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• Silence as Structural Presence: A Theoretical Exploration of Ivan Ikićʹs Film “Oaza” (Oasis) within a Cinematic Framing of Noam Chomsky’s Minimalist Program

  Edit Jakab

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  91

  This study proposes a formal-analytical reading of Ivan Ikić’s Oaza (Oasis) (2020) within an interdisciplinary framework combining film theory and Noam Chomsky’s Minimalist Program. Drawing on core Minimalist concepts – such as the distinction between Phonological Form (PF) and Logical Form (LF), economy of derivation, and the copy theory of movement – the article argues that cinematic silence in Oaza is not absence, but a structurally licensed form of non-externalization. In this sense, silence functions analogously to syntactic traces: elements that lack phonological realization yet remain interpretively active. Focusing on the interrogation scene and the final sequence of the film, the analysis demonstrates how the suspension of speech and the restriction of expressive means shift interpretive responsibility onto the viewer. Meaning emerges not through explicit articulation, but through structured absence and constrained access. The film thus operates as a derivational system in which omission is not a deficit but a condition of interpretation, governed by principles of economy and interface interaction.

• The Chaos of Fragments, the Fragments of Chaos The Last Prosaic Work of M. Yu. Lermontov: Shtoss

  Andrea Posta

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  358

  The unfinished short story, Shtoss received little attention from critics, despite of the fact that it is actually the last prosaic text written by M. Yu. Lermontov. It has become somewhat forgotten because it was interpreted as nothing more than a literary joke the young poet played on his friends in St. Petersburg a few months before his tragic death. This article is a narratological analysis of the short story Shtoss based on the terminology used by Gerard Genette and Boris Uspensky. It also aims to interpret the possible function of fragmentation, absence and uncertainty in the short story.

• The transformation of the camp theme in Sergei Lebedev’s novel “Oblivion”

  Zsuzsanna Kalafatics

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  294

  Sergei Lebedev’s novel Oblivion offers an original reworking of the tradition of Russian camp prose. Its central themes are the legacy of Stalinist terror, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the necessity of a conscious resistance to their consequences. This paper explores how Lebedev, drawing on the concept of post-memory, intertwines personal family history with questions of collective memory, highlighting the destructive effects of silencing the past and the absence of accountability for historical crimes. At the core of this interpretation is an analysis of the narrator’s journey through space, time, and self-discovery, structured around the mythological motif of descent (katabasis). The funeral ritual plays a key role in the novel’s initiation structure: the symbolic burial and mourning of victims who vanished without a trace becomes an act of memory restoration, offering the possibility of reconciliation and a new beginning. Lebedev critically engages with contemporary Russian memory politics, stressing the moral imperative to uncover and give voice to the traumatic past.

• Hero of Contemporary Russian Prose: Anna Skotnicka, Szczelina. Bohater współczesnej prozy rosyjskiej i jego światy, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2020, 335 s. ISBN: 978-83-233-4771-2

  Elżbieta Tyszkowska-Kasprzak

  Views:

  278

  The text contains a review of the monograph by the Polish literary critic Anna Skotniсka A fissure: A hero of contemporary Russian prose and his worlds. The author considers incompleteness, absence, and insufficiency as a property of the existence of the character of the works of Russian writers of the late 20^th to early 21^st centuries. The sources of this problem, according to Skotnicka, can be seen in the state of disintegration of the social, psychological and mental image of the world in a changing reality, especially historical changes: the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as political, cultural and social transformations. With these phenomena, the Polish literary critic also connects the concept of chaos, which is characteristic of the postmodern perception of the world as disunited, incomprehensible, alien in relation to people. Skotniсka considers these problems based on the works of Mikhail Kuraev, Svetlana Aleksievich, Roman Senchin, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Vladimir Makanin, and Mikhail Shishkin. The author refers to the current achievements of the humanities, especially philosophy. The work is innovative and stimulates reflection on the state of the modern human.