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Russia and Hungary: A dialogue of cultures in the space of literary texts: Book Review: Through "Alien" to "Own": Dialogue of Russian and Hungarian Cultures: Monograph / Edited by M.A. Lappo, V.V. Marosha. NGPU Publishing House, pp. 240. ISBN 978-00226-049-2, Novosibirsk, 2023
Views:271This monograph presents the results of a joint interdisciplinary project of Russian and Hungarian philologists to study the facts of interaction between Russian and Hungarian cultures in the space of literary texts. It examines various manifestations of the interaction of cultures: from the study of cases of direct influence to intertextual forms of assimilation and interpretation of elements of a foreign culture, current trends in translation reception. The volume includes papers by a wide range of authors whose texts made up the material of the study (from F.M. Dostoevsky and S. Veresh to E. Vodolazkin and Y. Berg).
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Artefact Metaphors and Similes in Modern Russian Prose
Views:315The article deals with comparative constructions (metaphors and similes) that include images of artefacts. The analysis involves the works of modern Russian prose writers such as A. Ilichevsky, E. Vodolazkin, O. Slavnikova, M. Shishkin, A. Volos, D. Bykov, D. Rubina, D. Glukhovsky, A. Makushinsky, S. Sokolov, V. Pelevin and others. It is concluded that modern Russian prose is characterized by the intensive use of artefact images as part of comparative constructions. The most common are metaphors and similes including the names of household items, fabrics, as well as machines, mechanisms, and their parts. These figurative means characterize, first of all, a person, parts of the human body, appearance, and people’s actions. Artefact comparative tropes giving a figurative description of various objects of nature are also widespread. Both traditional and new tropes including the names of artefacts in modern prose are discussed, in particular, the use of computer terms and names of new realities that have appeared relatively recently. A feature of modern prose texts is the regular use by writers of concretization and detailed transformation of images of comparison involving definitions of different types. Artefact metaphors and similes often act as key signs of the text and play a conceptualizing role in it.
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Culture in Digital Format
12 p.Views:354The article analyzes the changes in traditional culture triggered by technologies and development of its new formats as a result, such as clip culture, screen culture, culture of computer games, etc. It touches upon the influence on culture of the personal computer and other numerous digital devices, in particular the Internet, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and virtual reality. Traditional means of communication (books, photographs, audio and video recordings, digital TV, etc.) that are most influenced by digital technologies are also discussed. As traditional culture is losing its original features that emphasize the difference between different peoples, societies and their individual characteristics, all these processes are extensive, generating not only progressive, but negative trends. On the one hand modern culture has become accessible to everybody, on the other hand, it has lost the «romance» of personal communication. The article points out that nowadays the investigation of culture in digital format does not primarily mean analyzing its phenomena and artifacts in themselves. It is rather a matter of monitoring further transformations and contributing the unique features of traditional culture preservation, without diminishing the importance of digital technologies as a whole in society.
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“Hungarian Subject Matter” in Chekhov (The Short Story The Unnecessary Victory)
Views:265The paper considers “The unnecessary victory” as one of the notable works of the earliest stage of Chekhov’s creativity. The Hungarian theme of the story, inspired by the novels of Mór Jókai translated into Russian, and its plot, related to the traditions of the European career novel, address a wide audience. The young writer plays along with this reader with exotic narrative elements and delineates the difference between serious and marginal literature. This hoax, together with other skits of those years, reveals the young writer’s view of literary pursuits as an exciting game in which the main expectation is to be truthful and graceful. The same goals, according to Chekhov, characterize literature in general, regardless of the field of its competence and of the readership coverage.
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The System of Comparative Tropes in «Aviator», a Novel by E. Vodolazkin
11 p.Views:426The article discusses the functioning of metaphors and similes in the text of E. Vodolazkin’s novel «Aviator». The tropes are divided into two groups: conceptualizing tropes and non-plot-forming ones. The main semantic types of comparative tropes are noted as proceeding from «tenors» and «vehicles» of metaphors and similes. It is shown that the tropes interact with each other and form a system in the text.
Emphasis is put on the dynamism of metaphors and similes in the novel: they regularly reflect the hero’s changing perceptions. Comparative tropes play an important role in the unfolding of the key motifs of the novel and are associated with its various temporal and narrative plans. -
A Story by A. P. Chekhov “The Wolf”: Historical-medical and Archetypal Aspects
Views:595The plot of A. P. Chekhov's story "The Wolf" (in the first edition the story was called "Hydrophobia (A true story)") is associated with the frequent facts of wolves attacking people in the 1880s in the central part of the country (called an epidemic at the time).The time of writing the story between March and December 1886 is a year after the discovery of the rabies vaccine in the laboratory of Louis Pasteur and its successful testing in 1885; and in the year the story was created, the first Pasteur stations in Russia were opened. The paramount aspect of a plot of the work by A. P. Chekhov is connected with the field of psychology. Fear, which takes possession over the character, the landowner Nilov, is a psychological phenomenon in the medical sense and leads to an understanding of the fact why Chekhov needs an emphasis on the wolf in the title of the second edition of the story. The image of a wolf with its archetypal component plays a fundamental role in recreating a clinically accurate picture of fear. The real clash with a real wolf becomes a reflection of the fight with the "mental wolf," with its own fears. The writer is interested not so much in the existential side of the phenomenon of fear, as in the psychological one. And the image of a wolf with its archetypal component plays a fundamental role in recreating a clinically accurate picture of fear.
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Curator of Culture
Views:274In 2024 we celebrate the 80th birthday of Professor Zoltán Hajnády. The articles in this issue of Slavica have been written by his colleagues to express their respect for him and his work. In addition to the international significance of Zoltán Hajnády’s research on Tolstoy, which is the main focus of his articles, the laudation introducing the series of articles also mentions a broader aspect of his work on Russian–European relations and reveals his deep personality. A representative of humanistic values, a great educator and scientist, he works for the mediation and mutual enrichment of Russian–Russian and Hungarian cultures. For this endeavour, Hajnády was honoured with the Pushkin Medal in 2006.
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New Trends in the Use of Metaphors and Similes Including Names of Food in Modern Russian Prose
Views:282The article discusses metaphors and similes including culinary vocabulary, functioning in modern Russian prose. The purpose of the article is to identify new trends in the use of such figurative constructions in modern prose compared with the previous period in the development of Russian literature. The work outlines the main thematic groups of names of food and drinks used in prosaic texts, and notes changes in their composition and character. New elements in the semantic classes of «vehicles» of metaphors and similes are also revealed. A tendency towards the differentiation and concretization of images of comparison, which is characteristic of modern prose, is noted, and the means of its implementation (specific names and qualifying definitives) are described. The article considers new subjects of comparison and figurative parallels used in modern prose texts.
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The Search for a Social Ideal as a Cultural Tradition of Russian Thought
Views:259This study investigates some important lines of Russian social thought of the 19th and early 20th centuries in the context of the interpretation of the social ideal. Four perspectives of the problem are outlined: the first one is cultural geographic, divided into three branches (Westernism, Slavophilism and, Eurasianism), the second one is sociological positivism, the third one is philosophical liberalism, and the fourth one is religious thought. The cultural-geographic orientation created a wide field of the work of social thought in studying the paths of social development. Sociologists positivists P. Lavrov and N. Mikhailovsky, who were founders of ‘narodnichestvo’ movement, formulated the notion of social ideal as an object of sociological research. The positivist perspective that was intended for the ideals of social solidarity, transformed into the left the traditionalism that was narodnichestvo ideology. Narodnichestvo created the ideal prerequisites for the dissemination of Marxism in Russia. Liberal philosophic thought offered the original concept of the development of personality as a social ideal (P. Novgorodtsev). The fourth perspective was closest to the modern comprehension of the processes of unification of humankind and the development of the world economic system. The issue of social ideal thus became the main tradition of thought in the pre-revolutionary Russia.
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Ivan Goncharov’s Novel “A Common Story” and the Problem of “Petersburg Text”
Views:444The article raises the question about the nature of the “Petersburg text” in the novel “A Common Story”, about its correlation with the general body of the “Petersburg text” of Russian literature and about its individual meanings in Goncharov’s prose. Various levels of the “Petersburg text” are considered: the expression of the category of the “inner state” of the hero, as well as culture and nature. It is concluded that Goncharov’s novel does not fully fit into the mainstream of the “Petersburg text” of Russian literature, but adopts the basic principles of its construction, and also has great potential for the semantic increments of the individual local Petersburg dictionary, which is determined by Goncharov’s irony and symbolization.
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Intimacy or exposure: Ukrainian artists and the camp wound in relations with Russia
Views:343The 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 Features of Theatre Activity in Hungary: The Legal and Financial Basis (II)
12 p.Views:302Hungarian theatre system is the main object of the following article. The first part of article contains the general questions connected with the existing model of theatrical activity. Then there is the analytical review of the modern Hungarian legislation of area of culture and special attention is paid to the structure and content of Law XCIX / 2008 “On support and rules of employment in organizations of performing arts”. In the following part of the article all models which exist and develop in the country nowadays of direct and indirect financial support of theatrical organizations are considered. Since Hungarian and Russian theatre systems have some similar characteristics, the final part is devoted to possible partial adoption of Hungarian experience with a view to develop the institutions for the additional funding of Russian theatres.
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The Cultural Heritage of the Ancient Russian City of Yelets
Views:237This article provides scholarly evidence the small historical city of Yelets as a potential cultural heritage site in the context of its socio-cultural significance for the state, society and the local community. The paper overviews the results of a comprehensive sociological study of the issues of the cultural heritage of this ancient Russian city. The issues of the cultural heritage of Yelets is considered from the perspective of internal and external identification processes which transformed it and make it lose its unique urban identity. For the analysis of cultural heritage, the types of identity of the city are identified: historical and cultural, visual and spatial, socio-psychological and communicative spatial. The main factors of the identification processes of the city are analyzed, such as urban identity, history, culture, social interaction and language.
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Cultural Policy of Russia and Hungary: Modern Discourse and New Actors
11 p.Views:347The authors of the article argue that contemporary cultural policy discourse is in the focus
of attention of scientific communities, social and political organizations and government institutions.
It represents a sort of symbolic struggle and nominations and has necessitated a
new approach to cultural policy structuring. The article shows that this necessity is demonstrated
by the development of cooperation between Russia and Hungary in terms of cultural
sectors and cultural heritage. Expert communities and non-governmental organizations are
becoming significant elements in the structure of cultural policy subjects. The association
“For Hungarian-Russian cooperation named after Leo Tolstoy” has become such a key issue.
The authors of this article attempt to highlight the most essential contemporary issues in
the sphere of cultural policy in general and in relation of two separate countries – Russia and
Hungary – through the scientific project “Hygiene of culture”. -
The Motive of Passage as a Cultural Universal In I.S. Shmelev’s Novel “The Story of a Love”: Semantic and Functional Aspect
Views:279The article considers the motive of passage from the point of view of its role in the plot inI.S. Shmelev’s novel and from the point of view of mythopoetic meanings. It has been established that in the work “The Story of a Love” the symbolism of the passage motive is associated not only with the situation of the transition, but also with the Fall, which is interpreted by the writer as a stage of the movement towards insight. The passage motive organizes two spaces of storytelling: real and mental. Real space is divided into a space of purity and sin, the transition from one spatial locus to another also signifies the transition taking place in the soul of the protagonist from purity to sin and vice versa. The motives of the passage and temporary death are combined with the Christian motive of the transformation, allowing I.S. Shmelev to show the spiritual toss of the main character more clearly – as a transfer from life to death and its subsequent revival, as well as to assert the main motivein his work – the merger of the “mundane” and the “heavenly”, the world of objects, the material world and the “invisible" world of divine light.
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The chronotope of O. E. Mandelshtam’s Poems about the Unknown Soldier
Views:303The chronotope of O.E. Mandelstam’s Poems about the Unknown Soldier has at least three levels: (1) the level of internal time-space as immanent to the subject, the author-hero; this is the level of subjective refraction of events in individual consciousness/thinking; (2) the level of external time-space: the historical and natural beginning of world life (historical and physical cosmos) in their correlation; here worldly life is presented as if outside any of its perception from the outside, “by itself”; and (3) the mythical-symbolic dimension shining through the other two; the events here are interpreted in their parabolical content, including in the aspect of the philosophy of culture and intertextuality as a kind of “new mythology”.
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The Transformation of Spiritual Culture in the Context of the Formation of the "New Ethics" (Problem Statement)
Views:310The article is devoted to the analysis of the spiritual values that are being formed today and the reasons for the actualization of the New Ethics. Catastrophic dynamism leads to the elimination of the stable social groups as well as to the maximum diffuseness of personal boundaries. At the same time, the transformation of the communication system brings an extremely vulnerable virtual body to the forefront of cultural life. The new communication system, social atomization, the lack of understandable guidelines in the process of socialization and self-identification - all this turns the concept of “border” into a basic one for the New Ethics. However, the design of boundaries and self-defense mechanisms does not always lead to the expected positive results. We come to the conclusion, that an initially inadequate assessment of the aggressiveness of the environment forces a person to build the most aggressive defense mechanisms: the man himself is transformed into a source of toxicity, which in turn makes the environment even more toxic than it was originally.
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In search of winners: On the 100th anniversary of Yuri Trifonov's birth
Views:186Trifonov’s short stories are characterised by a direct tackling of moral issues. Tthe story The Winner contrasts social activity and biological longevity. Trifonov does not choose between the two but reflects on both. The conflict between biology and history is one of the main conflicts depicted in his remarkable prose.
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Images of the East in the Short Fiction of Ivan Bunin
16 p.Views:385The article examines the images of the East in the short fiction of Ivan Bunin. With the help of the narrative model of Jan van der Eng, consisting of three basic thematic levels (action, characterization, geographical and social setting) we read and arrange the works of Bunin through the prism of postcolonial criticism. On the one hand, we will consider the arguments of traditional postcolonial studies; on the other hand, we will also take into account the postcolonial theory regarding the “second world” (Russia, Eastern and Central Europe).We start our analysis with the texts in which images of the East are only featured on one thematic level, gradually directing our attention towards the short stories in which these images determine the whole semantic structure.
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Gogol’s Vij and L.N. Tolstoy’s War and Peace in V.V. Mayakovsky’s Poem War and Peace
Views:451Representing himself in his poem War and Peace in the form of a fictional "absolute unit" - the new Vij - Mayakovsky demonstrates the infernality of a new type, in comparison with Gogol's one. Mayakovsky's ideacontrasts with Tolstoy's pacifism and the idea of "eternal peace" (the novel War and Peace). Unlike Tolstoy, refusing to notice and recognize the real diversity in the manifestations of man and the human principle, Mayakovsky reduces all people, their thoughts and concerns to their personal ideas.
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The story Сhildhood as the beginning of Leo Tolstoy’s linguopoetic search
Views:252The paper discusses the most prominent linguistic and poetic techniques in Leo Tolstoy’s story Childhood. Linguistic poetics is understood in a broad sense: with the inclusion of not only linguistic units themselves, but also compositional characteristics, stable plot moves, details of subject expressiveness, and effects on the reader. The evolution of the studied techniques in Tolstoy’s further work is traced.
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European Cultures in Leo Tolstoy’s Interpretation: Ambiguous and Unambiguous (on the Basis of the Sketch “Sevastopol in May” and the Novel “War and Peace”)
Views:260The article examines the embodiment of the interactions of Russian culture with French and German cultures in the course of global historical eventsin Tolstoy’s works. The review includes the Crimean War of 1853-1856 and the Patriotic War of 1812. The author analyzes the use of foreign language inclusions by the heroes of Tolstoyʼs works and the authorʼs assessment of them. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the ideas and images of European cultures, which help to express the worldview of the writer.
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Camp prose: On the semantics and conceptual framework of the term
Views:239The paper analyzes camp prose as a unique literary phenomenon in 20th century Russian literature, shaped under the extreme conditions of Stalinists labor camps and repressions. The study looks into the effects of imprisonment on the linguistic personalities of both professional writers, such as V. Shalamov and A. Solzhenitsyn, and non-writers like E. Ginzburg and E. Kersnovskaya. The writings of these authors provide key points for analyzing the psychological, social, and individual transformations the authors experienced during incarceration. The use of metaphorical language in shaping their works is a major area of study. The authors succeed in delineating the unspeakable horrors of camp life by using metaphors as both stylistic elements and tools for reinterpretation. The study analyzes how these metaphors reflect the broader themes of dehumanization, endurance, and moral resilience. In addition, the analysis illustrates that camp prose goes beyond documentary testimony, becoming a means of linguistic resistance and creative survival. By exploring the lexical choices and narrative structures of these texts, the present study discusses methods in which authors build a new literary language and process in and of expressing trauma and memory. In doing this, it contributes to a deeper understanding of the interaction between personal experience, linguistic expression, and historical representation in Russian literature.
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«Chekhov’s Stage Set»: «The Cherry Orchard» in the Russian Poetry of the 20th – Early 21st Century
8 p.Views:352Chekhov’s text is one of the most significant constituents of the Russian poetry of the 20th – early 21st centuries. The one most frequently alluded to is the play by Chekhov – «The Cherry Orchard». The play written at the break of historical epochs turns out to be in tunes with the times of another turning-point. This fact conditions the allusion to the Chekhov’s text in a poem «The Young Poetry» by V. Kornilov. The main feature of the crucial time period in the poem is the category of freedom, unexpectedly granted during the historical turn and change. The key theme, which determines the historiosophical sense of the text, is a quotation from «The Cherry Orchard», a dialogue between Gaev and Fiers. I. Kabysh perceives the Chekhov’s play both mythopoetically and symbolically in such poems as «How Niveous-White Everything Is in Russia Today! » and «The Snow Started to Fall Without Delays». She introduces a different time into the text, models the reality after the events described in «The Cherry Orchard» and interpreted by the author of the poem in the lower clef (as in «crumbled estate»). The loss of the Garden, its disintegration, the loss of entity, is a gradual, step by step, process – into dachas, then into dust; that is the way the motif of vanishing space and culture appears.
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The Linguistic Means of Representation of the Category of Generality in the Text of A.P Chekhov’s Three Years
Views:249The multi-level means of representation of the category of generality inherent in the language as a whole are reflected in the story of A. P. Chekhov "Three Years" in all their diversity. The characters of the work reflect on generally significant topics in the context of their own lives, thatimplementthe category of generality in the work. When language units function in the text of the story, their particular-specific and generalizing meanings interact, which causes a two-dimensional semantic perception both within a single utterance and the text as a whole. The use of the means of generalizing in the speech of the characters is pragmatically driven and is determined by the purpose of the speaker to depersonalize the statement or to influence the interlocutor, giving personal reflections a universal meaning.