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• Grotesque and paradox: Female and male narratives in Victor Erofeyev’s novels

  Tünde Szabó

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  19

  This paper examines the narrative dynamics of two novels by Victor Erofeyev. The female discourse of Russian Beauty is characterized by the vertical dynamics of grotesque, while the discourse of the autobiographical narrator of Good Stalin is characterized by the dynamics of paradox, a horizontal movement between opposing truths. In both novels the Soviet aesthetic canon is undermined through the dynamics of narrative that denies the possibility of a singular truth.

• The relationship between Excellent People by Chekhov and the ideological position and artistic attitude in the late short stories of Leo Tolstoy

  Ildikó Regéczi

  Views:

  13

  In Chekhov and His Prose (first published in 1965), the author, Thomas G. Winner contends that the subject matters of a few of Chekhov’s short stories written in the 1880s (such as «Хорошие люди» [Excellent People]) were created in the spirit of Leo Tolstoy, yet the one called «Несчастье» [Misfortune], written also in 1886, already marked the beginning of a series of texts that can be interpreted directly as “a light parody” of Anna Karenina (1873–1877) as well. The basic question posed here concerns whether there is really a significant difference that can be observed between the above two works and whether they reveal this sharp difference in the reception of Tolstoyan ideas that Winner's monograph suggests. The paper seeks to answer this query on the basis of the interpretation of Excellent People and the textual representation of the issue of goodness. In this analysis, particular attention is given to the way in which Tolstoy's ideas are represented and to the author's poetic choices that bring the text close to Tolstoy's late short stories.

• On the meaning of disjunction and conjunction in Lermontov’s The Demon

  Katalin Kroó

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  17

  The 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.

• The Outlines of Meaning’s Analysis of Social Phenomena in the Concept of S. L. Frank

  14 p.

  Natalya Matveeva

  Views:

  358

  The present paper deals with the problem of how cultural meanings are perceived in S. L.
  Frank’s social theory. His conception lies between two main paths of sociological thought:
  Durkheim’s cognition of social facts as objective phenomena on the one hand, and Weber’s
  cognition of subjective meanings of personal actions, on the other. In his theory Frank concentrates
  on the concept of objective forming idea-force, which resembles the concept of
  social fact in its quality of exerting pressure on individual consciousness and volition, but it
  should be brought into harmony with interpretive methodology. In Frank’s view social ideas
  are regarded as a force forming social relations and therefore lie in the foundation of social
  institutions. These are, for example, ideas of state, of family, of friendship and so on. Social
  ideas are connected with the consciousness of the individual by their moral force. That is
  why such ideas are accepted by the individual at the emotional level of his spiritual life,
  because they believe that these ideas are true and organize their meanings and activities according
  to them. Thus social meanings of moral good or evil in human relations and in the
  social structure arise. At the same time they signify the emergence of sacred phenomena in
  society. Human beings, according the Frank’s theory, have an internal need to be possessed
  by the sacred senses that give them the feeling of the participation in the implementation of
  the transcendent goals. Society is an objective living idea which provides sacred meanings
  for the individual. On the whole, a society’s life is formed by the historically specific complex
  of ideas that are freely accepted or rejected by individuals and determine their feelings and
  behavior. There is no contradiction between personal freedom, creativity and social structure
  in S. Frank’s theory. The author of the present paperfinds similarities between S.Frank’s ideas
  and the fundamentals of cultural sociology.

• B. Spinoza, N.V. Gogol, J. Baudrillard: On the Debate about Theocentrism and Anthropocentrism

  13 p.

  Sergey Shults

  Views:

  193

  Interest 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.