarities and differences of the basic Russian and Western poetic, philosophical and logical approaches to metaphors are compared to each other. Besides, Hungarian comprehensive syntheses and reconsiderations of metaphors are also touched upon. Finally, suggestions are made as to which aspects of literary studies and linguistics can be used in the analysis of the system of tropes in literature.
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Gender and Space in Literature and Cinema (Bogomil Rainov’s Roads to Nowhere and Metodi Andonov’s A White Room)
Views:307The article discusses the structural link between the gender model and the fictional space in Bogomil Rainov’s short story Roads to Nowhere (1966) and its film adaptation—Metodi Andovov’s A White Room (1968). The transformations of the original text are traced via several semantic oppositions (masculine-feminine, rational-emotional, order-chaos) and the influence of two aesthetic paradigms—noir and the existentialist “new wave”. These transformations are interpreted in the socio-cultural context of the Bulgarian “thaw” with its quest for the marginal, regional, personal alternatives within the socialist system.
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Georgy Adamovich ‘The Beginning of the Story’, ‘From a Clogged Notebook’ - about the Turgenev’s Subtext
11 p.Views:328The discourse of ‘Ich-Erzählung’ creates visibility, or an autobiographical narrative,
where the author narrates the more famous classical texts on the theme of ‘love as strong as
death’. The narration of stories is based on the principle of the repeatability of individual
thematic units built on similarities and contrasts. The text that is being created does not translate into an autonomous story about Maria Leopoldovna, but it exposes the technique of reminiscence poetics. Quotes and auto-quotes form or create a peculiar language of the major art,
where the names of Turgenev and Tolstoy are markers of the story. Turgenev’s subtext is
connected with the way meaning is constructed in the story, which is told about love that has
never come true but is remembered all one’s my life. -
Rácz, Ildikó Mária: A lét és a szerelem szentsége. Ivan Bunyin művészi világképe. L’Harmattan, Budapest 2020, 373 pp. ISBN 978-963-414-681-0
Views:307This review presents a critical analysis of the monograph on Bunin by the Hungarian researcher Ildikó Mária Rácz. The author describes the main thematic blocs of the volume, for example, the influence of classic Russian literature on Bunin (Turgeniev, Tolstoi, Chekhov, and Tiutchev), the role of Eastern philosophy in the evolution of Bunin’s art, the connection between the modern psychological concepts (Freud, Jung) and the short stories as Mitya’s love or The grammar of love.
