Дослідження експериментальної літератури (Оксана Ковацька, Експериментальні вітрила української прози 20-х років ХХ століття)

The present study is dedicated to the contemporary research of the experimental literature, which was recognized as outstanding phenomena and as the form of artistic transgression during last time. The reason for reflection on this topic was the publication of the author’s monograph by Oksana Kovatska Experimental Sails of Ukrainian Prose of the 1920s (Kyiv 2020). The researcher appreciates the element of experiment in the Ukrainian post-revolutionary literature, and highly appreciates the innovative search of the young generation of contemporary writers. In particular, she focuses on three figures of literary experimentation, considering them in the context of the works of Viktor Petrov (Domontovych), Arkadii Liubchenko and Mike Johansen. Oksana Kovatska’s monograph is published as a pioneering work in the dimension of the problem presented here.

Przybrany ojciec. Czesław Miłosz w Chinach

Czesław Miłosz remains among the most important foreign authors and literary authorities for Chinese poets. Initially received in China with distrust and uncertainty, then portrayed in the official state discourse of romantic-revolutionary literature as the bard of socialism, Miłosz became the spiritual father of the younger generation affected by the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square Massacre, a witness of the age, and a symbol of intellectual independence and resistance against totalitarianism. After a period of reading Miłosz in terms of ethical and political categories, Chinese reviews and literary texts in the 2010s and 2020s increasingly refer to Miłosz as philosophical and metaphysical poet. This article analyses Miłosz’s reception in China, paying attention to the historical, cultural, and linguistic factors that shaped the assimilation of his work and the values he brought to Chinese poetry.

Chronotope of Siberia in the materials of the magazine “Nastoyashchee” (1928–1930)

The paper deals with the Novosibirsk magazine “Nastoyashchee” (The Present) (1928–1930). “Nastoyashchee” was oriented to the “fact literature”: the theory of new revolutionary literature developed by the LEF (Left Art Front) group, which emphasized the importance of the reflection of the truth of life. Hence, the importance of journalism increases, with feuilleton and essay becoming the most important genres. Such an attitude to the fact literature orients materials of the magazine to the local context understood rather broadly – as the context of Siberia and even the entire Asian part of the USSR. This understanding is considered on the example of all types of magazine materials: prose, poetry, folklore, illustrations, photography. It should be noted that the magazine’s attitude to the poetry was ambivalent: not only did it publish the poetry but also the articles with requests to stop writing poetry. Most significant was the literature of a quick response conforming to the current tasks of the proletariat. It is for this reason that most of the materials related to the fact literature had no ethnographic component, and the local was interesting not as exotic, but as correlating with USSR political context (the link between the city and the countryside, the organization of communes, the fight against the kulaks). The decisive role in writing is found to be inevitably assigned to sorting out the necessary facts illuminating life from the authors’ side of interest, making “Nastoyashchee” similar to the LEF group with their selecting and editing “facts-friends” and criticism of “facts-enemies.”

Revisiting German Proletarian-Revolutionary Literature

This article provides an overview of the emergence of proletarian literature in Germany, and the focuses in on the key texts, figures and debates of the Communist Party-affiliated Federation of Revolutionary-Proletarian Writers (BPRS) and the important debates about literature and politics in its journal Die Linkskurve between 1929 and 1932. At the same time, I argue for a complicated and sometimes conflictual relationship between the increasingly Hegelian aesthetic position of the journal and the more operatively-oriented work of BPRS authors.

Verhindertes Erzählen*

The small oeuvre of Juan Rulfo has triggered myriad interpretations, ranging from a view of the texts as great examples of Latin American magical realism, to a classification of the works as the endpoint of revolutionary literature. The following article investigates the unconventional narrative structure of Rulfo’s texts, which enabled this heterogeneous reception. As will be shown primarily in a close examination of Rulfo’s most famous short story “Luvina”, the Mexican writer’s dominant technique can be described as a continuous combination of ellipsis and recurrence.

Proletarian and Revolutionary Literature in a Transnational Perspective (1920–1940)

Simultaneously an emblematic and ambiguous case of engaged literature, proletarian and revolutionary writings from 1920–1940 have been the focus of numerous studies: whether they be in Germany, France, the United States or Soviet Russia, the principal actors have been identified, certain works have been republished, and the ways in which these movements were first encouraged and then dismantled by the Communist International in the interest of the only accepted socialist realism have been demonstrated. However, the transnational and even global dimensions of this movement and the profound similarities among institutional processes carried out in different countries have been overlooked. Drawing on little-known critical sources from the Francophone world, this article reworks the terrain and presents the state of institutional sites of proletarian and revolutionary literature. To this end, small groups, magazines, and associations will be considered in order to shed new light on this era when, across the globe, workers turned into writers.

BELLS, LANDSCAPE, LIFE, TIME (ACCORDING TO ORTHODOX LITERATURE)

The article shows how the bell ringing was interpreted in the Russian Orthodox (mainly pre-revolutionary) literature, and indicates important ethnographic details recorded in it.