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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
Views:106The 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 20th to early 21st 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.
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The Function of the „Author’s Mask” in “The Soul of a Patriot or Various Epistles to Ferfichkin” by Yevgeni Popov
Views:124Playing with the author’s figure is not a new device in Postmodernism. One may refer to “Either/Or” by Søren Kierkegaard or “The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin” by Alexander Pushkin, or “The Fiery Angel” by Valery Bryusov. At the same time the foreword of “The soul of a patriot or Various epistles to Ferfichkin” proves that in Postmodernism this game is taken to the next level. The author who abandoned their fictional space and renounced theirauthorial role during Modernism returns and re-takes their formal place. However, he does not do it seriously but hiding behind the mask of the author – says Malmgren, introducing the term of the author’s maskinto literary discourse. In this analysis I state that Popov, using the author’s mask, turns the traditional interpretationof the author’s role inside out. I conclude that, on the one hand, the author’s mask ridicules the concept by which the author’s biography is the key to his work. On the other hand, it makes fun of Vinogradov’s view, according to which there is always an abstract author hiding in the text who carries its real meaning. I come to the conclusion, that Popov uses this narrative technique to emphasise that it is impossible to look at a literary work as an arsenal of ultimate truths and statements.
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The first steps in the study of the Bulgarian language in Hungary
Views:20The article analyzes the handwritten notes from a book in the ELTE library (BOL/ Или-002), which preserves the testimonies of the activities of the first Hungarian Slavist, prof. Oszkár Asbóth (1852–1920). The only copy of the Collection of At. Iliev (1889) contains unique information about the beginning of academic Bulgarian studies in Hungary and restores lost traces of professional and personal contacts between Hungarian and Bulgarian scholars.
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Artefact Metaphors and Similes in Modern Russian Prose
Views:192The 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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The Linguistic Means of Representation of the Category of Generality in the Text of A.P Chekhov’s Three Years
Views:86The 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.
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Nowe dwudziestolecie (1989–2009). Rozpoznania, hierarchie, perspektywy [The New Twenties (1989-2009): Recognitions, Hierarchies, Perspectives]. Ed. by Hanna Gosk. Warsaw: Dom Wydawniczy Elipsa, p. 530, ISBN 978-83-7151-873-7
Views:51The volume Nowe dwudziestolecie (1989-2009): Rozpoznania, hierarchie, perspektywy [The new twenties (1989-2009): Recognitions, hierarchies, perspectives] reflects on the twenty years of Polish literature and literary change between 1989 and 2009, and compares and contrasts this period with the twenty years between the two world wars. The two twenty-year periods are linked by the fact that their starting point is associated with a date of immense importance for Polish history: 1918 is the year when Poland was returned on the map of Europe, and 1989 is also the year of the change of regime in Poland. The period between the two world wars is also regarded as a separate period in Polish literary history, while the second twenty years covered in this volume are questionable as a literary unit, a question which the essays in this book seek to answer. The volume is divided into three large sections, the first focusing primarily on theory, the second on Polish characteristics and themes that characterised Polish literature after 1989, and the third large section on the genre characteristics that have characterised Polish literature since the fall of communism to this day but were also important between the two world wars.
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New Trends in the Use of Metaphors and Similes Including Names of Food in Modern Russian Prose
Views:151The 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 beginnings of the collective identity of Slovaks in the Central European context
Views:23The study analyses the linguistic, literary and cultural contexts of the formation of Slovak national identity during the Enlightenment and the early national movement. The Slovak intellectual elite identified and defined Slovaks and the Slovak nation in terms of modern Austrian statehood, traditional Hungarian patriotism and cultural Slavism. The study shows that modern Slovak nationalism was already richly structured atits beginnings, adopting diverse ideological impulses and establishing relations with neighboring Slavic and non-Slavic cultures.
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A Story by A. P. Chekhov “The Wolf”: Historical-medical and Archetypal Aspects
Views:322The 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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Scientists in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s Novels
Views:105This study focuses on a characteristic type of hero in Ulitskaya’s works and analyses the image of the scientist heroes and their poetic functions in three of the author’s novels (The Kukotsky Enigma, The Big Green Tent and Jacob’s Ladder). These heroes represent a special kind of syncretic thinking. Firstly, in their conversations and debatesthe genre code of the Socratic dialogue is activated, as Mikhail Bakhtin described it in connection with the development of the polyphonic novel. Secondly, these heroes, who always appear in pairs, invoke the duo of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, as well as certain characteristics of “Quixotism”, which has a central role in the critique of the role that intellectuals have played in Russian culture. It is against the above background that the role of 20th-century intellectuals gains a new interpretation in Ulitskaya’s three novels.
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The Hungarian reception of Dostoevsky until the 1920s in the context of European and Hungarian Modernism
Views:18This 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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Culture and Normative Sociable Systems in a Period of Crisis: Issues of Theory and Practice
Views:102This article is devoted to the analysis of topical questions of the development of culture and normative sociable systems in a period of crisis. People faced new concept of reality in the third decade of 21st century. In the era of a brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible world the question of responsibility for the state of culture and normative sociable systems is most acute. As representatives of culture, education and science, researchers can create the space of clean, healthy, favorable opportunities for the development in the post crisis period.
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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:46The 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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“Step by Step” in Camp Prose: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s ”One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and Imre Kertesz’s “Fatelessness”
Views:116The paper is devoted to the disclosure of the concrete and abstract images of "step(ping) " and the reinvention of related other meanings (concepts like ’path’, ’fate’and ’happiness’)in the novel by A.I. Solzhenitsyn "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and in the novel by Imre Kertesz "Fatelessness". In order to identify the similarities and differences concerning these fundamental text-forming components in these outstanding works of camp prose, it is necessary to turn to the study of trophes, i.e. creating new meanings on the basis of the combination of incompatible things and images. This allows us to approach the author's picture of the world in both cases.