scholarly journals Symbolics of the book and the space of cultural memory in the «final book» of Boris Pasternak “Doctor Zhivago”

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-147
Author(s):  
Elena M. Bondarchuk

This article examines one of the symbolic components of the «objective world» of the novel about the writer – the image of the «book». It is noted that its use in the poetics of «Doctor Zhivago» is multifunctional. In addition to the characteristics of the artistic space, the «book» acts as a «finished object» that implements «universal and all-encompassing semantic segments» in the plot associated with cultural memory, the integrity of life and the world order. Special attention is paid to the content of the genre designation of «final book», which is applied to a number of «polymorphic» novels of the late 19th – 20th centuries and is considered in the context of «genre generalisations» in literature. The meaning of lexical components used within this genre designation is clarified. The occasional meaning «target», contained in the word «final», allows one to see in the intense self-reflection of the writer, which has a significant impact on the creative process, aspiration to cognise the «hidden essence» of things. The appeal to the goals inherent in the «ontological construction» of beings is defined in the philosophical tradition as «phenomenological reduction» (EGA Husserl), «transcending the spirit beyond its limits» (RM Garrigou-Lagrange). These processes are responsible for the retardation of the phase of the formation of the concept of the work – a phenomenon that has not yet been fully explained.

Volume Nine of this series traces the development of the ‘world novel’, that is, English-language novels written throughout the world, beyond Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Focusing on the period up to 1950, the volume contains survey chapters and chapters on major writers, as well as chapters on book history, publishing, and the critical contexts of the work discussed. The text covers periods from renaissance literary imaginings of exotic parts of the world like Oceania, through fiction embodying the ideology and conventions of empire, to the emergence of settler nationalist and Indigenous movements and, finally, the assimilations of modernism at the beginnings of the post-imperial world order. The book, then, contains chapters on the development of the non-metropolitan novel throughout the British world from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. This is the period of empire and resistance to empire, of settler confidence giving way to doubt, and of the rise of indigenous and post-colonial nationalisms that would shape the world after World War II.


Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 78-88
Author(s):  
Tatyana Yuryevna Kolyagina

The subject of this article is the problem of identity of the characters in the novel “In Search of the Primordial Land” by the regional Khanty writer Eremey Aipin. The goal is to describe the key vectors of reflections of the main characters on personal and national identity. The author aims to analyze the path of spiritual and social becoming, as well as finding true identity in the world and society of the protagonists of the novel — “man of the kin” Matvey Taishin and the hero “without kith or kin” Roman Romanov. The study leans on the interdisciplinary comprehensive approach, with the use of cultural-historical, typological, ethno-cultural, axiological and imagological methods of analysis. The scientific novelty lies in examination of the characters of the literary work from the perspective of their identity and identification. Analysis is conducted on the two ways of finding true identity by the characters in the small and big world. Path of “man of the kin” is the cognition of capabilities of staying in the world, strengthening of inviolable faith as the essential link in the chain of life, nature, Cosmos, and humanity. Path of the hero “without kith or kin” is a series of initiations (according to V. Y. Propp), as a result of which he gradually assimilates to the “earthly world”, having acquired the experience of merging with society. It is proven that solution of the questions on personal, social and national identity of the characters of the novel is interrelated with the author's traditionalistic worldview. The conclusion is made that in a crisis historical situation, the characters of the novel intuitively tilt towards ancient cultural memory of humanity, seeing its as a basis for reconstruction of identity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sanjmyatav Bazar

As the conception of security consolidates our prosperity to evolve on this planet that revolutionises our social norms and values from time-to-time, it also encounters threats and challenges that could potentially deliver a massive impact to the world. For instance, such security dilemmas would result in transforming the world order, international relations or even the lives of billions. This is the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic of 2019 (COVID-19) and it has changed the world for an indefinite period. Thus, it has forced us into a new phase, new norms and a new world. This paper will examine how this coronavirus outbreak has political, economic and social impacts on the world order through the lens of international relations.


Author(s):  
Alla Radionova

The article deals with the intertextual relationships of the novel «Doctor Zhivago» by B. Pasternak and the treatise «Fear and Trembling» by Søren-Kierkegaard. Pasternak mentioned Kierkegaard in his works and noted his great influence on modern culture. While Pasternak was working on the novel, he used the concept of chivalry, which was an allusion to Kierkegaard. In his treatise «the Knight of Faith» is a moral model that has overcome the fetters of rational thought and broken out of the temporary boundaries. S. Kierkegaard gives his description, which is directly related to the themes and motives associated with the image of Yuri Zhivago. Both Kierkegaard and Pasternak emphasize that the heroes of the high spirit merge with the human community, they cannot be distinguished from the general population with their private existences; the authors carefully contemplate the world around them, trying to penetrate into the very essence of each phenomenon, they differ in external carelessness with the utmost tension of the inner spiritual life. In their self-denial they renounce the most beloved, precious, valuable. Their love takes the form of religious veneration, and the beloved combines the temporal and the eternal, the earthly and the divine. They transfer the pain of double existence and the pain of loss into the realm of the spiritual, the creative, and the realm of memory. In the treatment of women's images in «Doctor Zhivago» Pasternak is equally focused on both Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, between whom, in turn, there are many similarities. The common ground between the two texts proves the presence of purposeful inter-system interaction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-147
Author(s):  
Yelena M. Bondarchuk

The article is addressed to the problem of typological characteristics of a number of novels distinguished by a long-term, large-scale conception and genre "proteism". Conventionally referred to as the "final books", these works represent an attempt to create a "universal text" of cultural memory. Such a text is intended to reveal the "totality of being", to answer the main questions of life. Through the prism of signs of the "final book", this article examines the novel "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak. The main attention is focused on the study of the ontological aspect of the objective, material world of the work, in particular, household objects and interior components. In descriptive fragments, the frequency lexemes "thing" and "object" are highlighted, which act as a reduced description. Their "collective" semantics creates conditional, generalised images of material and ideal objects that realize the idea of contact between the existential (sacred) and the ordinary and the idea of restoring unity (integrity). The lexeme “thing” acts as an actualiser of meanings associated with the concept of a way of life, an order of things, harmonious to a greater or lesser extent. The lexeme “object” is most often marked by the state of “ontological uncomfortableness”, “alienation” of objects of the external world from a person, which arose as a result of the disintegration of “living” connections, the absence of “contact” and decline in general. The opposition “thing-object” implements in the narrative “ready-made / code” philosophical generalisations, which are differentiated depending on situations, and it expresses the assessment of reality given by the narrator, whose worldview in many cases is extremely close to the position of the protagonist.


Author(s):  
Nadezhda I. Pavlova

The article is to study a mythological subtext of the novel “Children of mine” by G. Yakhina, which appeared at different levels: composition, plot, construction of the system of characters ' images. Main character of the novel, Jacob Bach, and his beloved Clara are reunited into a single whole, not only as lovers, but also as representatives of two interrelated and complementary principles of German culture-folklore and literature. The interaction of this pair of heroes should be considered in this symbolic context. Thus, the novel develops a fundamentally significant for its conception motif of prophecy, which implies a subtext about the creation of the world-Logos, which is further developed in the narrative, when the image of the main character fulfills the function of guardian of the cultural memory of the Volga Germans. At the same time, the act of creativity is synonymous with creation, which allows us to grasp in a complex novel whole the repeatability of components of a closed cycle of “myth-life”, fully realized in its narrative structure. Mythological world surrounding Bach is in opposition to the space of Soviet history, embodied in the image of the agitator Hoffmann. There is an inverted picture of the world: historical world as dead and the world of culture as a living world. Thus, in the novel, the poles of life and death exchange places in relation to the present and the past. In view of this conception, one can read a deep intention of the writer representing the word of culture as giving immortality and life in eternity.


Author(s):  
Wiesław Setlak

Id, ego and superego deficit in a psychological image of the protagonists of ″Jealousy and Medicine″ by Michał Choromański Jealousy and Medicine – a novel by Michał Choromański, published in 1933, evidently breaks out of the convention of psychological realism thriving on the achievements of behavioural psychology, dominant in the interwar period. Choromański’s work is an innovatory experiment on composition and thought; the world shown in the novel resembles a psychotic maligna or oneiric vision. The whole novel prompts interdisciplinary research using psychoanalysis of Sigismund Freud, Charles Mauron’s psychocritical method, being a transformation of classical Freudian psychoanalysis (with Otto Rank’s modifications), contemporary psychology of a creative process and the methodologies of psychological research which are accepted and occasionally used by contemporary literary studies. Choromański’s novel is deemed the most discerning studium of jealousy in interwar literature.


Author(s):  
C. Parker Krieg

      This essay examines the role of myth in and as cultural memory through a reading of the novel, Archipelago (2013), by the Trinidadian-British author Monique Roffey. Against conceptions of the Anthropocene as a break from the past—a break that repeats the myth of modernity—I argue that Roffey’s use of cultural memory offers a carnivalesque relation to the world in response to the narrative’s account of climate change trauma. Drawing on Bakhtin’s classic study of the carnival as an occasion for contestation and renewal, as well as Cheryl Lousely’s call for a “carnivalesque ecocriticism,” this essay expands on the recent ecocritical turn to the field of Memory Studies (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) to illustrate the way literature mediates between mythic and historical relations to the natural world. As literary expressions, the carnivalesque and the grotesque evoke myth and play in order to expose and transform the social myths which govern relations and administrate difference. Since literature acts as both a producer and reflector of cultural memory, this essay seeks to highlight the literary potential of myth for connecting past traumas to affirmational modes of political engagement. Resumen     Este ensayo examina el papel del mito en y como memoria cultural analizando la novela Archipelago (2013), escrita por la autora trinitense-británica Monique Roffey. Frente a la idea del Antropoceno como una ruptura con el pasado—una ruptura que repite el mito de la modernidad—este trabajo argumenta que el uso de la memoria cultural de Roffey ofrece una relación carnavalesca con el mundo en respuesta al trauma del cambio climático detallado en la novela. Basando mi argumento en la teoría clásica de Bakhtin sobre el carnaval como una ocasión para la contestación y la renovación, así como la llamada de Cheryl Lousely por una “ecocrítica carnavalesca,” este ensayo amplía el reciente giro de la ecocrítica hacia el campo de los estudios de memoria (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) para ilustrar cómo la literatura media entre las relaciones míticas e históricas con el mundo natural. Como expresiones literarias, lo carnavalesco y lo grotesco evocan el mito y el juego para revelar y transformar los mitos sociales que gobiernan las relaciones y gestionan la diferencia. Ya que la literatura actúa tanto como productora y como espejo de la memoria cultural, este ensayo busca destacar el potencial literario del mito para conectar traumas del pasado con modos de compromiso político más afirmativos.


Neophilology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 467-474
Author(s):  
Marina M. Glazkova

We investigate the comic as a special artistry mode, which consists in identifying at the compositional level the structural functionality of comic techniques when depicting the “inconsis-tency of the world order” on the example of the novel by G.M. Sluzhitel “The Days of Savely” with the help of characters playing their roles and changing role masks to show the relativity of everything in the world, except for the absoluteness of love as the most important category of eternity. We show that in the novel “The Days of Savely” various types of comic are used: direct and hidden mockery, laughter symbolism of details, stylization and fusion of various vocabulary layers, intertextual inclusions, new interpretation of precedent phenomena, etc. We substantiate the concept that the functionality of comic techniques in the work of Grigory Sluzhitel is extensive. The most important functions of the comic are: the ubiquitous images characterization; identifying the main “core” of the protagonist character and other heroes of the novel; interpretation of the events taking place in the “The Days of Savely” through the prism of the “wise child” perception – Savva cat; determining or predicting the fate of characters; expression of the author’s worldview, formulation of the work main idea; determination of the relativity of earthly life by playing various images in comparison with them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-403
Author(s):  
Shi Tang

The article examines postmodern properties of the detective novel “Quest” by B. Akunin such as “epistemological and ontological doubt” in the view of world and the openness of the narrative. The aspects of theatricalization in the text of the novel are analyzed: the world order of masquerade, the theatricality of episodes, theatrical allusions, etc. The article demonstrates functioning of the game between author and reader in this novel, which serves a great example of Akunin’s literary game strategy. It also confirms that the theatricalization in this novel is in association with postmodern aesthetics and a important aspect in the poetics of “Quest”.


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