scholarly journals Diary as a Mystification of Reality in Vladimir Sharov’s Novels

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
Irina V. Ashcheulova ◽  

In Vladimir Sharov’s novels, the text structure of the narrative is of crucial importance. The text structures of Sharov’s novels are diverse: letters, diaries, archives, notes, treatises, dissertations, etc. Sharov consciously chooses the diary as a form of narration, as a stylisation of the document of one’s personal presence in history. The diary allows Sharov to reveal the characters’ psychology, to identify their attitude to reality, its perception, and image. The article analyses the form of the diary in the novels The Rehearsals (1992), The Old Girl (1998), Raising Lazarus (2003). In The Rehearsals, the diary of Jacques de Sertan, a French director and actor brought to Russia by the will of fate, becomes the key form of the narration. For several years (1660s), Sertan describes the plot of the rehearsals of a religious mystery about the life of Christ staged under the patronage of Patriarch Nikon. The meaning of the diary at the level of the author’s consciousness is to establish the laws of historical mystery. The author comes to the idea that the idea (political, theocratic, utopian) influences the historical process. Service to the idea and fascination with it entail a desire to change, remake reality. This is how, according to Sharov, the endless revolutions of Russian history arise leading to national divisions, opposition of one part of the people against another. The algorithm of Russian history is extremely clear: repeated splits lead to absurd dead ends. The narration in The Old Girl is connected with the comprehension of the most important event in Russian history for Sharov’s authorial historiosophy: the Revolution of 1917 and the political repressions of the 1930s. The basis of the narration is texts of different statuses that the author imitated: first of all, the diary of the main character Vera Radostina. The diary here is a personal document of one’s own life and a document of the historical era of the 1920s and 1930s. This is the narrative function of Vera Radostina’s diary, stories about the revolution, its role, its meaning for a person and for contemporaries. The author’s modeling of the diary of a character such as Vera is associated with the perception of the role of a person in the historical process of the 1920s and 1930s. Vera turns out to be identical with the epoch. She is fascinated by the grandeur and phenomenality of what is happening. She understands that the revolution should be involved in the general historical flow, that it is necessary to “enter the revolution into the history of Russia”. From the point of view of the author’s consciousness, with a common historical pattern, the revolution turns out to be a catastrophe in the national historical process. In Raising Lazarus, the diary performs three functions. At the plot level, it logically ends the search for the missing manuscripts. At the level of the consciousness of Nikolai Kulbarsov, the author of the diary, it “documents his identity”, confirming the continuity of his self. At the level of the author’s consciousness, the diary becomes a fact of the resurrection of the individual in the abyss of history.

Author(s):  
I. V. Ashcheulova

The article examines the historical communication between two writers – Leonid Leonov («The Pyramid») and V. Sharov («Rehearsals», «Before and During», «Raising Lazarus», «Be like children»). The analysis featured the central artistic images and motifs of their novels, namely the Russian revolution and the people. According to the hypothesis, there are points of convergence between their historiosophical concepts. The Russian history, the way it was presented in their novels, was subjected to a multidimensional analysis, which revealed its catastrophism and eschatology. The revolution was largely demythologized by both Leonov and Sharov: they did not see it as an event that opened the possibility of creating a new world (paradise on earth) and a new man. So was the image of a God-bearing people who lost faith in the pursuit of social miracles. Both writers saw the revolution as the central historiosophical image of all Russian history. Both authors stressed the catastrophic and eschatological effect the revolution had for the foundations of Russian life, traditions, and Existence. Both authors used the symbolism of fire devouring Russia, its people, and every individual. In their novels, the revolution was an abyss which devoured millions of people and the  country itself. L. Leonov followed the theory of cyclical nature of Russian history; for him, the phenomenological essence of the revolution was a strange  and terrible delusion that captured the country and its people. V. Sharov was trying to prove the usual, repeatable character of revolution in Russian history: the cyclical nature of history was obvious to the writer. Sharov’s artistic strategy was to reproduce the individual word as a reaction to the revolution, words as expressions of attitudes towards reality, the metaphysical world, and God. History, according to Sharov, retains the traces of individual presence: it has a memory of i ts own. 


2021 ◽  
pp. 24-33
Author(s):  
V. V. Chernykh ◽  

The chronicles are undoubtedly the most important source for studying Ancient Rus as a whole, as well as its regions, both in the initial period of the formation of statehood and that of centralized state with its established institutions. The empirical base of the research is sources, which may be divided into several groups: chronicles, normative legal acts, scholarship that allows us to record changes in historical process. The methodological basis of the research is general dialectical method, which makes it possible to track effective methods and forms of chronicle development, and method of hermeneutics (scholarship on understanding and interpretation of texts and phenomena, the original meaning of which has become unclear due to antiquity or ambiguity of interpretation). The chronicles were written even in the 19th century, and thus it is of interest to conduct a comparative analysis of the early chronicles and those of the later periods in order to trace their transformations and changing methods over a considerable period of time; to assess how the narrative changed; to identify, if possible, who stood behind the chronicles both of early and later period; to study how the political situation changed; to assess how independent and objective the chroniclers were. The article is to pay tribute to the people who gave us this legacy of historical memory and knowledge of our ancestors and laid the foundation for continuity of national history in all its diversity. No other source provides such diverse, valuable, and often surprising information that allows researchers in various fields of knowledge to write histories of their disciplines. In the aggregate it can provide an image of the nation and follow the historical process in all its diversity, while identifying features of different periods. Therefore, addressing the history of chronicling is to remain an important component in studying Russian history for quite a long time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Egor A. Yesyunin

The article is devoted to the satirical agitation ABCs that appeared during the Civil War, which have never previously been identified by researchers as a separate type of agitation art. The ABCs, which used to have the narrow purpose of teaching children to read and write before, became a form of agitation art in the hands of artists and writers. This was facilitated by the fact that ABCs, in contrast to primers, are less loaded with educational material and, accordingly, they have more space for illustrations. The article presents the development history of the agitation ABCs, focusing in detail on four of them: V.V. Mayakovsky’s “Soviet ABC”, D.S. Moor’s “Red Army Soldier’s ABC”, A.I. Strakhov’s “ABC of the Revolution”, and M.M. Cheremnykh’s “Anti-Religious ABC”. There is also briefly considered “Our ABC”: the “TASS Posters” created by various artists during the Second World War. The article highlights the special significance of V.V. Mayakovsky’s first agitation ABC, which later became a reference point for many artists. The authors of the first satirical ABCs of the Civil War period consciously used the traditional form of popular prints, as well as ditties and sayings, in order to create images close to the people. The article focuses on the iconographic connections between the ABCs and posters in the works of D.S. Moor and M.M. Cheremnykh, who transferred their solutions from the posters to the ABCs.


Author(s):  
Dr.Prachyakorn Chaiyakot ◽  
Wachara Chaiyakhet ◽  
Dr.Woraluck Lalitsasivimol ◽  
Dr.Siriluck Thongpoon

Songkhla Lake Basin has a long history of at least 6,000 years and has a wide variety of tourism resources including nature, history, beliefs, culture and various traditions of the local people. It covers 3 provinces, the whole area of Phatthalung, 12 districts of Songkhla and 2 districts of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. It has an area of approximately 8,727 square kilometers. There are many tourist attractions because the basin has a long history through different eras, natural, historic, ancient sites, and the culture of the local people. In 2018, both Thai and foreign tourists visited Songkhla and Phatthalung, which is the main area of Songkhla Lake Basin. The total number of tourists that came was 7,628,813 and 1,641,841 and an income of 68,252.64 and 3,470.96 million baht was generated from each province, respectively (Ministry of Tourism and Sports, 2020). Although Songkhla Lake Basin has various tourist attractions, the promotion of tourism with the involvement of government agencies in the past mainly focused on promoting tourism along with the tourist attractions rather than encouraging tourists to experience and learn the culture of the people living in the area; the culture that reflects the uniqueness of the people in the south. This study, therefore, aims to find creative tourism activities in SLB in order to increase the value of tourism resources, create tourism activities that are aligned with the resources available in the community and increase the number of tourists in the area. Data for this study were collected using a secondary source of data collection method. It was done through a literature review of related documents, texts, magazines, and research which focus on Songkhla Lake Basin as a guideline for designing tourism activities. The field survey was done through twelve community-based tourism sites in SLB to find creative tourism activities. Data on each activity were collected in detail by interviewing the tourism community leaders and the local people. Content analysis was used to describe the individual open-ended questions by focusing on the important issues and the information obtained was presented as a narrative. Keywords: Songkhla Lake Basin, Creative Tourism, Local Wisdom


1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fida Mohammad

In this article I shall compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun’s ideas aboutsociohistorical change with those of Hegel, Marx, and Durkheim. I willdiscuss and elaborate Ibn Khaldun’s major ideas about historical andsocial change and compare them with three important figures of modemWestern sociology and philosophy.On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in thefourteenth century and did not have the privilege of witnessing the socialdislocation created by the industrial revolution. It is also very difficult tocategorize Ibn Khaldun within a single philosophical tradition. He is arationalist as well as an empiricist, a historicist as well as a believer inhuman agency in the historical process. One can see many “modem”themes in his thinking, although he lived a hundred years beforeMachiavelli.Lauer, who considers Ibn Khaldun the pioneer of modem sociologicalthought, has summarized the main points of his philosophy.’ In his interpretationof Ibn Khaldun, he notes that historical processes follow a regularpattern. However, whereas this pattern shows sufficient regularity, itis not as rigid as it is in the natural world. In this regard the position ofIbn Khaldun is radically different from those philosophies of history thatposit an immutable course of history determined by the will of divineprovidence or other forces. Ibn Khaldun believes that the individual isneither a completely passive recipient nor a full agent of the historicalprocess. Social laws can be discovered through observation and datagathering, and this empirical grounding of social knowledge represents adeparture from traditional rational and metaphysical thinking ...


Author(s):  
Stephan Atzert

This chapter explores the gradual emergence of the notion of the unconscious as it pertains to the tradition that runs from Arthur Schopenhauer via Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer to Sabina Spielrein, C. G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud. A particular focus is put on the popularization of the term “unconscious” by von Hartmann and on the history of the death drive, which has Schopenhauer’s essay “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual” as one of its precursors. In this essay, Schopenhauer develops speculatively the notion of a universal, intelligent, supraindividual unconscious—an unconscious with a purpose related to death. But the death drive also owes its origins to Schopenhauer’s “relative nothingness,” which Mainländer adopts into his philosophy as “absolute nothingness” resulting from the “will to death.” His philosophy emphasizes death as the goal of the world and its inhabitants. This central idea had a distinctive influence on the formation of the idea of the death drive, which features in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.


Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.


Der Staat ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-396
Author(s):  
Shu-Perng Hwang

Angesichts des markanten Aufstiegs des Rechtspopulismus in den vergangenen Jahren drängt sich die Frage immer wieder auf, ob oder inwiefern das Parlament den eigentlichen Volkswillen (noch) vertreten kann, und wie im Zeitalter der Globalisierung und Digitalisierung der eigentliche Volkswille überhaupt festzustellen und effektiv durchzusetzen ist. In dieser Hinsicht steht das Vertrauen in die Fähigkeit des Parlaments, den wahren Volkswillen herauszubilden und zu artikulieren, erneut vor großen Herausforderungen. Durch eine vergleichende Analyse zwischen den Demokratietheorien Böckenfördes und Kelsens zeigt der vorliegende Beitrag, weshalb und inwiefern das weitverbreitete Verständnis des Volkswillens und dessen Rolle in der parlamentarischen Demokratie gerade vor dem heutigen Hintergrund eine kritische Besinnung verdient. Es wird argumentiert, dass gerade in demokratischer Hinsicht nicht die Suche nach dem „wahren Volkswillen“, sondern nach wie vor die Gewährleistung der Menschen- bzw. Grundrechte der Einzelnen und insbesondere der Minderheiten von zentraler Bedeutung sein soll. In view of the spread of right-wing populism in recent years, the question as to how the will of the people is to be ascertained and expressed has attracted much attention in constitutional scholarship. In particular, the issue of whether or to what extent the parliament is (still) capable of representing and demonstrating the will of the people has been repeatedly discussed and debated. Through a comparative analysis of Böckenförde’s und Kelsen’s democratic theories, this article critically examines the problems of the widespread understanding of the will of the people as a real-empirical existence and its significance for the realization of democracy. Accordingly, it points out why and in what sense the reference to the so-called real will of the people would undermine rather than promote democracy. This article concludes by arguing that, precisely for the sake of democracy, what is crucial is not to determine what the “real will of the people” is, but rather to guarantee the freedom of the individual and especially of the minorities.


Author(s):  
Brianne H. Roos ◽  
Carey C. Borkoski

Purpose The purpose of this review article is to examine the well-being of faculty in higher education. Success in academia depends on productivity in research, teaching, and service to the university, and the workload model that excludes attention to the welfare of faculty members themselves contributes to stress and burnout. Importantly, student success and well-being is influenced largely by their faculty members, whose ability to inspire and lead depends on their own well-being. This review article underscores the importance of attending to the well-being of the people behind the productivity in higher education. Method This study is a narrative review of the literature about faculty well-being in higher education. The history of well-being in the workplace and academia, concepts of stress and well-being in higher education faculty, and evidence-based strategies to promote and cultivate faculty well-being were explored in the literature using electronic sources. Conclusions Faculty feel overburdened and pressured to work constantly to meet the demands of academia, and they strive for work–life balance. Faculty report stress and burnout related to excessively high expectations, financial pressures to obtain research funding, limited time to manage their workload, and a belief that individual progress is never sufficient. Faculty well-being is important for the individual and in support of scholarship and student outcomes. This article concludes with strategies to improve faculty well-being that incorporate an intentional focus on faculty members themselves, prioritize a community of well-being, and implement continuous high-quality professional learning.


Author(s):  
Markus Saur

In this article, the historical localization of Hebrew Bible Wisdom Literature is discussed firstly with regard to the literary development of the books of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. By examining these books one can make several observations that help to reconstruct the history not only of the individual books, but also the history of Wisdom Literature as a whole. Wisdom Literature is understood in this context as the result of a process of discussion, interaction, and interdependence, and thus the documentation of a broader discourse surrounding Wisdom topics. This discourse is reflected in the whole of Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible. From this point of view, the differentiation between the Wisdom books and some other Wisdom texts, such as the Wisdom Psalms or the book of Ben Sira, is finally placed within an era overview, and thus a short history of Wisdom Literature is presented.


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