Evan S. Connell

Evan S. Connell (b. 1924–d. 2013) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up there in a prosperous family with historical ties—reflected in his middle name, Shelby—to Confederate general Jo Shelby. Although his physician father expected his namesake son to join him in his medical practice, Connell, while at Dartmouth College, began to consider more creative options, including writing and making art. After a three-year stint in the U.S. Navy Air Corps during World War II—he never left the country—Connell began writing down his experiences and finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas. On the Lawrence, Kansas, campus, he studied art and continued to write, under the tutelage of Ray B. West, who edited the Western Review. With aid from the G.I. Bill and encouragement from West, Connell successfully applied to Wallace Stegner’s first class of creative writing fellows at Stanford University. He spent another year in writing and art classes at Columbia University in New York. Ultimately, he saw more of a future in writing, though he kept up a practice of life drawing and painting for many years. Connell had an early run of published short stories, beginning in 1946. After a fallow period in California, Connell went to Paris in 1952, where he became acquainted with the founding editors of The Paris Review. The literary journal published three of Connell’s stories, including segments from Connell’s novel in progress, which eventually was titled Mrs. Bridge. By then, Connell had taken up residence in San Francisco. After rejection by several New York publishers, the Viking Press took on Connell, releasing a story collection in 1957 before cementing Connell’s reputation with Mrs. Bridge, a quietly evocative portrait of a prosperous, middle-American family, which became his most admired and lucrative work of fiction. Over the next five decades Connell veered into an extraordinary variety of works—fiction, nonfiction, history, and hybrid experiments that looked like epic poetry. This pattern of no pattern in the arc of Connell’s work, combined with his lack of interest in self-promotion, seemed to confuse the New York publishing world, and critics often cited his unpredictability as the cause of a kind of literary marginalization. His sprawling account of Custer at the Little Bighorn became hugely popular in the 1980s, raising his profile and reviving his reputation as a writer.

Rereading the Transmutations of Miksa Fenyő’s 1944-1945 Diary, Az elsodort ország [‘A Nation Adrift’]

This review article examines the 2018 publication by Helena History Press of A Nation Adrift [‘Az elsodort ország’]: The 1944-1945 Wartime Diaries of Miksa Fenyő. Translated by Miksa Fenyő’s son, Mario D. Fenyő, this work gains new layers of meaning when alternately read as a Holocaust narrative, a family history, an example of life writing and the continuation of intellectual activity in the face of great adversity. Only recently available to an English-speaking audience, Az elsodort ország provides a remarkably comprehensive, well-composed description of the Hungarian Holocaust, World War II and the Siege of Budapest, as related by Miksa Fenyő (1877-1972), the former editor and critic of the modern literary journal, Nyugat [‘West’] and deputy director of GyOSz [Gyáriparosok Országos Szövetsége; ‘Association of Hungarian Industrialists’].

Second Language Creative Writing: Learner Development in the Shinhaiku Pedagogy

This article will address the place of second language creative writing (L2CW) in EFL curricula by first providing an updated understanding of L2CW and the Japanese form shinhaiku—a nontraditional haiku. Shinhaiku differs from traditional haiku in that it does not utilize the 5-7-5 syllable form. Secondly, the article will consider misconceptions as well as pedagogical implications of L2CW and thirdly, offer a classroom approach to L2CW (poetry writing) utilizing Hanauer’s (2012) meaningful literacy framework. The approach was developed from action research and teaching practices, underpinned by Spiro’s (2014) reading-to-writing cycle where learners 1) choose L2CW poems that they admire from an EFL literary journal; 2) articulate reasons for appreciation of said poems; 3) apply these ideas to their L2CW; and 4) reflect on the process. The article will also provide examples from student work as well as present a case for why shinhaiku is an accessible form in the Japanese context. この論文は、EFLの履修に於ける第二言語のクリエイティブライティング(L2CW)の位置付けについて述べたものである。第一に、L2CWの最新の解釈と日本語の形式として新俳句（従来型ではない俳句）を提示する。新俳句は形式として五七五の音節を使わないという点で、従来の伝統的な俳句とは異なる。次に、L2CWの誤認と教育法への影響について考察する。続いて、Hanauer (2012)による「意味を持つ読み書き能力の教育法」を通してL2CWの授業での取り組み（詩の創作）について述べる。この考え方はSpiro (2014) のreading-to-writing cycle (2014)に実証された行動研究と教育方法を発展したものである。その方法では、学習者は、1) EFL literary journal から彼らが良いと感じるL2CWの詩を選ぶ 2)前述の詩を良いと思う理由を明確化させる 3) その考えを自分のL2CWに応用させる 4)その過程を振り返り考察する。そして、学生の作品を例示し、新俳句が日本において利用し易い形式である理由を論証する。

Debora Vogel w galicyjskim jidyszlandzie. Czasopismo „Cusztajer”

The paper sums up the history and analysis of Tsushteyer [Contribution] literary journal, published between 1929 and 1931 in Lviv. The goal of the group under the same name (comprising such writers as Debora Vogel, Rachela Auerbach, Ber Shnaper, Melekh Ravitsh and Mendl Neugröschl) was to create a strong Yiddish-speaking cultural centre in Galicia. One of their projects was establishing and publishing a literary journal. Three issues of Tsushteyer contained prose, poetry, essays and art reproductions. The paper describes the characteristics of the contents, emphasises the role of Debora Vogel in the editorial office and outlines the unique features of Tsushteyer in comparison with other Yiddish literary journals.

Kontrafaktualna istorija kao deo naučne discipline

The emergence of the first alternative history of Serbia and the thematic issue of a literary journal devoted to counterfactual history drew attention to the necessity to analyze this phenomenon from a historiographical perspective. This paper outlines the historical and theoretical foundations of counterfactualism in European and American historiography and literature.

Lviv musical impressions on the pages of A. Bennett’s diary

Background. Objectives and methodology of the research. The article contains a commentary to the separate pages of A. Bennett’s diaries, in which the impressions of the famous English writer, playwright, actor and journalist from visiting the cities of Moscow, Orel and Lviv were recorded in May 1988. This trip took place at the invitation of the Writers’ Union of the USSR. As part of the British delegation, A. Bennett carried out a mission of “cultural diplomacy”, whose goal was to open the “Iron Curtain” between the West and the countries of Eastern Europe. The program of the visit of the foreign delegation is analyzed, in particular, visits to opera performances (at the Bolshoi Theater – “Werther” by J. Massenet, at the Lviv Opera and Ballet Theater – «The Ukrainian Cossack beyond the Danube» by S. Gulak-Artemovsky). The purpose of this article is to introduce into the scientific circulation the evidence that allows illuminating the events of the recent past through the prism of the perception of their immediate participants. Another task of this article is to determine the pragmatics of “hospitality” and its operatic component in the conditions of the Soviet system on a concrete example. In addition, the article establishes, with the help of diary notes, the specifics of the guests’ reaction to the realities of Ukrainian life during the “Perestroika” period and to the fact that opera represents power, which is essential for cultural diplomacy. The research is based on diary prose, which was originally prepared for publication in a literary journal. This determined the appropriate mode of expression and set the choice of illuminated objects. The descriptive-evaluative narrative appeals to real places and persons. So, the author tries to achieve the effect of documentary. At the same time, there is a noticeable tendency to create a slightly entertaining text that should interest the average reader and meet his expectations. Research results. This material made it possible to supplement with interesting facts the practice of cultural diplomacy that was established in the USSR, which was covered by the Western researchers, for example F. Barghoorn (1960), P. Hollander (1981), M. David-Fox (2011). In addition, the analysis of this evidence made it possible to introduce into scientific use not only the events, but also the attitude of foreign guests towards them. This is important for historiography and reconstruction of the recent past. The events, mentioned in the text of the evidence, acquire an outside view. The words of the “outsider” become comparative frame through which it is possible to comprehend what happened, freely from the obsessive rhetoric of the perestroika time. According to Bennett, in 1988 the protective function of the totalitarian system came into conflict with the new trend of the time. The imprint of stagnation and decline, even decomposition, but not the sense of purpose and optimism, which P. Hollander described as the “stigma of these countries”, also affected the “window” of Soviet reality, where obvious cracks of loud selfdisclosures appeared. The mandatory program of the visit included meeting with colleagues. With the help of diary, the specific reaction of the guests is set to the fact why an opera self-representation was so important for the «Soviet side». The pages of Bennett’s diaries showed attention to everyday details. The writer was able to create not an image of faceless mass, but the vivid portraits of his contemporaries and capture his experience of meeting a different reality. Conclusions. A. Bennett – a man and a writer – recreated his short stay in Lviv, capturing the theatrical nature of the life-giving performance that unfolded here in the tense collisions between official rhetoric and living reality. The opera itself was of little interest to A. Bennett, but he was well aware of the exceptional importance attached by the organizers of the trip to the fact of visiting the opera house. As an “object of showing” to foreigners, the opera served, first of all, as a proof of the “culture” of the country, a proof that the cultural heritage of the past is better preserved here. At the same time, in the system of “cultural diplomacy” the opera topos functioned as an aesthetic representation of power, the “higher truth” about it. Opera representation existed as a self-sufficient complete phenomenon, which testified to the presence of higher meanings in the real world.