Co za wstyd! Pamiętnik z okresu queerowego dojrzewania: prolegomena

Author(s): Błażej Warkocki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2016

This article focuses on the short story ‘Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer’ from Witold Gombrowicz’s debut collection ‘Memoirs from a Time of Immaturity’ (later published under the title Bakakaj or Bacacay in the English translation). Warkocki reads this collection as a ‘memoir of negative affects,’ with the opening story being a story about shame. Drawing on Silvan Tomkins and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Warkocki suggests that shame is an affect that interpellates the identity of the outcast and the misfit. Thus the short story represents a particular instance of queer performativity.

Bezwstydny taniec nie może trwać bez końca

Author(s): Kinga Dunin / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2016

From a sociological perspective, shame is an instrument of social control, while shamelessness is a way to break out from under that control. One strategy of shamelessness is camp, both as a poetics and as a practice. Dunin’s analysis of Witold Gombrowicz’s short story ‘Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer’ as well as Michał Witkowski’s ‘life writing’ attempts to answer how effective this strategy is and to identify its limits.

Завръщане в Атон

Author(s): Lyubomir Georgiev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 01/2017

„La Țigănci”, nuvela-parabolă a profetismului eliadesc

Author(s): Liliana Danciu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2018

The unprecedented experience of Gavrilescu, the main character in the La Țigănci short story, continues to arise various interpretations, proving the viability of this eliadesc writing. For some literary critics, he is the anti-hero by definition, which lives what Eliade understands by "level break", but without understanding anything of it. The ordinary man, with a banal existence, routinely in the profane becomes the Chosen One uselessly claimed by sacred, for ignorance prevents him from seeing beyond the Illusion. In the hut of the gypsies, he crosses a rite of passage, from life to death, proof being the shrouded curtain that will wrap his naked body, the terrible thirst for unpopularity, and the surprising encounter with the always young Hildegard, the beloved of his youth.In this article, I try to reveal another dimension of this eliadesc short story, linked to the name of the main character, which, in my opinion, refers to the name of the archangel Gabriel, the "pair" of the other, Michael. As it is known, the name of the archangel Michael is directly related to the Romanian legionary movement in the inter-warperiod, a nationalistic, violent and criminal political-ideological movement that has successfully manipulated local religious and cultural elements to gain followers and become strong. Up to a point, the Romanian legionary movement stood under the sign of both archangels, synthesizing both the intellectual and the political dimensions.In time, the two directions have broken apart, and the legion has remained exclusively under the warlike sign of the warrior archangel. The Romanian intellectuals, who originally sympathized with the nationalist ideals of the legionary movement, distanced themselves from it and remained under the soteriological mark of Archangel Gabriel. This is, in my opinion, the message hidden by Eliade in this unusual short story. Also, using allegory and symbol, the Romanian author turns out to be a man of vision and prophesies the future of Romania, which has been culturally and historically marked, in time, by Germany. The present does not contradict Eliade, because Germany is the engine of the European Union, of which Romania wants to be part.

The House of Usher Never Fell: Impossible Escapes and the Dark (K)night of the Soul

Author(s): Paweł Pyrka / Language(s): English Issue: 04/2017

Among the abundance of possible readings of Poe’s short story, one of the most intriguing is its treatment as an escape fantasy - the image of the unnamed narrator delirious, flight from the collapsing structure at his back seems almost too fortuitous, and invites questions as to the sole survivor’s relation to “the house of Usher”. As the structure’s suspected sentience could be seen to relegate its occupants to the position of psychological forces and manifest thought-content, the house is transformed into a combination of physical and mental spaces, akin to the twin “prisons” of body and mind which the narrator fantasizes about being freed from. The article examines the (im)possibility of Poe’s narrator’s escape, using Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth as a companion text. Read alongside each other, the two narratives “construct” their “houses” by a superimposition of their characters’ mental landscapes onto the skeleton of physical (textual) space, in order to perform the fantasy of escape from psychological conflict, whether by tearing down the house as in Poe’s tale, or by restoring the externalized order as in the Batman novel.

What a Shame! Memoirs of a Time of Queer Immaturity: Prologue

Author(s): Błażej Warkocki / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

This article focuses on the short story ‘Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer’ from Witold Gombrowicz’s debut collection ‘Memoirs from a Time of Immaturity’ (later published under the title Bakakaj or Bacacay in the English translation). Warkocki reads this collection as a ‘memoir of negative affects,’ with the opening story being a story about shame. Drawing on Silvan Tomkins and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Warkocki suggests that shame is an affect that interpellates the identity of the outcast and the misfit. Thus the short story represents a particular instance of queer performativity.

Мастацкiя асаблiвасцi аповесцяў Лукаша Калюгi «Дзе косцi мелюць» i «Зэнка малы нiколi не быў»

Author(s): Nadzieja Zujewa / Language(s): Belarusian Issue: 10/2018

In this article, the artistic features of two camp stories by Lukash Kalyuga “Дзе косцi мелюць” and “Зэнка малы нiколi не быў” are analyzed. The author examines the identification of the national character, culture, life of the Belarusian people. The work presents their psychology in the early twentieth century, their defining mental features, both positive and negative.

Narativi (de)materijalizacije: gotska spektralizacija u „Beskrajnoj groznici“ Fleneri OʼKonor

Author(s): Vladimir M. Vujošević / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 20/2019

The genre structure of the “ghost stories” is preserved in the key works of the so-called Southern Gothic, although these works often lack the real ghosts which were repeatedly portrayed in the early British prototypes of the genre. The basic genre technique employed in the “ghost stories” can best be described as “spectralisation”. Flannery O'Connor's “The Enduring Chill” is perhaps the focal text in the analysis of the spectralisation theme in the Southern Gothic fiction, since it evokes various procedures used in the two pivotal works of this American genre: Tennessee Williams's drama The Glass Menagerie and Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!. This paper explores various subcategories of Gothic spectralisation, such as the motifs of “body loss,” romanticisation of death, and fictionalisation of experience.

Из старините на Западна Грузия

Author(s): Vladimir Dimitrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 40/2020

A travelogue that combines modern pilgrimage with subtle observations of an art historian focused on the Christian Orthodox art and its astonishing monuments and relics in West Georgia.

From Communal Being to Individual Belonging: Potential Selves in Shobha Rao’s Short Fiction

Author(s): Andrea Llano Busta / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

Shobha Rao’s An Unrestored Woman: And Other Short Stories (2016) sheds light on gendered traumas that span decades as they adopt new forms: from the often neglected figure of the abducted woman in post-Partition India to sexually abused girls in 1980s New York, to name a few. Most of the female characters in the collection face a suppression of their agency enforced by legal dictates and patriarchal attitudes. This evinces the sharp contrast between everyday reality and social constructions which, despite being meant to create a sense of community, exclude some of the intended members. By drawing on Agamben’s theorisation of potentiality (1999), and through the analysis of two of the short stories—“An Unrestored Woman” and “Unleashed”—, it will be argued that being part of a group is not so much a result of yielding to pressure as it is of realising and subverting imposed circumstances. Characters on a quest to fulfil their potential will ultimately demonstrate that, in the absence of social cohesion, individuality and the exercise of free will are essential for belonging.

Cultural Perspectives and “the Tomahawk Man”

Author(s): Saša Simović / Language(s): English Issue: 25/2020

This paper deals with a classic of American literature, a master of the short story and poetry, a literary critic who demanded seriousness, professionalism and high standards of literature – Edgar Allan Poe – along with his contribution to literature in his native Appalachia and to world literature, and the way his literary legacy has been cherished in modern times and seen from different cultural perspectives. The paper will also shine additional light on the way the literary works of the “Tomahawk Man” influenced new generations of artists.

Formuła wyrażania szacunku w strukturze osiemnastowiecznego listu polskiego

Author(s): Katarzyna Sicińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 28/2019

The paper discusses, from the formal, semantic, pragma- and sociolinguistic point of view, the honorificative formula that constituted one of the components of the final part of an epistolary Polish text of the 18th century. Most commonly, it took the shape of a conventionalized phrase which consisted of the preposition z (‘with’), an adjective, and a noun; e.g. z prawdziwym szacunkiem ‘with true respect’. The formula was syntactically dependent, as it was part of a larger whole – nearly always the subscription, i.e. the broadly understood signature of the author of the letter. The lexical composition of the formula showed considerable diversity. The nouns that constituted it include estymacja ‘esteem’, poważenie ‘reverence’, szacunek ‘respect’, weneracja ‘veneration’, and others. The attributes that described the main stem of the formula were also characterized by notable semantic diversity. Moreover, the honorificative formula could also appear in the form of a Latin quotation, e.g. profundo cultu. The usage of the formula depended on social and situational factors, namely it was used in letters to people of equal or higher social status (e.g. to members of princely families), as well as in highly official situations.

CHARLES PERRAULT AND THE CONTEXT OF HIS CREATION; INTEGRATION IN HIS EPOCH; NARRATIVE STRATEGIES

Author(s): Ana-Maria Torkos / Language(s): English Issue: 37/2024

Perrault impregnated to his work mentions and explanations of the 17th century life. Thereby, he succeeded to put old texts, the oral folk tales, in the modern context of that period. Secondly, other tales were influenced by parts of earlier writings: The Decameron by Boccaccio and the Golden Ass by Apuleius, and last, the other tales are his original creation. Charles Perrault, in writing his fairy tales, was motivated to create his work for the amusement of his children. During the last three hundred years, Perrault’s tales became the most influential works in literature of children. In her works, Angela Carter uses magical realism and postmodern elements: fantasy, intertextuality, myths and gothic elements. She shares her opinions on feminism in his novels, short stories in which she puts certain elements of traditional tales, she achieves a woman empowerment, a sort of invitation for the women to fight for equal rights, freedom, against the male dominant society.

TRAVEL LITERATURE AND THE LIMINALITY OF UGLINESS

Author(s): Laurențiu Boșog / Language(s): English Issue: 37/2024

While positive aesthetic expressions, those of ‘beauty’ are often associated with travel literature, it is important to understand its corresponding antithesis, ugliness. As aesthetic factors can be a reason for one to undergo the process of travelling to another place, it should be proposed that ugliness, in its ability to subvert expectations, is a major player in the traveller’s experience. To see how it does that, we must first understand where does ugliness stand in relation to one’s view; exploring then the reactions to such a phenomenon.

L'ottica metonimica nel racconto “Il padre di Bucarest” di Ivan Stankov

Author(s): Nataliya Nyagolova / Language(s): Italian Issue: 4s/2024

The article examines the metonymic mechanism as a distinctive feature of modern Bulgarian prose through observations on Ivan Stankov’s story “The Father of Bucharest” from the book “Names under the Snow” (2019). The story breaks the traditional framework of the “Romanian text” in Bulgarian literature, usually closely linked to the initiatory plots of the national liberation struggles and the military prose of the first half of the 20th century. In the work Bucharest retains its national features only in the plane of literary topography. At the same time, I. Stankov’s Bucharest acquires the features of any large metropolitan city in the world, where alienation reigns, while empathy is a rare and unexpected impulse. The metonymic optics is explored at different levels: as a principle of image of urban space; as a stylistic concept of combining heterogeneous images; as a mechanism of intertext; as a paradoxical axis of thought and existence of modern man, created through the translation of unselected information, through the dynamic emotional and social illusion of the global world.

„Mit den Gespenstern sprechen“: Die multidimensionale und multitemporale erzählende Rede als „Mut- und Schmerzprobe“ in Christa Wolfs Erzählung Leibhaftig

Author(s): Nikolaos-Ioannis Koskinas / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2022

Christa Wolf has always considered literature as an ideology-critical medium for questioning Culture of Remembrance and memory myths. To do this, you need to talk to the ghosts. This is achieved by creating texts that experiment with the limits of language. The present study assumes that the novel ''Leibhaftig'' is the author’s most honest and at the same time most successful attempt in this direction, a narrative experiment that aims to “transcend the boundaries of the sayable”. The narrative is a multi-perspective polyvocal literary network. Playfully, the author experiments in two directions: with different temporal perspectives and with different forms of narrator and narrative perspective. The narrative structure is multitemporal. The level of an extradiegetic-homodiegetic narrative instance in the present is interwoven with memories from some sixty years in the past as well as from the whole history of humanity. Furthermore, the story is told in two narrative voices, both in first and third-person point of view, with the change often occurring in midsentence. The result is an open text that is not afraid of leaving the wound open, of settling accounts with one’s own as well as with the collective phantoms.

Britské cestopisy o Španělsku z pohledu časopisu Critical Review

Author(s): Martin Branda / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2023

The aim of this study is to analyse the reviews of travelogues on Spain that appeared in British literaryperiodicals in the second half of the 18th century. Based on a study of three reviews in the Critical Review,it notes how such texts were structured, how the reviewers approached the task of travel writing,and how they viewed the usefulness of the genre for the reader. Given the particular position of Spain inBritish discourse of the time, the study also considers the individual reactions of reviewers in their descriptionsof that country, providing an insight into their opinions of Spain and the Spaniards and theprevalent stereotypes that informed them.

THE PROSE AND DRAMATURGY OF JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Author(s): Iulian Băicuș / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 38/2024

In this critical essay I have been studying both the fictional and non-fictional texts written by Jean-Paul Sarte, the Patriarch of Existentialism, the most important French philosopher of the sities, the Bible of Exinstentialism being L estre et le Neant, his phenomenological study, applyed in his novel, La nauseea. I have written this essay in comparing La Nauseea with Events in the Immeadiate Ireality, Max Blecher’s novel and with Sadecq Hedayat’s novel, The Blind Owl, but I also mentioned the autobiography of Sartre, The Words.

THE INITIATORY JOURNEY OF THE HERO FROM THE ROMANIAN FAIRY TALE – DESIRE AND ASPIRATION

Author(s): Camelia Bof (Hreban) / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 38/2024

The folk tale is the unspeakable expression of the human desire for beauty and settlement in a matrix under the sign of acceptance and even providential blessing, in perfect harmony with the entire universe. In this sense, permanent permutations and metamorphoses of the hero are necessary especially, to reconfigure the old known existence, fixing or eliminating the lack, derogation, incoherence, chaos. Thus, each action of the hero will become a premise of another, creating a true path of firstly becoming himself and then, also of those who take care of him and rally along his journey. The dynamism in the narrative plan will also indicate transgressions of the limits, proposing ordering solutions of the physical world at the beginning, to continue with deep psycho-emotional and spiritual restructuring until a statuary in a new order of the world.

ALL IS OLD AND ALL IS NEW: A RESETTLEMENT OF ROMANIAN POSTMODERNISM

Author(s): Diana Sofian / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 38/2024

Considering traditional aesthetics under the sign of value relativism and showing distrust towards the ideal of the perfection of the masterpiece, skeptical towards the unitary vision of existence, denouncing the oppressive character of the canon and the imposture of the creative self, the postmodernists adopt the avant-garde attitude of derision and demystification, but not on the deeply demolishing of them: by re-writing with the procedures in sight, the past can be recovered.