scholarly journals Humanitas e o Cristo de Holbein: ceticismo e fé em Machado de Assis e Dostoiévski

Numen ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina Huguenin Pereira

Humanitas é a “filosofia” concebida pelo enlouquecido personagem Quincas Borba, a qual ecoa, de forma satírica, o darwinismo social em voga no século XIX. A força cega da natureza – a própria essência de Humanitas - obscurece todo o restante, e aprisiona o sentido, ou a falta dele, à máxima: “ao vencedor as batatas.” Trata-se de conquistar as “batatas” sem lamentar o processo ou as consequências. A crítica machadina à modernidade oitocentista – ao cientificismo, ao individualismo e ao racionalismo - guarda muito pontosem comum com a de Dostoiévski, não apontando, porém, na religiosidade de maneira geral, ou no cristianismo em particular, uma alternativa viável. Neste sentido, em Machado, “o punhado de pó” mencionado por Spiéchniev a Dostoiévski diante do pelotão de fuzilamento, predomina. Em Dostoiévski há um enlace entre Cristo e o “pó”, entre o sagrado e a miséria (material e espiritual) humana, entre finitude e transcendência. Este enlace tenso encontra-se com grande força em O idiota, e na forma como a obra tematiza o CristoMorto de H. Holbein. Entre o ‘punhado de pó’, a força cega de “humanitas” agindo sobre o cadáver do “Cristo Morto”, e, por outro lado, a fé cristã, o autor russo propõe uma alternativa de redenção.Humanitas is the name of a new “philosophy” conceived by Machado de Assis´s mad character Quincas Borba, which satirizes Social Darwinism. The blind forces of nature – the very essence of Humanitas – are the foundations of a senseless worldview in which the only existing law is the survival of fittest, regardless of human suffering or the violent consequences of a continuous dispute. Machado de Assis´s criticism on 19th century modernity – concerning scientificism, individualism and rationalism - can be compared in many aspects to that developed by Dostoevsky. However, Machado de Assis does not think of religion in general or Christianity in particular as a path of redemption. In this sense, in Machado´s work prevails the “handful of dust” mentioned by Spechniev to Dostoyevsky when the Russian author was about to be executed. In Dostoyevsky´s novels there is an encounter between Christ and the “handful of dust”, between what is sacred and human misery, between finitude and transcendence. This tense encounter is very much present in the novel The Idiot which presents Holbein´s Dead Christ as one of its motives. Between the “handful of dust” or the blind force of Humanitas acting upon the dead body of Christ on one hand, and Christian faith on the other, Dostoyevsky proposes and alternative path of redemption.

Author(s):  
Thomas Carrier-Lafleur

Cet article propose d’analyser deux aspects majeurs, et pourtant méconnus, d’À la recherche du temps perdu : d’une part, celui d’« imaginaire médiatique », d’autre part, celui de « dynamique du regard ». Tous deux sont propres au XIXe siècle français, espace-temps d’inventions majeures pour notre modernité culturelle et artistique. Le texte proustien, un pied dans le XIEe siècle et l’autre dans le XXe, apparaît ainsi comme un catalyseur et comme un passeur. Le « temps retrouvé » de la Recherche, c’est aussi celui d’un XIXe siècle rendu sensible par le roman, médiatisé par l’œuvre. Le déploiement et la floraison de ces deux thématiques (la première questionnant la problématique de la mondanité et l’autre celle de l’imaginaire de l’œil et de la vision) seront relevés de façon générale dans la Recherche, puis on proposera deux études de cas ― sur le journal et sur la photographie ― qui viendront les illustrer.AbstractThis article proposes to analyze two major aspects of the novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time/Remembrance of things past), by Marcel Proust: on one hand, what is called “l’imaginaire médiatique”, on the other hand, “la dynamique du regard”. Both are specific to the 19th century in France, time and place of major inventions for our cultural and artistic modernity. The proustian novel, a foot in the 19th century and the other in the 20th, seems thus like a catalyst and a frontier runner. The “time regained” by In search of lost time is also that of the 19th century, precisely mediated by the novel. The deployment of these two sets of themes (the first questioning the problems of “mondanité” — social life, social network, social gossip and so on —, the second those of vision in a civilization of the eye) will be generally identified in the novel, after which two case studies (on newspapers and on photography) will be proposed to illustrate them.


Ars Aeterna ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-35
Author(s):  
Irina Rabinovich

Abstract In his last published novel, The Marble Faun (Hawthorne, 1974), in spite of his seeming sympathy for Miriam’s plea for friendship, Hawthorne’s narrator relates to Miriam as a “guilty” and “bloodstained” woman, who similarly to the female Jewish models portrayed in her paintings, carries misery, vice and death into the world. The narrator’s ambiguity vis-àvis Miriam’s moral fibre, on the one hand, and his infatuation with the beautiful and talented female artist, on the other, stands at the heart of the novel. The goal of this paper is mainly addressed at examining Miriam’s position in Hawthorne’s fiction, through an analysis of his treatment of his other “dark” and “light” women. Furthermore, I enquire whether Miriam is to be perceived in terms of the popular stereotypical representations of Jewish women (usually, Madonnas or whores), or whether she is granted more original and idiosyncratic characteristics. Next, I discuss Hawthorne’s treatment of Miriam’s artistic vocation, discerning her distinctiveness as a female Jewish 19th-century artist. Finally, Hawthorne’s unconventional choice of Rome as the setting for his novel unquestionably entails reference to the societal, cultural and political forces at play.


2021 ◽  
pp. 98-115
Author(s):  
Olga A. Bogdanova ◽  

The article examines the metamorphoses of the image of St. Petersburg created in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky, in the literature of the Silver age, in particular in the half-forgotten, but significant story of a major symbolist writer G.I. Chulkov “Autumn mists” (1916). It is shown that, on the one hand, Chulkov’s artistic experience is intertwined with the general trend of “rewriting the classics” for the Silver age, which was first noted by D.M. Magomedova, at the same time on the other — proved that “Autumn mists”, is primarily focused not on the “great five books” of Dostoevsky with the hero-ideologist in the center of each piece, and the synthetic image of St. Petersburg in the novel “Humiliated and offended” (1861), incorporates the positive connotations early works of the famous classics and accusatory — late, are the most complete polemical conclusion cultural dialogue with Dostoevsky at the end of the “Petersburg period” of Russian history. It is pointed out that Dostoevsky’s mythologized images were transformed into elements of symbolist and, more broadly, modernist poetics, as well as the rejection of psychologism and the reinterpretation of the writer’s historiosophical prophecies of the 19th century. Thus, “Autumn mists” is a restored link of the “Petersburg text” of Russian literature at the break of cultural and historical epochs, which, in the context of famous works on the same subject by I.F. Annensky, D.S. Merezhkovsky, A. Bely, A.A. Blok, and others of Chulkov’s contemporaries, has an indisputable value due to the many-sided meanings contained in it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 219-229
Author(s):  
Radosvet Kolarov

This article investigates the hermeneutic position of one text in relation to another one. More precisely, it is the case when one of the texts clarifies the meaning of another, amplifies the emphases of the other text, raises it to a higher power. A literary work with such explanatory intention is designated in the article with the term “semantic amplifier”. Its action is demonstrated by an analysis of two literary works of Dostoevsky: the novel “The Idiot” and the long short story “The Meek One”. The term “dissipative motif network” is introduced in order to designate a network of motifs, whose links stand significantly wide apart and refer to different narrative situations. The connections among the variants of the motifs are not obvious or graphic; they are so to speak dotted, implicit and require deciphering. In “The Idiot” the links of the motif network are such as marking oneself with a sign of the cross in front of an icon, deadly paleness, jumping, and blood. However, those are also the links of the motif chain that constitutes the suicide of the character in “The Meek One”. Nevertheless, when a reader goes through the lens of “The Idiot”, the linkage among these motifs in the long short story seems to be accelerated. What is separated in time and is indirectly connected, it becomes tightened and assembled. The dissipative motif network so to speak gathers up into one indivisible gesture in which this cause and effect merge together into one single trajectory of the jump, the end of which is the death of the character. It is as if what happens in “The Meek One” is latently set in advance in “The Idiot”. A jump from the stairs and a leaping from the roof are variants of the very important for Dostoevsky motif “threshold situation”, which is crossing the threshold in a literal and in a figurative sense; an act which marks a turning point in a plot when decisions are taken, characters go through a crisis and cross the border of incompatible events. When “The Meek One” is read in the sense of framework of “The Idiot”, the story has the function of a semantic amplifier: the jump from a low height turns into a jump from a great height; the almost unconscious ritual of bowing in front of the icon turns into jumping with an icon held in both hands, the deadly paleness understood figuratively turns into the real paleness of a dead body. Thus, in the process that is aimed at creating its artistic conception, a literary work enters into the depths of another literary work, deciphers its innermost messages, enunciates and articulates them with its own voice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (3 (462)) ◽  
pp. 115-126
Author(s):  
Anna Kołos

The article discusses, on the one hand, three stages of developing views about race and superiority of European civilization reflected in the second half of the 19th century in aggressive social-Darwinism of positivists, and on the other it confronts racial generalizations with nation-centered thinking, which played an extremely important role in identity discourse of the Poles. On the example of China and the Siberian-Chinese borderland, it can be noticed that perception of geography and the ethnic diversity in the world through the prism of great historiosophical and racial constructions is manifested in quite widespread adaptation of orientalizing language of the hegemon speaking about backwardness, lack of maturity for modernization and definite supremacy of Europe, while resistance to the oppression of the partitioners, and more broadly to the colonial policy of the European powers allows in Poland, contemptuously called Halb-Asien, like in the case of Indians and Boers, creating a kind of auto-colonial identification with the seemingly “exotic” nation.


ATAVISME ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38
Author(s):  
Christina Dewi

Max Havelaar is a literary work by Multatuli, a.k.a. E.E. Douwes Dekker. This novel is usually known as a novel with an anti-colonial image. While in the other hand, this novel never suggests to stop colonialism done by Dutch in Hindia Belanda. This research aims at revealing the relationship between colonialism's views with its innovation of narrative technique in this novel. The first analysis is trying to do a focalization on MH. The writer wants to do it because MH presents an argument about the essence of colonialism in Hindia Belanda through opinions and views from three focalizations. MH uniquely uses three focalizers and its uniqueness is shown by Stern as a narrator-fokalizer in the Lebak Episode. Although Stern is one of the characters in the novel, it gives the impression that Stern is in a neutral position. He takes place in the middle-position between the two other character-focalizers. However, since he is one of the characters in this novel, his focalization is not perfectly neutral in the manner of inviting the readers to support the attitude of Multatuli, Readers are confronted to make a choice between the war of anticolonial or procolonial interests and to support either one of the two character-fokulizers : Multatuli or Droogstoppcl. The orientalism theory has been applied to conduct focalization in the novel as the research object.. The novel characterizes Multatuli and Stern as opposing figures against the forced labor while Droogstoppcl, on the other hand, as a figure who is supporting forced labor of the coffee trade. MH strove for labors to earn proper wages so that the issue about the procedures of cultuur-stelsel has a special place in MH. Anti-colonial traits are shown by a rejection of low wages, oppression, robbery, injustice, mistreating, and discrimination. This novel is influencing the colonial hegemony of the competition of industrial products among colonized countries in Europe in the 19th century. That is why liberation values in MH restricted only to the liberation of the labor class from capitalists and people from low-classes from tyrants. This novel does not discuss political liberation


Author(s):  
Kirill A. Chekalov

The article deals with the influence of theatrical aesthetics on Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail – the famous writer of the French popular literature of the second half of the 19th century. The great connoisseur of the theatre, Viscount of Ponson du Terrail filled his novels – and first of all, an extensive cycle of works about Rocambole – with allusions to the scenic practices of his time (first and foremost, he speaks about Parisian pulp theatres) and plays that had won favour with the commonalty: "Le Chiffonnier de Paris" by Félix Pyat and "La Tour de Nesle" by Alexandre Dumas. On the other hand, performability is a paradigmatic feature of feuilleton. Viscount of Ponson du Terrail was the leading representative of this genre. Particular attention is paid to the production of the play "Rocambole" by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Ernest Blum (1864) and the transformations that the novel text underwent in the stage version.


Slovene ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-30
Author(s):  
Joshua S. Walker

This article presents a reevaluation of Andrey Stolz as more than either a “weak point” in the novel or a “plot device” and “simple foil” to Oblomov (as D. Senese represents Dobrolyubov’s position). I investigate the problematic nature of “Germanness” in the novel according to the Imagological methodology, and this allows me to explore how Andrey’s intercultural identity is mediated through a myriad of different perspectives in the novel. Andrey accesses two politically-loaded symbolic sets of the German character in mid-nineteenth-century Russian literature: as an outsider, an Other, who is a negatively-valued opposite by which the positive Russian Self can be defined; and as an aspect of the internalized German in Russian culture, where the Other functions as a symbol of the westernizing process within Russian society. Andrey’s unstable Germanness thus exposes the paradox of expressing the Russian Self in the 19th century, where the Russian is constructed in contrast to-yet also in terms of-the imagined Western Other. I therefore challenge the prevailing assumption that Andrey is meant only to be the “antidote” to Oblomov, and suggest that his character elucidates the instability of the Russian Self Image.


Author(s):  
Ririn Tasumbey

The purpose of this study is to reveal about womens’ image in England in 19th century especially the existance of women that lived during Austen’s era at the time. In analyzing this study the writer used qualitative research design which is the data collected in form of words rather than numbers. The data collected in this research are from two sources; primary and secondary. The primary source is from the novel itself and the secondary sources are from internet, and some other books. The datas are analyzed by using mimetic approach. The result of the study shows that fearness, dissapointment, unhappiness, and even arrogance are parts of life of some women at that time. They have no choice to choose a better life. England adopted Primogeniture as a basic of inherit the wealth to the children. This one is a reason why woman in society is placed lower rather than man. Man hold the authorithy in many aspects such as social, politics, and economic. However, girls were not gaining any noticeably easier access to legal rights or professional opportunities at this time. There was an over-riding assumption that men and women were different in natural capabilities. Consequently, both men and women ought to accept distinct social roles, marked out along gender lines, where women were denied equality of opportunity in areas such as education, business and action. Girls were praised for being submissive, modest, pure and domesticated. The qualities of being independently-minded, studious or talented were seldom regarded as feminine attractions. In the other hand, there was still few women who could face the problem toughly.Keywords: Woman, Late Ninetenth Century, Mimetic Approach, social roles


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-199
Author(s):  
KATHRYN WALLS

According to the ‘Individual Psychology’ of Alfred Adler (1870–1937), Freud's contemporary and rival, everyone seeks superiority. But only those who can adapt their aspirations to meet the needs of others find fulfilment. Children who are rejected or pampered are so desperate for superiority that they fail to develop social feeling, and endanger themselves and society. This article argues that Mahy's realistic novels invite Adlerian interpretation. It examines the character of Hero, the elective mute who is the narrator-protagonist of The Other Side of Silence (1995) , in terms of her experience of rejection. The novel as a whole, it is suggested, stresses the destructiveness of the neurotically driven quest for superiority. Turning to Mahy's supernatural romances, the article considers novels that might seem to resist the Adlerian template. Focusing, in particular, on the young female protagonists of The Haunting (1982) and The Changeover (1984), it points to the ways in which their magical power is utilised for the sake of others. It concludes with the suggestion that the triumph of Mahy's protagonists lies not so much in their generally celebrated ‘empowerment’, as in their transcendence of the goal of superiority for its own sake.


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