Leo Tolstoy and US Utopian Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galina Alekseeva
Keyword(s):  
American History ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Utopian Literature ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Personal Library ◽  
Green Stick

American utopia in literary and documentary texts by American writers had an impact on Leo Tolstoy’s ideas and writings, which can be seen in the marginalia and annotations he left in his extensive personal library. The concept of utopia was deeply ingrained in Tolstoy, beginning with the childish legend of “the green stick” engraved with the magic words of universal happiness. As a child Tolstoy was fascinated with the potential of the “green stick” and its secret that could make all men happy, and he tried many times to find it. Tolstoy examined and developed this concept of universal happiness throughout different periods of his life. From the mid-1880s to his departure from Yasnaya Polyana in 1910, Tolstoy stayed in close contact with American religious writers. During this period, he received many books and periodicals from America and thus got to know the works of numerous American writers, philosophers, and public figures who were close to him in spirit. Tolstoy had a keen interest in American history, culture, art, traditions, and especially in the religious movements of America. Some of these ideas found expression in Tolstoy’s fiction and other writings.

scholarly journals Legitimating New Religiosity in Contemporary Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-35
Author(s):  
Irina Sadovina
Keyword(s):  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Holistic Medicine ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Medical Claims ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Alternative Spirituality ◽  
And Gender

Attitudes toward alternative spirituality in Russia are shaped by legislative limitations on religious freedom, the state’s traditionalism, and Russian Orthodox anticultism. Nevertheless, public personalities associated with new religious movements persist and flourish. Oleg Torsunov, popularizer of Vedic Psychology and holistic medicine, is a striking example. Despite ongoing controversies about his religious affiliation, medical claims, and gender ideology, Torsunov continues to attract followers. This article examines why public figures such as Torsunov seem unsinkable in hostile cultural environments. Mapping the heated discursive landscape surrounding Torsunov, I argue that the secret to this resilience is a “legitimation lattice”—the strategy of grounding one’s authority in several sources of legitimacy. Torsunov’s lattice is composed of different interlocked strips: science, Indian spirituality, personal charisma, and common stereotypes. This structure increases the resilience of controversial public figures in two ways: by making their legitimation strategies flexible and by allowing them to emphasize mainstream values as needed.

Essay review: Broad-minded biologist

1993 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-310
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Essay Review ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Mentally Retarded ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Oxford University Press

Christopher Sexton, The Seeds of Time: the Life of Sir Macfarlane Burnet . Oxford University Press, 1991. Pp. 301, £19.95. ISBN 019 5532740 Those who knew Burnet only after he had become a successful and widely respected scientist will be surprised to learn from this biography that, when younger, he had been shy and diffident. There is, however, no room for doubt about this. Sexton quotes illustrative comments by others, passages from diaries, and the autobiography published in 1968. Shyness and diffidence were not familial traits: there are 15 Bumet(t)s in the DNB , and F.M. Burnet claims five Fellows of the Royal Society as collaterals. The shyness may have arisen from his mother’s preoccupation with the care of his mentally-retarded elder sister and the failure to make close contact with his father, a banker who had emigrated from Scotland to Australia in 1880. The young Burnet became an assiduous reader, with a keen interest in natural history and a special interest in beetles.

Building the Ideal

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy C. Kozakavich
Keyword(s):  
American History ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Oneida Community ◽  
Alternative Communities ◽  
Social Reform Movements ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Residential Institutions ◽  
Del Rio

This chapter introduces the terminology of studying alternative communities and interrogates the terms utopian, communal, and intentional as applicable to the subject of the book. Finding "intentional communities" to be the preferred term, the chapter provides five qualities that are shared by all groups who may be defined as such. An overview of the types of communities prevalent in American history follows, including religious movements such as the Shakers and Harmonists, social reform movements such as the Oneida Community and Brook Farm, and socialist experiments such as the Kaweah Co-operative Commonwealth and Llano del Rio Cooperative. The chapter explains why company towns, residential institutions, and temporary communities are not intentional communities and provides justification for the geographic limitations of the volume.

Alternative Religious Movements and Race in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Suzanne Clark
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
American History ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Dance Movement ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
Northern Cities

Alternative religious movements have played a significant role in American history. There is no easy definition for these types of groups; their ideas and practices vary. One clear commonality, though, is their development on the sociocultural margins. Thus, inherent in alternative religious movements is a critique of dominant culture, and this offers a powerful means of engaging issues of race in America. Other groups, however, choose to echo prevailing racial ideas as a means of making themselves mainstream. The typical narrative of American religious history is white and Protestant, and alternative religious movements have provided both criticism and approval of that story. While a close look at every alternative religious movement would be impossible, even an abbreviated exploration is revealing. During the antebellum period the question of slavery and the white supremacy that supported it prompted alternative religious movements to ask questions about equality. While many Shakers and Spiritualists recognized value in all, other groups, like the Mormons, encoded contemporary racial assumptions in their early theology. Throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, African Americans and Native Americans criticized white supremacy by offering alternative explanations of humanity’s history and destiny. The 1890s Ghost Dance movement envisioned an Indian paradise devoid of whites, and in the early 20th century black alternative movements in northern cities emphasized the religious significance of their blackness. Though these groups criticized the white supremacy surrounding them, others continued to emphasize the superiority of whiteness. In the latter part of the 20th century, many Americans associated racialized alternative religious movements, such as the Nation of Islam, the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the Peoples Temple, with fear or brainwashing. In examining how alternative religious movements engage racial assumptions, articulate racial discourse, or create religio-racial identities, a study of these movements illuminates the interplay between religion and culture in American history.

scholarly journals Tolstoy’s Text in Works of R. Akutagawa

2021 ◽  
pp. 218-230
Author(s):  
V. V. Kuryanova ◽  
N. A. Segal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Literature ◽  
Leo Tolstoy ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Personal Myth ◽  
The World ◽  
Japanese Writer

The supertext in the works of one of the most popular and mysterious Japanese writers of the early 20th century — Ryunosuke Akutagawa examined in the article. The relevance of this study is due to the fact that the problem of considering supertexts is one of the promising interdisciplinary areas of modern humanitarian knowledge. It is pointed out that in literary criticism there are quite a few works on topos texts, but very few works devoted to the nominal supertext, which is Tolstoy’s text. It is emphasized that Tolstoy’s text began to be created especially actively at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Tolstoy’s personality itself aroused interest not only in his homeland, but throughout the world. It is noted that the author’s extensive correspondence with public figures in Japan is known. It is argued that the fiction and journalistic texts of the Russian classic influenced the development of the national literature of Japan. Particular attention is paid to the issue of including in the text the personal myth of Leo Tolstoy as the basis of the Tolstoy’s text in the works of Akutagawa. It is shown that the Japanese writer refers to the story of the Yasnaya Polyana wise old man, using the episode of reconciliation between Turgenev and Tolstoy as the plot of the story “Woodcock”. In conclusion, the authors note that in their later works (“Cogwheels”, “The Life of an Idiot”) Akutagawa questions the sincerity of L. Tolstoy’s faith in God, interpreting the mythologeme “Leo Tolstoy and Religion” in an original way.

Ultrastructure of Liver in Lactosyl Ceramidosis

1971 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 312-313
Author(s):  
Z. Hruban ◽  
J. R. Esterly ◽  
G. Dawson ◽  
A. O. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Connective Tissue ◽  
Liver Biopsy ◽  
Osmium Tetroxide ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Multivesicular Bodies ◽  
Bile Canaliculi ◽  
Dense Bodies ◽  
Marginal Plates ◽  
Membranous Material ◽  
Perichromatin Granules

Samples of a surgical liver biopsy from a patient with lactosyl ceramidosis were fixed in paraformaldehyde and postfixed in osmium tetroxide. Hepatocytes (Figs. 1, 2) contained 0.4 to 2.1 μ inclusions (LCI) limited by a single membrane containing lucid matrix and short segments of curved, lamellated and circular membranous material (Fig. 3). Numerous LCI in large connective tissue cells were up to 11 μ in diameter (Fig. 2). Heterogeneous dense bodies (“lysosomes”) were few and irregularly distributed. Rough cisternae were dilated and contained smooth vesicles and surface invaginations. Close contact with mitochondria was rare. Stacks were small and rare. Vesicular rough reticulum and glycogen rosettes were abundant. Smooth vesicular reticulum was moderately abundant. Mitochondria were round with few cristae and rare matrical granules. Golgi complex was seen rarely (Fig. 1). Microbodies with marginal plates were usual. Multivesicular bodies were very rare. Neutral lipid was rare. Nucleoli were small and perichromatin granules were large. Small bile canaliculi had few microvilli (Fig. 1).

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