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The mystical experience is not something reducible simply to the private experience sphere. The force of the Mystery that is revealed in the subject opens up to the need to understand and communicate that experience. This helps us to perceive the levels inherent to the mystical experience until it transforms into communication. And so, we speak of two ways of language linked to the mystical experience: written language, with its peculiarities and creative connotations, and anthropological language, communicable through the experienced transformation and the way of life of the subject.
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In this paper, I focus on imagination in 14th century English mysticism and modern approaches of Richard Rolle’s, Walter Hilton’s, and the unknown author of the Cloud of Unknowing’s concept of imagination. There are several inconsistencies within contemporary approaches to the imagination, affectivity, and bodily metaphors, implying a contradictory appreciation of the three English authors. In this paper, I will discuss criticism of imagination in the mysticism of these three English authors. Moreover, some possible responses will be highlighted.
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The Czech Catholic writer Jan Čep (1902–1974) belonged to the group of authors who built their work on spiritual-religious motifs. Literary critic František Xaver Šalda stated in the bookmark of Čep’s novel The Border of a Shadow (1935) that he is a “poet of death”, namely “a very special, possessing a very special, unusual view of things of life and death”. The language and imagery of his artistic work are based on philosophical-reflexive and meditative lyricism, often with a contemplative overlap. We consider the image of a double home to be one of the key images of Čep’s poetics. Its development can be traced from the author’s juvenile prose work to the latest texts, which are mainly essay-like. In addition to this image, however, in Čep’s work, reflecting on the phenomenon of life and death also appears to be the mainstay, while it is obvious that these entities are very closely related to the image of a double home. In this context, it will be important to observe how the phenomenon of death is depicted in Čep’s only novel The Border of a Shadow.
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Mysticism and poetry make up an inseparable pairing and, in these times of absence, they reveal the deep desire of man to go beyond the immediate, the existential, the superficial. The Argentine poet Hugo Mujica opens, from his poetic saying, a door towards the abyss and the desert, towards the limit of language and silence. We can glimpse in his poetry Heidegger’s legacy and, together with the philosopher, the Master Eckhart is also dragged from his going to God without god. From the interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophy, theology and poetry, we will approach to decipher this influence that transforms the saying of the poet-philosopher and updates his word in the desert and plunges us into the mystery of the unspeakable.
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The article concerns the last phase of poetic production of father David Maria Turoldo, notably the last collection published when he was still alive – the Final Chants. In his very long work or religious poet, liturgist, and essayist, he treated a number of topics, incl. social themes and current affairs. In his last phase of his poetic, he doesn’t speak to the society, to the poor, and to marginalised people like in the past, but he addresses God directly – by forming an intense dialogue with the Absolute. In this poetical and mystical dialogue, he interrogates God about the most impenetrable mysteries for human understanding. These mysteries overwhelmed theologians and mystics of all times. Here, we shall focus notably on the topic of God being far from His creation – which is manifested through the divine silence. God seems not to hear the invocations of the faithful; it looks as though He doesn’t care about the problem of suffering (especially of the weakest persons) that remains apparently unrelieved by divine intervention. We shall present some meaningful short examples of such deep and complex issues, in order to introduce the reader to the knowledge of the peculiar Turoldian approach, by providing a possible interpretative key.
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Mystical experience is connected with ineffability. This paper proves it in works by various authors. It mentions some common phenomena associated with mysticism, such as stigma, levitation, appearance of light, religious anorexia, etc. Some of them are observed in late works by Julius Zeyer, a Czech novelist and poet, which represent the core of the analysis. Christine the Miraculous and The Three Memoirs of Vít Choráz both reflect mystical experience experienced by the main characters. The paper refers to accompanying aspects of the behaviour of the characters related to ineffable.
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The article deals with the issue of silence in the thinking and work of the contemporary French author Sylvie Germain. The starting point for deliberation is the author’s essay Acte de silence (2011), in which silence is conceived both as a manifestation of God’s discreet appearance and as an act of humility and patience of man. The presence of silence seems to be a necessary condition for mystical experience. Silence understood in this way is the subject of the analysis in a selected passage from Germain’s novel L’Enfant Méduse (1991), which suggests some specific features of the author’s poetics of the transcendent, also present in her later novel work.
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This paper focuses on the figurativeness of the language of mystical experience in the context of Jung’s theory of collective unconsciousness. It analyses the autobiographical work of St. Teresa of Ávila and tries to identify images that mirror the archetype of the whole, or the Jungian Self (das Selbst). The main objective of the paper is to reveal the life-giving potential and spontaneous nature of symbols created by the unconscious and to highlight their scope and importance in human life.
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One of the key poets of Slovak post-November poetry was shaped in the Komúna dissent group headed by philosopher and artist M. Strýko during the communist regime. Operating in dissent supported the radicality of his poetic gesture and lifestyle, the image of an active, evolving individual freed from the senselessness of civilization, and also the idea that it is possible to integrate evil into a higher good. These ideas also form branches to the sanjuanist motifs and intellectual solutions that are close to Groch. The article seeks these penetrating places with special attention on the symbol of the journey and pilgrimage, and at the same time points to Groch’s creative updates of one of the most famous spiritual teachings of the West.
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Opiniile potrivit cărora postmodernismul ar fi o invazie a culturii de masă și a alianței celei mai josnice cu kitsch-ul (Clement Greenberg) ori un produs printre altele, soporifice, ale societății de consum (Fredric Jameson) au fost de mult abandonate și glosate în chip de curiozități în muzeul istoriei conceptului. La fel, confuziile incipiente între postmodernism și avangardă, bazate pe o continuitate a dialecticii noului ce înlocuiește vechiul prin opoziție și subminare, au fost reparate chiar de cei care inițial le afirmaseră (Ihab Hassan și Leslie Fielder de pildă)12. Ideea redescoperirii plăcerii lecturii, a reînnoirii pactului cu cititorul, bazat pe seducție și dorința de a se lăsa sedus, propagată de primii scriitori-teoreticieni autodeclarați postmoderni (John Barth și Umberto Eco printre alții)3, a rămas însă extrem de vie și de fertilă, cel puțin într-o abordare mai simplificatoare, dar nu și simplistă, a caracteristicilor noului eon cultural. Să fie oare seducția una dintre mărcile pe care postmodernismul și le adjudecă, delimitându-se în acest fel de modernitatea adesea orgolios elitistă? Reîntoarcerea la narațiune și abandonarea jocurilor abstracte și livrești pe care și le propune ar pleda pentru un răspuns afirmativ. însă operele dificile ale atâtor scriitori postmoderni (sau integrați, unii poate fără voia lor, acestei orientări) pun sub semnul întrebării un asemenea deziderat. Reacțiile scriitorilor în fața datoriei de a-și subjuga, sub povara imensei lor atractivități, cititorii, pot fi multiple.
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E deja primăvară, prin mai. El are aproape 27 de ani și își începe jurnalul intrând în „pădurea întunecoasă”. Poate fără să vrea, o parafrază la Dante : „în pădurea întunecoasă, cu pământul pătruns de umezeală, nu mă orientam decât după albul gulerului său” Fără nimic simbolic și, mai ales, fără făgăduința paradisului. O intrare în labirint, în infernul vieții de zi cu zi, singur, exilat încă de la început în propriul corp. „Sigur e că scriu asta din deznădejdea pe care mi-o inspiră trupul meu și viitorul acestui trup”. E chiar a doua frază din jurnal, iar mai încolo va consemna că îi e teamă, oroare, milă, scârbă de „acest trup”. îl disprețuiește și îl reneagă ; îl refuză ; iar corpului îi e teamă, oroare, milă de el, de Franz Kafka; îl disprețuiește și îl refuză; îl reneagă la rându-i. „Cu un asemenea trup ca al meu nu poți izbuti nimic în viață.” într-adevăr, în viața reală, Franz Kafka și propriul corp sunt doi străini, față în față, despărțiți de o pavăză : „o clipă m-am simțit învăluit de o platoșă. Cât de departe îmi sunt, de pildă, mușchii brațelor”. S-ar părea că se simte protejat, apărat, izolat de lume, dar de fapt, platoșa s-a așezat între el și propriul său corp, din al cărui prizonierat ar vrea, clipă de clipă, să scape. De aici, obsesia conturului ferm, a limitării brutale prin care „jalnicele trupuri omenești” sunt izolate, fără putința unei comunicări reale; de aici, obsesia camerelor etanșe, a ușilor care se închid mereu, dar nici una care să te protejeze, să-ți dea sentimentul de „acasă”. Unde e casa, unde-i acasă, „locșorul acela curat pe pământ, peste care uneori să strălucească soarele, ca să te poți încălzi și tu nițel”? Niciunde. Sunt, toți, și el, Franz, și Gregor, și Georg, și Joseph K., și Karl, bărbați în toată firea, dar nu au o casă a lor : stau cu părinții, în gazdă, în chirie, prin hanuri, pensiuni, hoteluri, „flotanți”, suspendați mereu în interval.
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The present paper analyses the concept of the performativity of human language in the philosophical writings by Étienne Bonnot de Condillac and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The first part of the text is devoted to the idea of langage d’action and its significance for Condillac‘s epistemology and theory of language; whereas the social and political functions of human speech, presented in the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, are interpreted in the second part of the paper. Ultimately, it seems that for both Condillac and Rousseau human language is not just a mere thinking tool, but also a way of changing and improving our reality.
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Mohamed Nedali is a contemporary Moroccan writer of French expression born in 1962 in Tahannaout, about thirty kilometers from Marrakech where he still lives. Having written eight novels with a realist vocation, he makes his region his favorite place and fiction because, as he says in an interview, “in literature one only speaks very well of a place one knows so well”. However, this attachment to space, or at least this rootedness in identity that demonstrate the territorial anchoring of the author, seems insufficient to serve his realistic vision. It is nevertheless true that the intrusion of vernacular languages in a text written in a foreign language is not without importance because it constitutes a significant element in a realistic fresco. Indeed, the text of Nedali is strewn with Moroccan expressions. This intrusion is not gratuitous and illustrates the role that the contact of languages can have in a fictional narrative. Moreover, the choice of anthroponyms in Nedali’s fiction is not arbitrary, as it is thoughtful and serves the author’s vision. Being a writer of soil and a good connoisseur of the Moroccan society, the author uses it to create a fresco whose contrasts illustrate his bias and his refusal of social evils.
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In 2021, the State Publishing Institute (Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy) published a new edition of The Stranger translated by Marek Bieńczyk. This is the second translation officially published in Poland, the previous was created by Maria Zenowicz in 1958. The article analyses these two Polish translations of The Stranger. The author compares some parts of the text and shows differences between Polish versions trying to find out how a new translation has changed a perception of the novel among Polish readers.
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The article presents a corpus analysis of media messages about immigrants from Ukraine in Warsaw. The aim of the research was to compare headlines and texts and to identify keywords, words with the highest frequency and the most popular collocations. The korpusomat web application was used for the study. The results confirm that the image of Ukrainians is built on the basis of the opposition between locals and foreigners. The quantitative data for the headlines and for the texts were similar. The topics concerned mainly the work of immigrants. An important role in the media news was played by lemmas locating the places of events and the nationality of their participants.
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Our article is focused on the contrasts in the Mirouer des femmes vertueuses, an anonymous collection of two stories: one about Joan of Arc and the other about Griselidis. We compare opposing aspects of these characters. Firstly, we counterpose the discursive character of the heroines, where one is real and the other is fictional. Then we study different qualities, the two models of femininity and finally the behaviour of the character in question in the face of events.
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The aim of this article is to take a closer look at the nature of popular fiction and its inherent usage of contrasting elements. We would like to examine two Alexander Dumas’ novels, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte-Cristo in order to try to explain the aforementioned tendency as well as give examples illustrating it. In the first part of the text, we concentrate on premises of the genre in general. Having established those principles, we go on to analyse The Three Musketeers in the context of its contrasting features. We can divide this novel into three basic sets of oppositions: that between the cardinal and the queen, that between titular characters, accompanied by d’Artagnan, and finally that between main female characters, Constance and Milady. After the analysis of the first of the novels, we then proceed to study The Count of Monte-Cristo. We draw attention to its most distinctive contrasts which include, amongst others, the opposition between the protagonist’s two incarnations: Edmond Dantès and the count of Monte-Cristo. All in all, both novels rep-resent well the tendency to use contrasts as a means of characterization. The popular fiction’ structure which presupposes that the good must be victorious and the bad punished fits well with the utilisation of oppositions.
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The article is based on the notion of contrast and its role in creating a detailed and nuanced narration with psychologically complex heroes. Contrasts in question include those between poverty and richness, dreams and reality and being and pretending to be. The reflexion is enriched with a theatrical twist by questions concerning the role (or even hypothetical presence) of hybris in the process of creating an intricate composition and the possibility of a tragedy-like reading and interpretation of the short story.
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Water with its entire seascape, which includes both flora and fauna as well as figures from the mythological world, is one of the main elements of the poetic imagination that forms in the Symbolism. By analysing poems written in the years 1890-99 in the light of the thought of philosophers and mythocritics like Bachelard or Pierrot, we can notice a strong relationship between aquatic symbols and female characters. Focusing on mermaids, nymphs and Aphrodite, we can see that the poetic impressions are created on the basis of a contrast between purity and voluptuousness, which result from the features of the water, the archetypal features of the characters and attributes which are assigned to them during the poetic creation, and that their combination allowed the authors to develop poetic images nuanced and aestheticized relative to the original stories.
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