Autobiographism – seeing and understanding. A few remarks on the poetry of Erna Rosenstein

Tekstualia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (61) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Iwona Grodź

The article analyzes selected literary works by Erna Rosenstein (1913–2004) through an autobiographical lens. Rosenstein’s poems can be interpreted as emotional and sensual accounts of traumatic experiences from the time of the Second World War.

Literary Fact ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 314-332
Author(s):  
Michela Venditti

The article is a introduction to the publication of the minutes of the meetings of the Russian lodge "Northern Star" in Paris, concerning the discussion on the admission of women to freemasonry. The proposed archival materials, deposited in the National Library of France in Paris, date back to 1945 and 1948. The women's issue became more relevant after the Second World War due to the fact that Masonic lodges had to recover and recruit new adherents. The article offers a brief overview of the women's issue in the history of Freemasonry in general, and in the Russian emigrant environment in particular. One of the founders of the North Star lodge, M. Osorgin, spoke out in the 1930s against the admission of women. In the discussions of the 1940s, the Masonic brothers repeat his opinion almost literally. Women's participation in Freemasonry is rejected using either gender or social arguments. Russian Freemasons mostly cite gender reasons: women have no place in Freemasonry because they are not men. Freemasonry, according to Osorgin, is a cult of the male creative principle, which is not peculiar to women. Discussions about the women's issue among Russian emigrant Freemasons are also an important source for studying their literary work; in particular, the post-war literary works of Gaito Gazdanov are closely connected with the Masonic ideology.


Author(s):  
Jane Manning

This chapter addresses British composer Joe Cutler’s Bands (2008). This touching, insightful piece, deceptively simple, demands immense concentration and empathy. The text, by the composer’s father Richard Cutler, is a moving encapsulation of the traumatic experiences faced by child evacuees during the Second World War, as they left home and parents and boarded trains for unfamiliar places. With immense skill and daring, the composer strips his material to the bone with a pared-down, static harmonic base and stark, repetitive vocal lines to convey graphically the desolation and numbed emotions of the departing children. Rhythmic fluidity is provided by the interplay between irregular patterns in the piano’s left hand punctuated by percussive right-hand acciaccaturas, while the singer maintains a steady quarter-note pulse through syncopations and tied notes. In view of the plethora of high Gs, some prolonged, a tenor would perhaps be most comfortable, although a very light baritone with a secure high range could sound suitably disembodied.


2021 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Tiiu Jaago ◽  

This article looks at how contemporary life stories reflect the historical-political events that took place in the 1940s, and their impact on the development of family relationships. The focus is on the expression of traumatic experiences caused by these events. Observable events, such as the Second World War, living under a foreign power, political repressions, escape to the West, etc., and their impact on Estonian society have been analysed by Estonian sociologists using the concept of cultural trauma. Literary researchers have studied this subject from the perspective of literary trauma theory. This article provides an analysis of Estonian life stories, which is based on the tools of folkloristic narrative research and the trauma conception. Although the narrators do not use the word ‘trauma’, it can be assumed that they express their traumatic experiences in some special way. It appears, for instance, that these first-person narratives provide a laconic description of the situation, relatively free of the emotion that possessed the narrator in the situation being described. The narrative style is determined by the distance between the narrator and the event that traumatizes them. This distance can be created by the narrator through using urban legends and rumours to characterize the general attitudes of the period being described. When the events of the twentieth century were discussed in the stories told in the 1990s, the dynamics of family relationships between two or three generations came to the fore in the stories told in the present time. The changing focus of the stories, shifting from events to the subject of intimacy, directs researchers to observe the transmission and transformation of trauma in a new context.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Mateusz Świetlicki

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch’s historical novels and picturebooks for young readers have gained significant commercial and critical recognition in North America. Interestingly, Ukraine, her grandfather’s homeland, has remained the central theme in her works ever since the publication of the picturebook Silver Threads in 1996. The author of this essay argues that by telling the suppressed, untold stories, hence bringing attention to the next-generation memory of the traumatic experiences of Ukrainian Canadians, Skrypuch puts them on the landscape of Canadian collective and cultural memory and challenges the false generalizations attributed to Ukrainians and Ukrainian Canadians in North America after the Second World War. After briefly outlining the history of Ukrainian immigration to Canada, and explaining the roots of the negative stereotypes attributed to Ukrainians, the author analyzes Hope’s War (2001), Skrypuch’s first Ukrainian-themed novel, and shows that by highlighting the unexpected similarities between the experiences of the protagonist’s grandfather, who during the Second World War was a member of the UPA, and the anxieties of contemporary teenagers, Skrypuch evokes empathy in mainstream and diasporic readers and enables the formation of next-generation memory.


Kultura ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 154-172
Author(s):  
Mirča Maran

The paper presents different aspects of the translation work of Romanians from the territory of the present day Vojvodina (Banat) during the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, up until the Second World War. The translation work in administration, education, religious institutions, and primarily in journalism and literature, has played an important role in the multicultural society of Banat. Various languages, cultures, traditions and religions interacted and intertwined there, and the society functioned on principles which enabled mutual understanding and cooperative work of all those who lived in Banat, regardless of the differences. The first translations in the Romanian language, primarily from German and Serbian, appeared in the 18th century, for the needs of state administration, education or religious work. The translations became more diverse and of a higher quality thanks to the work of the first elite Romanian intellectuals from the period of the late Enlightenment, the representatives of whom were Paul Iorgovici, Constantin Diaconovici Loga, and Sofronie Ivacicovici. In the 19th century, the translations got new content in the form of publication of multilingual posters, invitations, association rules, monetary instructions, newspaper articles, religious books, but also literary works, among which the most prominent were the translations of Hungarian literary works to the Romanian language, done by the writer and publicist Alexandra Tintariu. In the period between the two World Wars, translation work also gained new content because translations from German and Hungarian to Romanian stopped as the focus was placed on translations from Serbian to Romanian and vice versa.


Author(s):  
Vera Helena Jacovkis

In A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguroʼs first novel, the main character and narrator Etsuko remembers a summer in Japan after the Second World War. Migration and the possibility of rebuilding their lives in a different place become a matter of discussion in that period. The purpose of this article is to explore through textual analysis how the novel presents an experience of war in visual terms. Sight becomes the frame for war experience, and therefore the notion of ʻwitness’ becomes central. The narrator takes a position between being a victim and being a witness, showing the difficulties of telling traumatic experiences such as war, the atomic bomb, and its consequences.


Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document