SAMUEL BECKETT’S GERMAN INCLINATION

Author(s):  
Olga V. Zatonskaya ◽  

The article’s topic is formation of the artistic world of S. Beckett. Along with such factors of the “education” of the Irish writer as the world of the ideas and novels of D. Joyce, as a close acquaintance with traditions of the French drama and poetics of the “absurd” that he himself formed, the influence of the German culture and literature was an important aspect of his becoming a writer. German literature inspired Beckett by phenomena of the everyday culture, language, and the works and philosophical ideas of such thinkers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hölderlin. From them S. Beckett perceived and artistically reflected in his work an idea of a tragic solitude of an artist, his being misunderstood in love, an ironic distance in regard to the very idea of tragedy and the idea of a “superman” as the final stage in the formation of a “true” person. In the German language, Beckett often borrowed both the colloquial racy vocabulary and the structural organization of his works. The author believes that Beckett’s interest in intellectually close Schopenhauer and Nietzsche lead him to the theme of antiquity, inseparable from German culture. That is why one can see their common views on such fundamental concepts of existence as the cyclicality and inanition, death of God, solitude.

Author(s):  
Marcel Reich-Ranicki

This part details the author's childhood, when he attended a Protestant, German-language, primary school. In spite of her origin, his mother did not want to know anything about religion and had little interest in things Jewish. His father, on the other hand, remained closely linked to Judaism. In 1929, when the author was nine years old and about to move from the Polish city of Wloclawek, one of his favorite teachers told him that he was going to travel into the land of culture. He did soak up German culture in Berlin and did develop a great love affair with German literature. But as an 'alien Jew', the Nazis compelled him and his family to return to Poland.


2019 ◽  
pp. 144-149
Author(s):  
Olha Zlotnik-Shagina

The article deals with the system of views of the famous researcher of German and Slavs literature L. Rudnitsky. The author conducts studies with a focus on neo-views of authoritative international scholars in the context of comparative literature, with an examination of monographic studies of Rudnitsky on Ivan Franko’s work – the famous Ukrainian critic, ethnographer, literary critic, man of letters. L. Rudnitsky’s focus is on Franko as on the translator and popularizer of the works of German and Western literature, in particular, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, etc. The author pays special attention to the contact- genetic and comparative-typological relations with the German language and literature. The contextual links of language and literature with the art of that time, which is considered in the context of the world cultural space are also described. In Rudnitsky’s monographs Ivan Franko and the German-speaking world: the importance of the environment for the poet’s creativity and the German language and literature in the works of Ivan Franko, the concept of the research space of the French translator at that time is observed. In confirmation of the importance of Rudnitsky’s work, the author uses the views of diaspora literary critics, such as I. Denisyuk, I. Kachurovsky, etc., who noted the work as a significant contribution and breakthrough in the study of the work of the outstanding Ukrainian artist I. Franko in the context of his translation activities. Through citational intertextuality, the author proves the contribution of Rudnitsky in the analysis of the works of Franco in a new generally-European perspective. The author emphasizes the deep meaningfulness of L. Rudnitsky’s translations conducted by I. Franko from the oldest German written notes, emphasizes the skill of the Camener in the transfer of the features of the old German language. We also see a comparative aspect in literary studies, which is dominant in our approach to the study of Franco’s translation activity. Valuable in research observations of L. Rudnitsky about Franco as a translator and popularizer of the works of German literature is his desire to expand the “German-speaking world”, which is confirmed by our in-depth analysis of the works of Rudnitsky and authoritative reviews on them. It is proved that for many years there was created an original concept of the study of German literature through the works of L. Rudnitsky – American talented literary critic of Ukrainian origin.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Trish McTighe

In an era of public consciousness about gendered inequalities in the world of work, as well as recent revelations of sexual harassment and abuse in theatre and film production, Beckett's Catastrophe (1982) bears striking resonances. This article will suggest that, through the figure of its Assistant, the play stages the gendered nature of the labour of making art, and, in her actions, shows the kind of complicit disgust familiar to many who work in the entertainment industry, especially women. In unpacking this idea, I conceptualise the distinction between the everyday and ‘the event’, as in, between modes of quotidian labour and the attention-grabbing moment of art, between the invisible foundations of representation and the spectacle of that representation. It is my thesis that this play stages exactly this tension and that deploying a discourse of maintenance art allows the play to be read in the context of the labour of theatre-making. Highlighting the Assistant's labour becomes a way of making visible the structures of authority that are invested in maintaining gender boundaries and showing how art is too often complicit in the maintenance of social hierarchies.


Author(s):  
Mariya Stoilova ◽  
Sonia Livingstone ◽  
Giovanna Mascheroni

Mobile devices play a growing role in the everyday lives of children around the world, prompting important questions about their effects on childhood experiences. Exploring the recent global trends in children’s use of smartphone devices, the authors examine the reconfiguring of children’s communicative practices and cultures of connectivity, documenting the opportunities and risks that smartphone technology affords. Throughout the chapter the authors challenge the notion of “digital childhoods,” drawing on the most reliable research on children and smartphones including findings from Global Kids Online, which suggest that digital divides intersect with existing social inequalities, exacerbating the barriers for less privileged children. This raises further questions about the long-term consequences for children’s development, rights, and future access to opportunities and resources.


Author(s):  
Carol Mei Barker

“In China, what makes an image true is that it is good for people to see it.” - Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1971 The Olympic Games gave the world an opportunity to read Beijing’s powerful image-text following thirty years of rapid transformation. David Harvey argues that this transformation has turned Beijing from “a closed backwater, to an open centre of capitalist dynamism.” However, in the creation of this image-text, another subtler and altogether very different image-text has been deliberately erased from the public gaze. This more concealed image-text offers a significant counter narrative on the city’s public image and criticises the simulacrum constructed for the 2008 Olympics, both implicitly and explicitly. It is the ‘everyday’ image-text of a disappearing city still in the process of being bulldozed to make way for the neoliberal world’s next megalopolis. It exists most prominently as a filmic image text; in film documentaries about a ‘real’ hidden Beijing just below the surface of the government sponsored ‘optical artefact.’ Film has thus become a key medium through which to understand and preserve a physical city on the verge of erasure.


Author(s):  
Marcel Reich-Ranicki

The author of this book was born into a Jewish family in Poland in 1920, and he moved to Berlin as a boy. There he discovered his passion for literature and began a complex affair with German culture. In 1938, his family was deported back to Poland, where German occupation forced him into the Warsaw Ghetto. As a member of the Jewish resistance, a translator for the Jewish Council, and a man who personally experienced the ghetto's inhumane conditions, the author gained both a bird's-eye and ground-level view of Nazi barbarism. His account of this episode is among the most compelling and dramatic ever recorded. He escaped with his wife and spent two years hiding in the cellar of Polish peasants. After liberation, he joined and then fell out with the Communist Party and was temporarily imprisoned. He began writing and soon became Poland's foremost critical commentator on German literature. When he returned to Germany in 1958, his rise was meteoric. He claimed national celebrity and notoriety as the head of the literary section of the leading newspaper and host of his own television program. He frequently flabbergasted viewers with his bold pronouncements and flexed his power to make or break a writer's career. This, together with his keen critical instincts, makes his memoir an indispensable guide to contemporary German culture as well as an absorbing eyewitness history of some of the twentieth century's most important events.


2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic

How do we identify and understand transformative agency in the quotidian that is not contained in formal, or even informal structures? This article investigates the ordinary agency of Palestinian inhabitants in the violent context of the divided city of Jerusalem. Through a close reading of three ethnographic moments I identify creative micropractices of negotiating the separation barrier that slices through the city. To conduct this analytical work I propose a conceptual grid of place, body and story through which the everyday can be grasped, accessed and understood. ‘Place’ encompasses the understanding that the everyday is always located and grounded in materiality; ‘body’ takes into account the embodied experience of subjects moving through this place; and ‘story’ refers to the narrative work conducted by human beings in order to make sense of our place in the world. I argue that people can engage in actions that function both as coping mechanisms (and may even support the upholding of status quo), and as moments of formulating and enacting agential projects with a more or less intentional transformative purpose. This insight is key to understanding the generative capacity of everyday agency and its importance for the macropolitics of peace and conflict.


Antiquity ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (290) ◽  
pp. 825-836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Crossland

The landscapes of the central highlands of Madagascar are inhabited by the spirits of the dead as well as by the living. The ancestors are a forceful presence in the everyday world, and the archaeology of the central highlands is intimately entwined with them. This is made manifest both in the on-the-ground experiences encountered during fieldwork, and in archaeological narratives, such as the one presented here. Tombs are a traditional focus of archaeological research, and those that dot the hills of the central highlands are part of a network of beliefs and practices which engage with the landscape as a whole and through which social identity is constructed and maintained. In the central highlands, and indeed elsewhere in Madagascar, there is an intimate relationship between peoples’ understandings of their social and physical location in the world and their understanding of their relationship to the dead.


Temida ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic ◽  
Marina Kovacevic-Lepojevic

In the last two decades stalking phenomenon is recognized and actualized in the world in professional, scientific circles, in media and the everyday talk. Recently, stalking is identified as specific and complex problem studied separately from domestic violence, workplace abuse, sexual harassment, threats, following, homicide, voyeurism and the other phenomenon to which stalking may or not be related. This paper is aimed to determine the notion of stalking and its relationship with similar phenomena, to review the research about the prevalence and nature of stalking, as well as to review the measures for its prevention, supporting victims and prosecution of offenders. Finally, the paper intend to contribute toward initiation of research and legal reforms regarding stalking victimisation in Serbia.


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