Paradigms of Humanism: The case of Miron Costin and Nicolae Costin

Author(s): Andrei-Iulian Din / Language(s): English Issue: XXIV/2023

In the paper at hand, we thoroughly investigate the paradigms of Humanism, placing special emphasis on both the idealistic and pragmatic facets of this intellectual movement that has significantly influenced the course of our civilization. Moreover, we delve into the realm of Humanism within 17th and early 18th century Moldavia, scrutinizing aspects such as education and politics through the lens of prominent figures, including Miron Costin and Nicolae Costin. We postulate that it is imperative to recognize that we cannot divorce individuals from their temporal contexts, and thus, a nuanced understanding of each person within a specific historical framework is essential in order to avoid succumbing to the pitfalls of anachronism and to properly appreciate one’s cultural contribution.

The Migrant Experience in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis

Author(s): Anamaria Fălăuş / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir The Complete Persepolis written in 1999 in France and published 4 years later in English (2003) is an autobiographical narrative that attempts to follow the main character’s personal experiences and coming-of-age while registering her birth country’s (i.e. Iran) complicated and tormenting history, that starts right after the 1979 Iranian Revolution and advances through Iraq-Iran War as well as the growth of Islamic fundamentalism. This paper revisits theoretical problems related to the general process of migration, defining terms and attempting to apply them in the specific case of Satrapi’s exilic experience as it is described in her graphic memoir. It registers and distinguishes different types of migrant figures and modes of migrant-host relationships, as well as theories of cultural adaptation and proposes the application of theoretical background to Marjane Satrapi’s memoir, the analysis focusing on issues of identity searching, fitting in and integration that are defining for the experience of an immigrant girl trying to get accustomed to the harsh reality of the adoptive society she has to fit into.

ANEGDOTA I EPIZOD JAKO PRZYKŁADY ANALOGII PRECEDENSU

Author(s): Maria Gołębiewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 78/2023

What serves as a starting point for the article are theses regarding the analogy in legal acts and regulations – the rule analogy and the precedent analogy. What in turn serves as its point of reference are theses concerning cultural schematization, which include narrative patterns of myth, general (universal) history, and individual history. The legal rule and precedent analogies may be considered as argumentative and narrative strategies. The precedent analogy plays an important role in contemporary, modernist, individualized biographical and autobiographical micronarratives. In fact, the anecdote and the episode may be examined as examples of the precedent analogy.In the contemporary humanities, as well as in the social sciences, the presence of “travelling concepts” has been observed (Mieke Bal). The “episode” and the “anecdote” can be seen as examples of this inter- and trans-disciplinary concept. With this in mind, the article poses questions regarding the argumentation that refers the anecdotal and the episodic in microhistories, especially in particular, individual histories, and, above all, in subjective (auto)biographies.The terms “episode” and “anecdote” pertain to two different modes of describing that which is instant, short-lived, and seemingly included in the allegedly coherent historical whole. The former refers to an extraordinary event that constitutes a breach and disrupts the much sought-after temporal and semantic coherence which helps give meaning to events. The anecdote, by contrast, confirms this coherence (which includes alleged historical purposefulness and necessity) along with a revealed sense. What serves as a crucial context for the reflections presented in the article is the theory put forward by Max van Manen in Phenomenology of Practice. Meaning-Giving Methods in Phenomenological Research and Writing. In his applied phenomenology, van Manen proposes an argumentative reference to the history of an individual subject – to biography, which he recognizes not only as a documentary testimony to individual existence, but also as an “anecdote” – an example of a general subjective attitude.

FRAGMENTS D’UNE POÉTIQUE DU FEU GASTONA BACHELARDA. TRZY FIGURY MITYCZNE

Author(s): Marta Ples-Bęben / Language(s): Polish Issue: 78/2023

Gaston Bachelard’s last book (or, rather, notes from 1961–1962, edited and published by Suzanne Bachelard, more than twenty years after they were written) presents analyses of three mythical figures: Prometheus, Phoenix, and Empedocles. The Promethean myth and the myth of Empedocles’s death were earlier addressed in Bachelard’s previous works. In Fragments d’une poétique du feu, he extends and supplements his earlier analyses.The article examines the interpretations of selected myths in Fragments... in the context of the evolution of Bachelard’s philosophy and his key inspirations. It also addresses the following questions:1) what is myth in Bachelard’s late work?2) which of his main inspirations (psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, phenomenology) are still strongly visible in his late research?

REINTERPRETACJA MITYCZNEJ FIGURY ATLASA W ANTROPOLOGII GASTONA BACHELARDA

Author(s): Marzena Karwowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 78/2023

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962), a French anthropologist of the imagination, seems to be somewhat forgotten and significantly underresearched in Polish literary studies, even though his major works on poetic imagination – La Psychanalyse du feu (1938), L’Eau et les rêves (1942), L’Air et les songes (1943), La Terre et les rêveries de la volonté (1947), La Terre et les rêveries du repos (1948), La Poétique de l’espace (1957), La Poétique de la rêverie (1960), and La Flamme d’une chandelle (1961) – have exerted a major impact on the perception of the literary text. Not only did Bachelard propose a new poetics (the poetics of the elements), but he also redefined the category of the author and introduced the following concepts to the humanities: the Dreaming Cogito (or the Dreamer’s Cogito), which describes a creative subjectivity, and dreamy consciousness (Fr. conscience rêveuse), or, in other words, poetic imagination. Bachelard’s poetics of the elements is founded upon his notion of symbols-images, which include principal images (Fr. imago princeps), imaginative compounds that organize the Dreamer’s Cogito.The article discusses the theoretical concepts that Bachelard explains in his monograph ontheEarthelement,entitledLaTerreetlesrêveriesdelavolonté.Essaissurlesimaginationdela matière (Corti, Paris 1947). Karwowska focuses on the reinterpretation of the mythical figure of Atlas. It is examined in the context of the imaginary relationship between anthropos and kosmos, which serves as the thematic core of Bachelard’s anthropology. Following Bachelard, Karwowska interprets the mythical Atlas as an archetypal image that can be expressed on the level of langage. What serves as its main feature is redundancy which remains open to various interpretative contexts. Bachelard’s work on myth in literary studies was most fully developed by myth-criticism. Scholars who research this field, similarly to Bachelard, investigate the human mundus imaginalis. They look for semantic basins (imaginary chreods), formed around a common meaning, the dominant myth. The article attempts to reconstruct the images generated by the Dreamer’s Cogito, which are the imagination’s response to the human encounter with material nature. It examines the mythical figure of Atlas against the wide spectrum of Bachelard’s figures of the imagination (the Antaeus complex, the Pluto-Proserpine complex, the mythical figure of Vulcan, the muscular anthropos, crystal imagination). Bachelard thoroughly investigates how humans use their imagination to colonize nature, studies the mechanisms of imagination that function on the level of the relationship between anthropos and kosmos, and finds universal anthropological antagonistic strategies of fight and domination in the human relationship with matter.

DIALEKTY SŁOWEŃSKIE A ZRÓŻNICOWANIE SOCJALNE JĘZYKA SŁOWEŃSKIEGO

Author(s): Anna Stefan / Language(s): Polish Issue: 71/2023

The Slovenian language is one of the smallest Slavic languages in terms of the number of speakers and it is additionally characterized by strong social differentiation. It has a literary variant (sloven-ski knjižni jezik), which differentiates the written language (knjižna zborna zvrst) and the spokenlanguage (knjižna pogovorna zvrst). In addition to the literary variant, there is a non-literary variantof the language (neknjižni jezik), comprising regional variants (pokrajinski pogovorni jeziki) and dia-lects (narečja). Among them, seven main groups can be distinguished: Carinthian (koroška), Littoral(primorska), Rovte (rovtarska), Upper Carniolan (gorenjska), Lower Carniolan (dolenjska), Styrian(štajerska) and Pannonian (panonska). The article begins with a brief historical outline and a des-cription of the different variants of Slovenian. This is needed to understand the phenomenon of Slove-nian social differentiation and to show the place of dialects in it. The main objective is to characterisethe individual Slovenian dialects in terms of their selected intrinsic features.

Wieloznaczność przestrzeni (natury) w Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych Olgi Tokarczuk

Author(s): Katarzyna Rytlewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2023

The article presents a consideration of the space of nature in the work Drive YourPlough Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. The variously treated and read space, inwhich the main character of the book functions, becomes a contribution to reflection on theplace of nature in the human environment. Nature understood as the place of plant and animallife, nature as part of the cosmic universe, as well as the myth of Nature. The article also showshow Olga Tokarczuk’s book fits into environmental criticism.

VERSCHIEDENE ASPEKTE DER BULGARISCHEN NARRATIVE VON FLUCHT, EXIL UND WIRTSCHAFTSMIGRATION (1944 - 1989)

Author(s): Maria Endreva / Language(s): German Issue: 5/2023

The paper defines and examines different narratives of migration, which has different causes: Flight, Exile, and Economic Migration. After a terminological introduction, citing A. Hirschman's concepts of exit, voice and loyalty, the following migration narratives are described: In the pre-1989 period, two basic narratives are identified: the negative official narrative of socialist government and the positive narrative of emigrants' freedom and prosperity abroad. After the fall of communism, there are several directions: the narrative of the cultural superiority of the West and its material prosperity, which have the strongest impact on emigrants. Another, new narrative of hiding of the truth is also identified, which includes the narrative of return.

ЧОВЕКОЛЮБИЕТО В ЖИВОТА И ТВОРЧЕСТВОТО (ВОЕННИТЕ РАЗКАЗИ) НА ЙОРДАН ВЪЛЧЕВ

Author(s): Rositsa Vasileva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

Literature as interdiscourse can be regarded as a concept that underpins the notion of the relation of literary fiction to social reality outside it, in this case the phenomenon of 'war'. It invariably leads to a clash of different identities and the emergence of conflicts (collisions) within the interaction of "own" and "other". The paper focuses on the way the problems of the attitude towards the other are solved through the principles of Christian ethics. From both ethical and aesthetic points of view, Yordan Valchev's war stories are the best written works about World War II in Bulgarian literature. Told by the narrator, experienced and true, the stories astonish with the humanity shown to one's fellow man, whether one’s own or someone else's. The article also briefly presents the life path of the author, for whom humanity and patriotism are sacred foundations to which he remains faithful despite a life full of difficulties, obstacles and suffering.

БЪЛГАРСКО-ГЕРМАНСКИ КУЛТУРНИ И ЛИТЕРАТУРНИ ОТНОШЕНИЯ ПРЕЗ 30-ТЕ И НАЧАЛОТО НА 40-ТЕ ГОДИНИ НА XX ВЕК

Author(s): Iliyana Obretenova-Velinov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

Bulgarian-German cultural and literary relations in the 30s and early 40s of the 20th century were characterized by high intensity and reveal the carefully conducted bilateral cultural policy during the considered period. The article covers all spheres of cultural influence, emphasizing the fact that the aggressive cultural foreign policy of the Third Reich was entirely conditioned by the enforcement and imposition of nationalistic doctrines and ideals, revealing the goal of Hitler's Germany to recruit allies. Thus, the research reveals in a historical context the cyclicality of the Bulgarian-German cultural and literary relations.

МОДЕЛИТЕ НА АЛТРУИЗЪМ, КОРЕЛИРАЩИ С КОНЦЕПТУАЛНИТЕ МЕТАФОРИ МОРАЛНА ОТЧЕТНОСТ И МОРАЛЪТ Е ГРИЖА, МОРАЛЪТ Е ЕМПАТИЯ В ТИПА ПРИКАЗКИ АТ 480

Author(s): Delyana Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

The article defends two main theses. According to the first, one of the most common motifs in the fairy tale in general and in AT 480 tale-type narratives in particular - namely, the conflict between stepmother and stepdaughter - corresponds to the opposition between the phenomena of kin altruism within the framework of Hamilton's theory (1964) and reciprocal altruism within the framework of Robert Trivers' (1971) theory. The phenomenon of reciprocal altruism, for its part, is an extremely important factor regarding the good functioning of the modern ultrasocial society. According to the second thesis, the model of reciprocal altruism corresponds to the MORAL ACCOUNTING, MORALITY IS NURTURANCE, and MORALITY IS EMPATHY conceptual metaphors reflected in the plot of AT 480 fairy tale-type variants.

KOНЦЕПЦИЯТА ЗА ТРЕТОТО ПРОСТРАНСТВО В РОМАНА НА ИЛИЯ ТРОЯНОВ СВЕТЪТ Е ГОЛЯМ И СПАСЕНИЕ ДЕБНЕ ОТВСЯКЪДЕ

Author(s): Yolanta Gramatikova-Hafez / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2023

The focal point of the study is to unravel nuanced insights from Iliya Troyanov's novel "The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner" employing the conceptual lens of Homi K. Bhabha's third space. The analytical quest aims to decipher the essence of the 'third space' and explore whether the dynamics of comprehension between the familiar and the foreign intertwine with the processes of self-discovery and self-definition. To shed light on these inquiries, we navigate the realms of cultural hybridity, cultural translation, and the shaping of identity.

Apostolii din Cambridge

Author(s): Mircea Mihăies / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 12/2023

Excerpt from a book in progress for Polirom publishing house.

Cum literatura transformă lumea

Author(s): Alexandre Gefen / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 12/2023

Romanul «post-ironic» de limbă engleză (DavidFoster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Jonathan SafranFoer, Zadie Smith etc.) precum și literatura contemporană de limbă franceză, de la Annie Ernaux la Michel Houellebecq, de la Virginie Despentes la Maylisde Kerangal, de la Karine Tuil la Camille Laurens, au în comun aceeași orientare: se ocupă de problematicile sociale (raporturile de gen, de clasă socială, problematica politică și mizele ecologice, consecințele dramelor istorice lăsate în urmă de războaie și ale colonizări).

Przyległość i płynność – ekspresje sąsiedztwa w pismach Kraszewskiego i Stempowskiego z kraju nad Dniestrem

Author(s): Jerzy Borowczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2023

The focus of the article is the analysis of the literary expressions of neighbourhoodaffinities in the Dniestr River basin featured in Wspomnienia Odessy, Jedysanu i Bu-dżaku. Dziennik przejażdżki w roku 1843 od 22 czerwca do 11 września (1845–1846) byJózef Ignacy Kraszewski and in Jerzy Stempowski’s essay W dolinie Dniestru (1941).The center of attention was captured by the myriad forms of contiguity seen in thetopography of the banks of the Dniestr River – namely, the middle course in a sketchby Hostowiec and the lower one, surrounded by a liman, in Kraszewski’s diary. Themidsection of the article deals with the fluidity of languages used by representativesof the various ethnic groups and social strata living on both banks of the Dniestr, aswell as the multiplicity of religious denominations. The third contention bears onboth writers’ attempts to overturn the dominance of history drawing on both writers’strong tendency to exploit the motif of ruin. Neighbourhood relations set aglowboth a nineteenth- and twentieth-century writer. Both writers also achieve an effectof contiguity and fluidity within the composition and style of their respective works.

Konstrukty cywilizacji i metafizyka transfiguracji w twórczości Romany Kaszczyc

Author(s): WIKTORIA CHOJNACKA / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2023

Romana Kaszczyc – an artist concerned with nature, borderlands, peripheries, theWest Pomeranian and Lubusz lands, the Barlinecka Wilderness – dissolves in her work the ontological dimension of borders, while bringing into play the perspectives of neighbourhood relations, interdependence and diversity. Wilderness endures,irrespective of the conventional borders marked on the administrative map of Poland.However, it is also worth raising the question of whether culture is becoming– by greedily expanding its territory – nature’s neighbour, or perhaps its oppressor?In her work, Roma Barlinecka creates a world in which social patterns and rolesbecome a prison. Whereas, the coexisting binary reality of night and day, darknessand illumination, life and death is metaphysical in the artist’s eyes. Thus, is theborder transcendent, epistemological and independent of man? Above all, I wouldnot only like to commemorate a worthy artist who consciously chose to live in theborderlands, but also to look at the border itself, and how antagonisms betweenculture and nature, centre and periphery, global recognition and regionality aregenerated and constituted.Notwithstanding the goals above, the main research objective is to develop aninterpretation of selected culture-themed texts by Romana Kaszczyc in the light ofconsiderations of the semantic experience of the borderland. I will present a criticalstudy of literary and plastic works from a neo-regional and ecocritical perspective.The interpretations shall induce deliberations on neighbourhood relations, borderand ecocide. Research inspirations will be drawn from the scholarly output of, among others: Julia Fiedorczuk, Aleksandra Ubertowska, Tatiana Czerska, ElżbietaRybicka.

Човекът срещу машината: за другото пространство на „Другият сън“

Author(s): Nikolay Genov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 59/2023

This article offers a comparative analysis of Samuel Butler’s novel „Erewhon, or Over the Range“ and Vladimir Poleganov’s „The Other Dream“ through the topic of natural selection and the struggle for territory between machines and humans. Space is examined as a stake in the race for control in which virtuality performs the function of boundary extension for the losing side.

GOLEMA XIV prognoza rozwoju ludzkiej cywilizacji a typologia osobliwości technologicznych

Author(s): Rachel Palmen / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2023

In the paper, a conceptual analysis of technological singularity is conducted and results in the concept differentiated into convergent singularity, existential singularity, and forecasting singularity, based on selected works of Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bo- strom, and Vernor Vinge respectively. A comparison is made between the variants and the forecast of GOLEM XIV (a quasi-alter ego and character by Stanisław Lem) for the possible development of Homo sapiens civilisation. According to the prediction, the scientific and tech- nological progress is to bring humanity to transfer its civilisational primacy to a nonhuman superhuman intelligence xor a posthuman one. Both scenarios are best described by forecasting singularity, yet all variants are applicable only conditionally. As GOLEM did not undertake, the trajectories may also intersect or combine.

IF I MET A JEW – WHAT WOULD I TALK TO HIM/HER ABOUT? THE POSSIBILITIES OF CREATIVE WRITING AND POST SHOAH LITERATURE IN THE CZECH LANGUAGE

Author(s): Eva Maria Hrdinová,IVONA DÖMISCHOVÁ / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

This article explores the possibility of using creative writing practices to teach international students about the Holocaust in literature. The specific authors analyzed are Egon Hostovský, Jiří Weil and Josef Škvorecký. Specific creative writing practices visible in students' individual works were also discussed.

SIERGIEJ ANDRIEJEWSKI: ZNIESŁAWIENIE NA LIŚCIE. SPRAWA CEDERBAUM PRZECIWKO LUTOSTAŃSKIEMU (SŁOWO WSTĘPNE "HISTORIA JEDNEGO PROCESU" I PRZEKŁAD MARIAN KISIEL)

Author(s): Przemysław Kisiel / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2023