Cultivating and Disciplining Friendship Letters

Chapter 4 uncovers the archeology of sworn friendships in early modern Isfahan through the medium of epistolary practices. Friendship letters were respectable forms of social exchange collected across anthologies to model and memorialize social networks of voluntary kinship. Categorized by scribes and owners of anthologies as a genre, rasaʾil-i ikhvaniyyat (fraternal letters), they were media by which to maintain social relations. This chapter analyzes the materiality and social dynamics of voluntary kinships as epistolary performances of male friendship; gifts of paintings to friends are read together with their accompanying letters to reflect on how Isfahan’s urban culture transformed the grammar and aesthetics of male friendship. The most commonly assembled letters, in particular, those written by Nasira Hamadani (d. 1620), provide the means to explore the affective language and sentiments of verbal communication between friends in and outside Isfahan.

Verbalization of the Concept of Dignity in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Novel “The First Circle”

The article analyzes the verbal realization of the concept of dignity in O. Solzhenitsyn’s novel «The First Circle». Verbalization of the concept of dignity characterizes the positive characters of the novel and is a part of the ways of reproducing general humanistic issues, revealing the author’s intentions for both positive and negative characters, which creates contrast in describing the then civilizational ambiguous era. The humanistic orientation of the positive characters in the novel, who are marked by dignity, self-sacrifice (Nerzhin, Sologdin, Volodin), courage (Khorobrov, Rubin), honest attitude to work (Potapov, Egorov) is observed. It was found out that the character of Gleb Nerzhin, in whom the reader can recognize O. Solzhenitsyn himself, and the image of Spiridon Egorov are the most comprehensively depicted. The first is a representative of the intelligentsia, the second – of ordinary people. They are united by the inner humanism, which does not depend on historical circumstances or situational trials. This, according to the author, is the basis of the immortality of the people, reveals their deep philosophy, based on humanistic principles. In general, it is determined that dignity/humanity is the leading motive of the novel, supplemented by the elements of motives of male friendship and sincere love in the difficult conditions of tyranny. The images of representatives of the tyrannical government are covered in detail through their dialogues and monologues, including internal ones. Yes, the image of Stalin appears as painted with dark signs in contrast to a sunny day. In the end, the conceptual sphere of humanism is concretized in the motive of the heroes’ struggle for better life for all the people not only of their native country, but of the whole world. It is this motif that characterizes the 1970 Nobel Prize-winning work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The issue of the novel is also marked by a certain controversy: for example, the theme of war and the related celebration of victory are very relevant today in both Ukraine and Russia, where this theme is an important ideological factor.