Boundaries of Art in Nabokov's The Gift: Reading as Transcendence

Slavic Review ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-625
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Blackwell
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Restricted Movement ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Russian Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Given

The author's actual creative act always proceeds along the boundaries of the aesthetic world, along the boundaries of the reality of the given, along the boundary of the body and the boundary of the spirit.—M. M. BakhtinThe spirit finds loopholes, transluscences in the world's finest texture.—V. V. Nabokov, "How I Love You"Are boundaries real? This, to a certain extent, is the central question posed by The Gift when Fyodor suggests that "definitions are always finite, but I keep straining for the faraway; I search beyond the barricades (of words, of senses, of the world) for infinity, where all, all the lines meet." Written in one of the most border-conscious eras of history (the Treaty of Versailles had just created nine new independent countries and changed the boundaries of many others), Vladimir Nabokov's last complete Russian novel addresses head-on the most pressing issues he and his fellow emigres faced. Cast beyond the edge of their homeland, the exiles were forced to accept unnaturally restricted movement within Europe as well, due to their lack of a valid nationality. So one might say that for Russian exiles of the 1920s and 1930s, boundaries constituted the single most unrelenting feature of reality.

ON THE ISSUE OF THE “ROCK POETRY WORD” IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN NOVEL. THE WORLD OF BORIS GREBENSHCHIKOV IN THE WORLD OF “DREAMS SWIMMER” BY LEV NAUMOV

2021 ◽  
pp. 96-111
Author(s):  
Yurii V. Domanskii ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Denominator ◽  
Russian Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Modern Russian

The article deals with references to the work of Boris Grebenshchikov in the “Dreams Swimmer” by Lev Naumov “The swimmer of dreams” (2021). The common denominator of the system of these references is the aesthetic character of the hero’s understanding of himself in the world and the world in relation to himself, which, if not directly leads the hero to the idea of his own chosenness, then at least is a symptom of the emergence of this idea. As a result, the system of references to the songs of “Aquarium” in Naumov’s novel makes it possible to interpret the character’s worldview as a worldview based on the aesthetic concept of understanding reality. The example of the appeal of a modern Russian novel to the “word of rock” considered in the article allows us to make sure that such an inclusion contributes to the disclosure of the specifics of the character’s worldview, and the analysis of this appeal brings one closer to a deeper understanding of the text.

Gertrude Stein and the Politics of Literary Genius

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Colesworthy
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Gertrude Stein ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
Money Economy ◽  
The World ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter examines a range of Gertrude Stein’s texts from the 1930s and her 1940 Ida A Novel to argue that her late-career work presupposes an opposition between art and politics and that the latter corresponds to an opposition between gifts and exchanges. For Stein, the world of art is a gift economy, while politics is rooted in the money economy. Thus, unlike the other authors here, she reinforces the separations at which Mauss took aim. And yet, like them, she suggests that these separations do not hold, particularly in the wake of the apparent generosity of the New Deal. Drawing on analyses of the aesthetic properties of money, the chapter sheds further light on Stein’s conservative politics, while also making the case for her status as a thinker of not just the gift but also money, and for the inseparability of these two lines of thought in her work.

History as Chiasm, Chiasm as History

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Alan Busk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The Body ◽  
The World ◽  
The Given

This paper connects Merleau-Ponty’s conception of chiasm with his philosophy of history. I argue that history gives us an exemplary form of a chiastic relation and that Merleau-Ponty presages his later ontology of flesh when he investigates the paradox of thinking history. In brief, the paradox is this: history takes on significance only in light of a given reflection on it (just as the world is disclosed only by means of a given body). At the same time, “the given reflection” is overlaid and shot through with historical meaning and is nothing but the result of a historical inheritance (just as the body is bound up with the world and is nothing apart from it). I claim that, for Merleau-Ponty, to think history is to think that which is external to oneself and that which one is, in a deferred simultaneity or “circularity” that can be called chiastic.

“Outer” and “Inner” Body in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Literary Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 14-15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Géza S. Horváth
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Act And Being

Bakhtin subordinates the experience of the body to the experience of the action, to the participation in the event of being. The world's thickening into body around the man is named as a new reality, an “aesthetic reality” by Bakhtin: “the artist and art as a whole create a completely new vision of the world, a new image of the world, a new reality of the world’s mortal flesh [реальность смертной плоти мира], unknown to any of the other clturally creative activities. [. . .] Aesthetic activity collects the world scattered in meaning and condenses it into a finished and self-contained image [образ]. This constitutes the analogy of the body and the artistic form for the creative view. The aesthetic activity gathers and thickens into a complete, sufficient- for-itself image the world dispersed from the perspective of the sense. The problem of the outer and inner body is treated in this paper in the light of Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and being.

scholarly journals “Like Stitches to a Wound”: Fashioning Taste in and Through Garment Mending Practices

2021 ◽  
pp. 089124162110120
Author(s):  
Marium Durrani
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Fast Fashion ◽  
The World ◽  
Dress Practices ◽  
The Given ◽  
Over Time

This article immerses the reader into the world of garment mending in communal repair events in four cities— Helsinki, Auckland, Wellington, and Edinburgh—to explore mending as a locus of taste. It engages in the discussion on taste as a reflexive activity and a sensed effect that gradually reveals itself to the practitioners engaged in the practice of mending. Here the focus is on the role of the body and the interplay between the sensing body and materials, to show how everyday menders construct a taste for and toward their practice over time. As menders actively engage with and appropriate the given design of their garments, they defy mainstream wasteful fast-fashion practices and mobilize variations in dress practices while connecting with the matter that makes up their clothing . By engaging with the notion of taste in this way, the overall aim of this article is to clarify how everyday menders become able to form an alliance with their practice, ultimately converting mending into an object of passion.

scholarly journals Traumatic influence of the attitude towards one’s own gender as a factor in the development of eating disorders

2021 ◽  
Vol 273 ◽  
pp. 10046
Author(s):  
Aleksandr Tsapenko
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorders ◽  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Statistical Method ◽  
Adolescent Girls ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
The Body ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
The World ◽  
The Given

At present, the amount of people suffering from various types of eating disorders is steadily increasing all over the world. A large proportion is occupied by people with manifestations of anorexia. Primarily this disorder affects female representatives at the age of 13-20 years. Taking into account the severity of the consequences that anorexia leads to, cases of death are increasingly being recorded, including adolescents. That’s why the question of providing effective assistance to such patients is especially relevant. However, without establishing the true causes, the results achieved during the treatment may be only short-term. In this connection, the author made an attempt to look at the problem more deeply. Thus, the article is devoted to the consideration of the causes of anorexia of adolescent girls, lying in the field of the unconscious, in particular, in a deep psychological trauma received in childhood. According to the author, the reasons of this trauma are the perception as a humiliation of the manifestations of the brother’s admiration or friends’ son from the girl’s parents, as opposed to the lack of attention, warmth and care towards her. The arising misunderstanding of the reason for such a different attitude contributes to the formation of a girl’s confidence that it is better to be a boy and, as a result, an unwillingness to be a woman. This, in turn, leads to anorexic behavior, as anorexia can inhibit the transformation of the body into a woman. The given assessment was confirmed in a conducted study among 128 girls aged 13-18 years with various eating disorders, including 46 with manifestations of anorexia nervosa. The substantiation of the hypothesis put forward at the beginning of the study was checked by means of a statistical method - the Fisher-φ test.

Nocion de Simbolismo en Merleau-Ponty

1998 ◽  
pp. 70-75
Author(s):  
Graciela Ralon de Walton
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Society ◽  
The Body ◽  
Language Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Formations ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The problem of the relationship between natural and conventional symbolism shows Merleau-Ponty's concern with maintaining an 'organic link between perception and intellection.' For the body affords in itself and in its relation with the world the model on which the interpretation of symbolism is grounded. This paper develops the view that the architectonic of the body implies a silent structure which is the condition for expressive operations. The body is the 'primal expression,' and this means that it is so organized that it brings forth an institution (Stiftung) of meaning. As regards conventional symbolism, Merleau-Ponty turns aside from an intellectual interpretation by contending that the attempt to find in categoreal activity a common fundamental moment must not overlook the fact that meaningful structures cannot be separated from the materials which embody them because 'matter is pregnant with form.' This view opens up the possibility of considering the cultural formations which emerge in the relationship between persons in language, knowledge, society and history as a reprise of the aesthetic logos in a different architectonic.

scholarly journals ação de desenhar na infância como iniciação aos segredos do mundo

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (36) ◽  
pp. 01-27
Author(s):  
Sandra Regina simonis Richter ◽  
Márcia Vilma Murillo
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Intimate Relationship ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Vital Function ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Educational Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Poetic Imagination ◽  
The Aesthetic

In order to highlight the intimate relationship between imagining, drawing and making worlds, this essay questions the educational meaning of children to initiate in the action of drawing in face of the growing cultural tendency of the body being less and less required to produce senses. The incarnated action of drawing, as an aesthetic action of touching and being touched by the world when transposing the visible limits and entering into the intimacy of worldly invisibility, constitutes an experience that is as recurrent and trivialized in school daily life as it is existentially complex due to its poetic power to enter the invisible and inaugurate worldviews. The historical disqualification of the image and imagination in Western thought, supported by the separation between subjectivity of the body and objectivity of the world, does not allow educational thought to consider the phenomenon of poetic imagination as an existential experience of language insertion in the world from the gesture of drawing. Gesture that finds its specificity in the instant the hand traces and inscribes lines on the surface of the supports as infinitely creative writing. The aesthetic gesture of drawing, temporalized by the rhythm of the body in the emergence of the fabulation that accompanies the repetition of the marks, implies a poetic experience of language that involves the fusion of two senses: that of the gesture in materiality and that of the mark configured in it, marked and cicatrized in the surface of the support by the body’s action that performed it. The approximation between education, arts and childhood allows us to highlight the philosophical and pedagogical tensions that involve the question of poetic imagination and to take another look at the action of drawing in the context of children's education. What emerges, from the dialogue between Gaston Bachelard, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Luc Nancy, is the relevance of the educational intention of caring for the vital function of language as an aesthetic and poetic experience that is constituted in the processuality of the body to make something appear that produces and contains presence, that which promotes and expands the existential density of the real.

scholarly journals Author: personal – social – eternal (interpretive field of «Diary» by V. Vynnychenko)

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Xxth Century ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Process ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Semantic Proximity ◽  
The Given ◽  
Relevant Material

The diary papers of V. Vynnychenko (1911—1925) as a special interpretive field for studying the author’s world-view aesthetics and his creative intentions are analyzed. The text of the diary is systematized, based on the relevant material: the author’s thoughts on the nature of creativity as a special way of comprehending the world and a person in it; creativity as a manifestation of a person’s specific mental organization; creativity as an opportunity for self-manifestation in the present/future dyad; etc. The degree of correlation of conditions and possibilities to create, which were important for V. Vynnychenko as a politician while the fundamental changes at the beginning of the XXth century in Ukraine took place are also noticed in the article. The author’s issues given in the diary are considered in the aesthetic context of the literary process at the turn of the XIX-XXth centuries, when cardinal changes took place under the influence of interpretative changes of the world picture in philosophy and culture in general are represented in the given work. In addition, attention was paid to the concept of «creative act» and its understanding by V. Vynnychenko as a staged phenomenon: the plan, the stages of its realization, the role of intuition, fiction, fantasy in the creation of the another reality. The author’s interpretation of the author’s phenomenon taking into account to the interaction of the concepts of «endowment», «talent» and «genius» is given and commented. The emphasis is placed on V. Vynnychenko’s diary thoughts about the latest trends in Ukrainian literature of the early XXth century: homocentration, modernism as an art system renovation of the genre and poetic paradigm. To sum up, this allowed to understand the creative laboratory of the author more deeply and earnestly. The diary material is directed to the artistic creation of V. Vynnychenko - the play «The black Panther and the White Bear» for their semantic proximity: the process of creativity, psychological, aesthetic dominant of creativity, symbolism, artist’s essence researches. The perspective of the proposed direction of studying mnemonic and literary material is grounded, which allows the use of an interdisciplinary methodology for understanding aesthetic phenomena.

“Outer” and “Inner” Body in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Literary Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 14-15 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-154
Author(s):  
Géza S. Horváth
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
New Vision ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Act And Being

Bakhtin subordinates the experience of the body to the experience of the action, to the participation in the event of being. The world's thickening into body around the man is named as a new reality, an “aesthetic reality” by Bakhtin: “the artist and art as a whole create a completely new vision of the world, a new image of the world, a new reality of the world’s mortal flesh [реальность смертной плоти мира], unknown to any of the other clturally creative activities. [. . .] Aesthetic activity collects the world scattered in meaning and condenses it into a finished and self-contained image [образ]. This constitutes the analogy of the body and the artistic form for the creative view. The aesthetic activity gathers and thickens into a complete, sufficient- for-itself image the world dispersed from the perspective of the sense. The problem of the outer and inner body is treated in this paper in the light of Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and being.

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