‘For “feather” read “father”’: Death and Possibility in Paul Muldoon’s Paternal Elegies

Focused on Muldoon's father elegies written between his debut collection New Weather and Hay, the present essay argues that these poems evoke paternal death as the founding moment of poetic expression. Only when the father figure has passed away is the space for poetic expression implicitly made available to the son, so that the elegies from ‘The Waking Father’ all the way to ‘The Bangle (Slight Return)’ seek to reimagine the father figure as a poetic construct open to reinterpretation beyond the confines of his factual existence. In effect, the poem, as a locus of unconstrained revision of the self, becomes a consoling act that works only insofar as the poem manages to elude closure.

On the autobiography of M. Y. Lermontov's dramaturgy of the early period (plats “Menschen und Leidenschaften” and “A Strange Man”)

This article is dedicated to the analysis of the two plays written by M. Y. Lermontov in the the early period – “Menschen und Leidenschaften” and “A Strange Man” form the perspective of manifestation of autobiographical context therein. These works are based on the dramatic events in Lermontov's biography that took place in 1830–1831, such as conflict between the poet's grandmother and father, death of his father, as well as Lermontov's relationship with N. F. Ivanova. Analysis is conducted on the texts of these two dramas, as well as on the biographical situation that encouraged Lermontov to create these plays. Special attention is given to determination of specificity of interrelation between the biographical and fictional in Lermontov's dramaturgy of the early period. Lermontov’s appeal to the drama genre is associated directly with the need for artistic mastering of the biographical context. The article analyzes the process of instilling life facts in the dramaturgical text, as well as the specificity of manifestation of the autobiographical in the plotline, images of the heroes, as well as ideological-thematic aspect of the work. The result of the conducted research lies in tracing the evolution of the image of the protagonist based on self-projection of the author's personality, as well as the peculiarities building a romantic conflict that has autobiographical grounds. The two compositions represent a different perspective upon the personality and behavior of a “strange” man; autobiographical accuracy in depicting a romantic conflict is associated with the possibility of conveying the history of relationships in the play, due to the closeness of this literary genre to empirical reality. This allows viewing the two plays as a system of artistic development of biographical events in the dramatic discourse.

Early Parent Death and the Clinical Scales of the MMPI

There is growing evidence that early parent death can affect the severity of adult depressive illness. It was anticipated, therefore, that early-bereaved depressed patients might score higher on certain MMPI clinical scales than non-bereaved, depressed controls matched for age and sex. This is shown to be the case, the most affected scales being Hypochondriasis and Paranoia. Hypochondriasis is shown to be more strongly associated with early father death, while Paranoia is associated equally with mother and father death. There is some suggestion that early mother death is also associated with elevation of the F score. Early parent death is shown to have no effect upon the MMPI scores of non-depressed patients.