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This article concerns the concept of play as it is argued in The Sense of Beauty, by the American critical realist philosopher George Santayana. His argumentation represents a tacit polemic with the understanding of play in the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Thus, the key issue of the article is the opposition between transcendentally reasoned argumentation and a psycho-social understanding of the essence and meaning of play. Keywords: play; work; value; perception; beauty; judgment of taste.
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« THE BRIDGE » is offered in PDFs comprising always a full issue, unsplit into individual articles. Please take a look into the TABLE of CONTENT and into the EDITORIAL (above ↑) to look for authors and texts of interest for you.
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« THE BRIDGE » is offered in PDF format comprising always the full issue as one file, not devided into individual articles. Please take a look into the TABLE of CONTENT and into the EDITORIAL for authors and texts of your interest.
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Based on an axiological analysis of the bylinas about Dunay Ivanovich and Mikhailo Potyk, the article reveals a number of epic motifs which are interpreted as a semantic unity of the hero’s motivation, his deed, and its consequences. The article brings to light how the epic singer renders the spiritual laws connecting the motivation for a certain act with its consequences (i.e., the hero’s punishment and his subsequent penance or perdition); and formulates cognitive ethical meanings belonging to each of the bylina’s motifs. For each motif, the author identifies the following components: the hero’s particular moral weakness or passion which captures him, evoking thus, sympathy — or the so-called «compassion» — in the listeners; the moment when the hero is overcome by his sin; the moment of the crime; and the punishment as a natural consequence of the hero’s deeds. Also, the difference between axiological coordinates of every act — before and after its commission, in the evaluation of either the hero or the listener — is determined in the present paper. The motifs of the mentioned bylinas are classified here on the basis of their type and their involvement into parallel structures with similar motifs, or by the presence — or absence — of their antithetical counterparts. The result of the present study is a denial of the widespread theory according to which Russian bylinas should be described as «meaningless», as having controversial diachronous semantics, as damaged — in terms of the content — during their existence in this or that social milieu (peasant, skomorokh, minstrel or Cossack one), as presupposing allegedly «extraneous» and «recent» Christian concepts and ideologemes.
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The article analyzes the previously unexplored story of Sergey Durylin Khivinka (the story of a Cossack woman) (1924), written by the author in Chelyabinsk exile. The story is written in a narrative manner inherent in literature of the 1920s. Durylin, who is least oriented towards the Soviet everyday life, who is invisibly and silently arguing with the literary majority, creates an artistic image of a woman of the 19th century descending from common people, a Cossack woman, who was captured by the Khivins, based on historical facts recorded by N. K. Bukharin. The article takes into account the literary sources the author built his work on: A Journey Beyond the Three Seas by Afanasiy Nikitin and The Enchanted Wanderer by N. S. Leskov. The clearly expressed Easter archetype of “A Journey” of the story of Durylin outlines the vector of an axiological path of the heroes — the pilgrimage toward Easter, marked with their return to home. Using the poetics of a tale, the writer draws focus primarily toward a narrative manner of N. S. Leskov with its usual confessional character. On the basis of memoirs, it is stated in the article that the writer’s wife, Irina Alekseevna Komisarova-Durylina, to whom this story is dedicated, became the prototype of Khivinka.
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The article studies and compares various possibilities of Russian classical realism, it reveals and describes the features of constructing images of the world in the works of O. N. Olnem (V. N. Tsekhovskaya) and S. N. Durylin. The pictures of the world by Olnem and Durylin are limited mainly by the manor topos. Localization of the events within the manor space is the key for the presence of the same objective and spiritual realities in the analyzed works, nevertheless, distributed and correlated differently. While the “narrative levels” in Durylin’s memoirs (subject, functional, socio-historical, subjective-personal, cultural-historical, Christian ones) are value-coordinative and the Orthodox determines theoanthropic “verticality” of the estate world, in Olnem’s description all the “estate elements” are coordinate and exist in the horizon of a personal or social event, they are factographic, only psychologically and / or socially colored, and the “Christian event lasting in eternity” loses its world-organizing function and is present as a formal rhetorical tradition. The difference in the actualization by Olnem and Durylin of the value of narrative levels is expressed in the implied meanings of the name — A Quiet Corner, In the Home Corner. The writers relate the “Manor Corner” to silence. However, if for Durylin the “quiet”, “silence” is a spiritual complex that expresses the Christ-like essence of a person, for Olnem, silence is a socio-historical category, designed to mark semantically the process of disappearance of the “noble nest,” silence as a synonym for death. Thus, no matter how close the work of the writers came together in substantive content, no matter how similar and related they were, the “watershed” separating them, in the words of V. V. Rozanov, turns out to be the “attitude to faith, God”. This difference determines the existence of different "realisms" in Russian literature and, consequently, of different reading and research strategies.
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The idiom “twice two is four” along with its variations is seen in the article as a marker of the situation of an “underground man”. In literature of the twentieth century the “underground” in its ethical and philosophical aspects has expanded its meaning, becoming the context of a utopian and antiutopian thought, absorbing the tragic experience of Russian culture after Dostoevsky. Of course, the widespread locution “as sure as twice two is four” does not always point at this variety of meanings, but it can be reached only in combination with the psychological type of the “underground man”. Thus, the image of Stalin in the novel “the First Circle” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is considered as a variation of the “underground” consciousness. The problems of philosophical, history related to the evolution of this type of consciousness and actualized in this novel, remain important for modern literature. Another version of this philosophical collision is given in Victor Pelevin’s anti-utopian novel “S.N.U.F.F.”. In both of these cases, the situation of the underground person becomes a picture of a psychological and historical catastrophe. The negative development of the analyzed arithmetic formula in Russian literature of the 20th century encourages to look for another pole of tradition outside the “main” cultural domains. One of the variants of a moral escape from the trap of the “underground consciousness” can be found in the poetry of Alexander Bashlachev. The mythopoetical plot of the song “Verka, Nadka, Lyubka” is an exceptional variant of the development of the “underground man” topic. A starting point of the plot is just the formula “twice two is four”. The genre shift from lyricism to allegorical epic gives the poet an opportunity to reconstruct the Easter ideal of Russian culture, even if in a tragic and provocative form, close to the tradition of Russian foolishness for Christ.
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Poetry can do without the authorial aside. Yet, this is true for all literary genres. What happens, though, with poets’ critical pieces when these pieces – structured in order to highlight, in general theoretical terms, either an aesthetic phenomenon or a cluster of generic artistic features – surpass the realm of self-reflective ambitions of the poets themselves? In that case, we talk about a versatile or prolific author. The multi-directional nature of that agency, its dialectical essence, implies a possibility of autonomous existence of critical forms of expressing stances and judgments, independently of poets’ personal poetic standards. It is A. B. Šimić’s oeuvre that presents a fertile ground for discussing this complex issue of literary onto-theory: the history of reception of integral, that is, a separate study and evaluation of his poetry/ critical prose, proves in valid terms both uncertainty and arbitrariness in anti-theoretical approaches up to date to critical pieces of artists (in Serbian poetry, Šimić’s counterparts in this respect are poets Laza Kostić, Momčilo Nastasijević, and Miodrag Pavlović). This study tendency demands another segment of general discursive practice of literary critics be clarified. It is a constant conflict between principal interpretative concepts, so-called leading/major literary paradigms. With regard to this, the cognitive-logical power and aesthetic-critical integrity of the interpreter of the aforementioned relations come forward. Consequently, this is fully visible in the way A. B. Šimić’s status of critical prose changes in the Yugoslav and, in particular Croatian, literature of the 20th century.
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Oral literature is a significant part of written literary tradition, particularly when it comes to writers such as Ivo Andrić who often tend to thematise the historical past and folk culture. In his opus, oral literature emerges throughout various forms and it has different artistic functions. In this paper, the focus is on short forms of oral literary tradition in his fiction. The emphasis is on concrete examples of short forms in his novels and short stories, such as catchphrases, sayings, proverbs, curses, spells, predictions, toasts, alongside the cursory review of both lyric and epic oral poetry. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the multifunctionality of different modes of oral literary heritage in Andrić's prose oeuvre.
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Kostas Ouranis (1890-1953), Angelos Dhoxas (1900-1985), Orestis Laskos (1907-1992), Caesar Emanouil (1902-1970), Alexandros Baras (1906-1990), Nikos Kavvadias (1910-1975) are among the artists who in the turbulence of the interwar years discover the fascination of the urban space and the magic of the voyage. French literature had been familiar with the image of the modern city from the time of Baudelaire’s poems (The Swan, Spleen), but Greek poetry first discovered it only via the generation of the symbolists of the 1920s. The theme of the city was entirely absent from the lyric poetry of the poetic generation of the 1890s. “The Disharmonic Flute” (1929) by the poet Caesar Emmanuel is among the lyrical collections that have become the quintessence of this new Athenian urban life. In its verses vibrate the unending noise of the cabaret and of the performance together with a strong sense of hedonistic delight.
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On 28-29 May 2020 in full Coronavirus pandemic upsurge and lockdown conditions the Eleventh Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies gathered on Zoom instead of The Palace of Culture and The Middle Age Citadel of Târgu Mureș as initially planned. The meeting was summoned in partnership with Rethinking Europe in order to reflect, from the perspective of the Baltic Sea Region, upon the Old Continent in the context of Brexit and the pandemic. Questions on the impact of the recent evolutions on Baltic and Scandinavian states have been raised, but the perspective was much wider looking on how the countries of this region responded to structural changes or alterations of the international environment over time. The two plenary sessions on the EU after Brexit: Perspectives on the Future of Europe and Constructions of Christian Identity and the Idea of the Holy Land in the Northern Periphery: The Sawley World Map in Twelfth-Century England appropriately mirrored the sequential diversity of the conference. Panels have been devoted to Encounters, fantasies and perceptions in shaping Europe, Rethinking Europe in Nordic and Baltic cultures, Rethinking the Baltic Sea Region in Europe during the interwar period, Rethinking Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea Region in Europe during the two world wars, Intercultural relations in the Nordic and Baltic countries, Reception of Nordic literature, New perspectives on Norwegian literature, Teaching and use of Nordic languages. The main theories, concepts and ideas presented are resumed in the Book of Abstracts published before the conference, while the full papers are assembled in volume 12, issues 1 and 2 of our biannual peer review journal.
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The influence of the Victorian on postcolonial Indian narratives in English dates to the 1930s with the Founding Fathers: Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K. Narayan. There is a clear development of the Indian social novel that emerges in the Gandhian era to the connexions with the Victorian, underlying the relationship between neo-Victorianism and globalization. It is the aim of this article to highlight a Dickensian pervasive presence in the first stages of Indian narratives in English, specifically the Indian social novel. I will establish a comparative approach between Dickens’ celebrated novel Great Expectations (1860-61) and Coolie (1936) by Mulk Raj Anand, the social Indian writer par excellence. I suggest a neo-Victorian encounter framed within a colonial/postcolonial encounter, making explicit how different historical processes – late eighteenth-century England and the Gandhian era in India – cause a similar social impact on so different contexts. Mulk Raj Anand adapts and appropriates the Victorian in Coolie, showing deep social concern and claiming against social evils, injustice and hypocrisy in India. This analysis stands as a transcultural exercise that shows Dickens’ universal scope regardless of time and space.
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John Dos Passos conveyed multiple intersections of art and culture and the spirit of the 1920s in his prose. His novel Manhattan Transfer is characterized by intermediality: a combination of theatre, film, and visual art. With this novel, Dos Passos became a chronicler of American life. A passionate critique of modern society runs through Manhattan Transfer. The city is presented in this novel as a site of cultural intersections and transition and this focus is matched by the fragmentary qualities of the text. From his war novel Three Soldiers through his city novel Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos places his readers in the swirl of the human currents of his time and argues for the human spirit against the forces of a mechanistic world that would crush them. The harshness of the vibrant city is illustrated through the strivings and affairs of these immigrants, Broadway stage performers, journalists, and business aspirants. The relationships between Dos Passos’ experimental fiction and modern art and film are explored, along with the cultural transition of the American 1920s.
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Was the chief literary critic of the 1930’s, Antreas Karantonis (1910-1982), spiteful and unfair in his critical texts about the poetry of G.T. Vafopoulos (1903-1996) and was Karantonis a critic who adapted to the poetic evolution? The prominent poet of the 1930’s generation has expressed the opinion that Karantonis has been unfair to his poetry but research on the critical texts shows that, besides the negative views, Karantonis also expressed some positive ones regarding Vafopoulos’ poetry. In addition, the constant critical adaptability that comes as a result of the critic's communication with the shifting poetic codes, and for which Karantonis’ work is reproached by Vafopoulos, could be considered as an essential — perhaps even the most essential — virtue of the dynamic function of critical discourse.
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The paper explores the representation of diasporic Muslim identities in a coming-of-age narrative: Arab American female novelist Mojha Kahf’s bestseller The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf published in 2006. It examines how the religious diasporic hybrid identity is mobilized within the female protagonist Khadra Shamy, including the ways she struggles to negotiate her identity across different cultural terrains and gendered, racialised, intergenerational configurations. It attempts to show how these literary representations construct --and help conceptualize—the ways we understand diasporic Muslims in the U.S. The individual experiences as narrated in the novel illuminate a series of essential socio-political questions facing the community as a religious minority in a secular context. This study will address these questions through the representation of cultural hybridity in the literary narrative within the framework of postcolonial theory. It focuses on three constructs of the novel central to the conceptualizing of a hybrid identity of the female protagonist: firstly, the mirror images and moral panics that generate cultural clashes in the East-West encounter, which foreground, secondly, the predicament of an ambivalent existence of the protagonist as a diasporic individual, and thirdly, the ways she forges her hybrid identity as a New Woman within the diasporic context.
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In his seminal essay theorizing the concept of heterotopia, “Of Other Spaces”, Michel Foucault insists that his focus is on external spaces. However, given the ability of certain spaces, especially those associated with trauma and torment, to simultaneously be inhabited and inhabit the psyches of their denizens, it stands to reason that some heterotopic spaces are internal as well. One such example is Ursula K. Le Guin’s Dry Land, an inner hellscape which appears throughout her Earthsea series. The Dry Land serves to mirror, invert, and contest not only the world of Earthsea, but also the pervasiveness of Western literary and cultural influences on the genre of fantasy itself. Inspired by classical and Renaissance sources (Homer and Dante) and modernist ones (Rainer Maria Rilke and T. S. Eliot), the Dry Land, a jarring spatial and literary aberration in the context of Earthsea’s Taoist framework, serves to confront both the resistance to the finality of death and the supremacy of the Western literary canon. In doing so, it demonstrates Le Guin’s desire to distance herself from Western canonical influences, while nevertheless highlighting the fact that, given the cyclicity of literary rebellion, she is, in fact, walking in Dante’s and T. S. Eliot’s shoes.
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The paper analyses a contemporary Georgian novel – Zura Jishkariani’s Chewing Dawns: Sugar-free. The novel belongs to the sub-genre of bio-punk. The aim of the paper was to identify the defamiliarized and ironized socio-cultural processes taking place in the contemporary Georgian society, considering the narratological concept of alternative worlds and the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor. The outcomes of the research would draw the cultural-intellectual orientations of contemporary Georgian society. Based on these two conclusions, the paper aimed to find an age-long similarity between the social-political challenges of the 1920s and the contemporary problems of the Georgian society. Research has proved that numerous systems of values have been deconstructed and carnivalized by means of a play with alternative worlds. The development of the world depends on the activation of the human brain capacity, which ensures the cognition of the “higher reality“. The literary text under analysis reflects current achievements in cognitive sciences. The mental trips reflect the capacity of the human brain. The text describes the protagonist’s aspiration towards manipulating and stimulating of the human brain. This is the only way to overcome the banality of life. The manner of narration and the idealization of the aim serve the purpose of description of the revolutionary spirit.
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The second issue of volume 12 of The Romanian Journal for Baltic and Nordic Studies continues to reflect the academic discussions occasioned by the Eleventh Conference on Baltic and Nordic Studies of May 2020. Prof. Radu Carp was one of the keynote speakers of the conference and his address on Combining soft power with the geopolitical approach - how difficult is it for the EU to change its attitude? elicited a great interest among the presenters and attenders of the scientific event. As in any such scholarly event, especially an international gathering with a critical focus on the construction/reconstruction of Europe in vital moments of its past and recent past aspirations, the viewpoints of the participants, including the analysis of Prof. Carp on the current challenges of the EU are passed on to the wider community of fellow researchers, the public and decision-makers. The call for stepping up to a new level of integration and geopolitical power projection is dissected both in its soft and hard power dimension without eschewing the focus on democracy, climate change mitigation measures or cybersecurity.
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