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The Heritage of Tolstoy’s Artistic Detail in the Poetics of Chekhov (Defamiliarization and „Randomness”)
Views:123One type of the “random Chekhovian detail ”can be referred to as a special cognitive phenomenon arising during the perception of the background and foreground within the depicted perception of the hero. In this paper, I suggest that this technique works if we perceive Chekhov’s laconicity against the detailed descriptions of the inner world of Tolstoy’s characters in the process of their estrangement. In the first part using the example of “War and Peace” I examine the “random” details concerning various features of Tolstoy's defamiliarization and show their transformation in Chekhov’s poetics. The examples from Chekhov’s early short stories “Grisha” and “Polinka” demonstrate an intermediate level of this transformation. In the second part I turn to the story “The Lady with the Dog” and consider the transformation of Tolstoy's technique through parallels with the novels “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”. The situation of Gurov and Tolstoy’s characters (Natasha, Prince Andrei, Levin) is similar with regard to the fact that they retain true love in their hearts and get into an everyday social situation, where they are exposed to the the automatism and lies of everyday life with special intensity.
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The Transformation of Spiritual Culture in the Context of the Formation of the "New Ethics" (Problem Statement)
Views:151The 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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The Motive of Passage as a Cultural Universal In I.S. Shmelev’s Novel “The Story of a Love”: Semantic and Functional Aspect
Views:137The 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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Metaphoricity in the novel Pelagia and Black Monk by Boris Akunin
Views:12The paper discusses the tropological game in Boris Akunin's detective novel Pelagia and the Black Monk. The author focuses on the transformation of the main images in this contemporary work. Various periphrases and similes are then studied, as well as the destruction and renewal of redundant tropes, and the generation of new metaphors, particularly those related to color, nature, and zoomorphic images (e.g. the color black, rays). The figurative order of the text of the novel offers such potential correlations that expand the plan of interpretation of the novel in a new and unexpected direction, testifying to a truly postmodern rewriting of lingual, literal, and poetical clichés. A key role in this process is played also by details (see Z. Hajnády).
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On the meaning of disjunction and conjunction in Lermontov’s The Demon
Views:13The paper analyzes Lermontov’s verse narrative (poema) The Demon by focusing on some clear-cut binaries, representing and suggesting, as their primary meaning, dichotomic pairs related to the system of literary characters (the Angel or Tamara vs. the Demon), evaluative concepts (e.g. good vs. evil), and notions comprising ideological views (the celestial, the earthly world, or the netherworld). The interpretation takes a distance from these definitions, examining the poetic modes of neutralizing and removing the dichotomies in the text by weakening the semantic motivation for setting and interpreting the binaries; the emergence of mono-dualistic antinomy, and the creation of equivalences of motifs and constructs of reverse symmetry with the transformation of their reference. Resulting from these strategies for meaning generation in Lermontov’s text, a shift from an axiological conceptualization of the world to the literary model of the human existential experience of the soul can be traced.
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Figures of the Young Actress in the Dramatic Art of A.N. Ostrovsky and A.P. Chekhov
Views:133The present study focuses on the turning point in drama history between the artistic concept of A.N. Ostrovsky, the founder of modern Russian theater, and that of A.P. Chekhov, who transformed the former approach in the matter of just a few decades. I propose that an analysis of Ostrovsky’s Talents and Admirers (1881) and Chekhov’s The Seagull (1896) can reveal the borderline that divides the dramatic formations belonging to these two separate periods. The analysis concentrates on the transformation of a specific motive, the portrayal and the dramatization of the chances of destiny available for the figure of the young actress. I presume that the dramaturgical features surfacing through the exploration of this portrayal will outline the differences in the approach and in the poetic means used by the outstanding representatives of these successive periods in drama history. Thus, I am not seeking intertextual instances in the narrow sense of the term. Rather, I am after a thematic and motive-based congeniality and its saturation with a new meaning, coming from the functional shift that establishes a connection between the texts of the pieces by Chekhov and Ostrovsky. This approach to intertextuality in the broader sense of the term, which is not primarily present in references at the textual level but is rather based on, for example, thematic congruity, can play an important part also in the assessment concerning functional history, in exploring reception-related peculiarities and, consequently, in the validation of the historical aspect.
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Object – Body – Flashback in “The Seagull” by Michael Mayer
6 p.Views:158The article features the transformation mechanisms of Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” in its film adaptation of 2018 by Michael Mayer. The director’s concept activates the opposition “memory – forgetfulness” and this is based on composition-visual reminiscences, i.e. flashbacks. The world of objects and the body discourse in the film complies with that specific film story of nostalgia in which the past is not simply going back to the things the characters were through, but also as a new reading of Chekhov’s intertextuality in the context of Anglo-Saxon cinema culture as well as a stylized memory of the Russian classic writer and his times.
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«Doktor Zhivago» and Leonid Pasternak
Views:94In 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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Interferences in the Field of Literature and Philosophy: Contact Points in the Poetry of Russian and Hungarian Authors: Dukkon Ágnes: A veszélyes szépség útjain. Eszmék, témák, kapcsolatok a klasszikus orosz irodalom világában, L'Harmattan Könyvkiadó – Uránia Ismeretterjesztő Társulat, Budapest, 2021, 340. p. ISBN: 978-963-414-702-2
Views:45The Hungarian literary scholar Ágnes Dukkon set herself a great task to complete in her new monograph by undertaking to offer a broad overview of the entire 19th century epoch of Russian literature through monitoring the transformation and evolution of the literary motive of dangerous beauty [ужасная красота]. While focusing on the concrete correspondences between a variety of literary worlds, the study presents interpretations of works by A.S. Pushkin, M.Y. Lermontov, F.I. Tyutchev, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoyevsky, M.Y. Saltikov-Shchedrin, N.S. Leskov, and L.N. Tolstoy. At the same time, however, the author of this monograph never fails to keep in mind the conceptual context of the artistic texts by analyzing their relationship with the topical contemporary philosophical ideas of the age. For the Hungarian readers, the chapters incorporating the conclusions of research aimed at Russian–Hungarian connections, conducted with the methodology of historical poetics, comparative literary studies, intertextuality, and biographism, are of special interest. The scholarly findings of this renowned researcher would definitely deserve to be translated in the future into an international language.
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Harms – Gogol – Dostoevsky (“Old Women” – “Vij” – “Crime and Punishment”)
14 p.Views:168In terms of historical poetics and intertextuality, parallels are drawn between "Old Woman"
by D. Harms, "Vij" by N. Gogol and "Crime and Punishment" by F. Dostoevsky. As far as the
three authors are concerned, their common features are revealed, together with the transformation
of the motives of the ugly infernal old woman, which are depicted in the context of
mythopoetics, historiosophy and social history by the three authors. Concerning the texts produced
by their followers the term “post-text” is introduced, which is meant to include the dialogical
connotations of literary evolution. The role of “vertex composition” (a term coined by
V.M. Zhirmunsky) in works of Modernism/ Avant-garde is also touched upon. -
Artefact Metaphors and Similes in Modern Russian Prose
Views:190The 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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B. Spinoza, N.V. Gogol, J. Baudrillard: On the Debate about Theocentrism and Anthropocentrism
13 p.Views:187Interest in the problem of man, in the structure of the world and in its foundations is brought together, with all the difference, Spinoza, Gogol, Baudrillard. In the lineup of authors, three main attitudes are revealed. Spinoza: all that exists is theocentric; one must strive to comprehend God and His "extensions" (not creatures!) in the form of the world and man. Gogol: comic-romantic criticism regarding intramural irrationality with the author's aspiration for an eschatological perspective. Baudrillard: immersion in the pan-social as the only being, although it has (starting from the Renaissance) an empty foundation. According to Spinoza, man, nature, the world, in general, everything in reality is an extension of God. Not "creation"! - it is a continuation, practically an integral part of God, some "doubles", although those with less "good." It turns out that God is not able to separate himself from what is around him, what is in the outside world and everything that is not He considers himself to be. Gogol, on the other hand, strove to portray man as really different in relation to God and at the same time capable of changing (the concept of “Dead Souls”). Isn’t the “apocalypse of our time” outlined by Baudrillard? Its unchanging Marxist-Freudian jargon is intended only to serve the immediate intention of reforming social reality. The Baudrillard concept is marked by post- and neo-romantic skepticism regarding the nature of man and society. The extra-Marxist (and non-Freudian) in Baudrillard - his bet on "reversibility", on the "gift" (in the terminology of Moos and his followers) of the "gift", ie installation on a "symbolic exchange" between communicants in all spheres of existence. Thus, Baudrillard comes to recognize the linkage "modern / postmodern" and to recognize the benefits of modernity. The transformation of “dead souls” is a path that Gogol also thought about realizing on different grounds and which opposes the complacency of Spinozist machines.