The Horrors of War in the History of German Literature: From Heinrich Wittenwiler and Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen to Rainer Maria Remarque

As terrible as wars have always been, for the losers as well as for the winners, considering the massive killings, destruction, and general horror resulting from it all, poets throughout time have responded to this miserable situation by writing deeply moving novels, plays, poems, epic poems, and other works. The history of Germany, above all, has been filled with a long series of wars, but those have also been paralleled by major literary works describing those wars, criticizing them, and outlining the devastating consequences, here disregarding those narratives that deliberately idealized the military events. While wars take place on the ground and affect people, animals, objects, and nature at large, poets have always taken us to imaginary worlds where they could powerfully reflect on the causes and outcomes of the brutal operations. This paper takes into view some major German works from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century in order to identify a fundamental discourse that makes war so valuable for history and culture, after all. Curiously, as we will recognize through a comparative analysis, some of the worst conditions in human history have produced some of the most aesthetically pleasing and most meaningful artistic or literary texts. So, as this paper will illustrate, the experience of war, justified or not, has been a cornerstone of medieval, early modern, and modern literature. However, it is far from me to suggest that we would need wars for great literature to emerge. On the contrary, great literature serves as the public conscience fighting against wars and the massive violence resulting from it.

The Polonaise in Frédéric Chopin’s Works. Andante spianato and the Grande Polonaise Brillante Op.22

"The present study is focused on the musical genre of the polonaise and its particularities in Chopin’s creation, with precise reference to Andante Spianato and The Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22. Chopin’s substantial contribution to the genre consists of the transformation of a gallant dance of conventional harmony into a veritable heroic chant of prodigious harmonies. Due to a proficient transformation of a folk motif, Chopin is able to introduce folklore in his major works, according to the larger trend of national awareness that required the artists’ return to the folklore sources of inspiration that were able to express the national yearning for freedom. Far from the solemnity of the courteous dance, these pieces become programmatic musical poems, sprung from the most noble of emotions, the love for one’s country. The nostalgic chromatics, diffused throughout Chopin’s entire creation, is augmented by the call for resistance in front of the historical events (Poland’s loss of political independence). The polonaises Chopin composed at maturity had a new form, transforming into veritable epic poems which depicted images of Poland’s heroic past as visions impregnated by lyric pathos and pain for the country’s troubled history. Although their common feature is the epic and grandiose tone, Chopin’s polonaises are extremely varied and versatile, characterized by grandeur and dramatism. The work proposed for analysis – Andante spianato in G Flat – is based on the principles of stanzas and variation and has the structure of two stanzas of A B type, followed by a Coda. Chopin added the coda as an introduction (only around 1843-1835, in Paris) to The Grande Polonaise Brillante, Op. 22 (composed in 1831). Although intensely contrasting, the two parts seem to be connected exactly by this difference. This is the process that describes the genesis of The Grande Polonaise Brillante prédécès d'un Andante Spianato Op 22. Keywords: polonaise, folklore, ornamentation, chromaticism, variation, rubato. "

CRNOGORSKE PJESME U TOMAZEOVIM PJESMAMA ILIRSKIM MONTENEGRIN POEMS IN TOMMASEO’S ILLYRIAN POEMS

This article discusses the circumstances in which Niccolò Tommaseo, an Italian writer of Dalmatian origin, included three poems from the Montenegrin literary periodical Grlica (1835-1839) in his collection of Italian translations of “Illyrian” folk poetry (Canti illirici, 1842), published in Venice. In this regard, the research pointed to the mediating role of the German romantic poet Heinrich Stieglitz, author of a travel book about Montenegro (Ein Besuch auf Montenegro, 1841). In the autumn of 1839, Stieglitz visited the Montenegrin Metropolitan and poet Peter II Petrović Njegoš in Cetinje, wherefrom he presumably brought copies of this first Montenegrin periodical to Venice. Also discussed is the possible influence that Tommasseo’s activities on collecting South Slavic folk poetry in Dalmatia had on the creation of the anthology of epic poems Serbian Mirror, which Njegoš composed after his first meeting with Tommaseo in January 1844.

COMPREHENSION OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE KAZAKH EPIC IN THE CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL MODERNIZATION OF SOCIETY

This article reveals the main elements of the epic world, which are the roots of Kazakh spirituality. Certain elements of modern Kazakh culture are also manifested. The ontological side of the topic is the spiritual and cultural philosophical values that make up the ideological basis of Kazakh folklore: freedom, honesty, conscientiousness, justice and resistance to promises. The purpose of our research is the social argumentation of the Kazakh epic, based on the national code and mentality at the present stage of modernization of the Kazakh society. The article states that the epic poems of the Kazakhs are archetypes of the mentality of values of modern Kazakhs. It is supposed to revive the philosophical and poetic creativity of the Kazakh people as mental qualities absorbed by future generations.

The Composition and Transmission of the Homeric Poems: A Summary

If the modern oral hypothesis, beginning in the 1920s (see 17 below), about the composition of early Greek epic poetry is correct (a ‘paradigm shift’ in Homeric studies according to Casey Dué), there were many poets who over centuries, beginning perhaps in the middle-to-late Bronze Age, composed in performance many different versions of epic poems, including poems about the Trojan War, and including the subject matter of the Iliad and the Odyssey, vestiges of which survive on papyrus fragments and in the manuscripts of later authors. But the versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey that we have were not the work of many poets but, for the most part, of a single poet. The overall unity of the poems cannot be explained, or explained away, by any theory that posits multiple, successive authorship spanning many years.

НЕГОВАЊЕ КУЛТА СВЕТЕ ПЕТКЕ У РЕЛИГИОЗНОЈ ПОЕЗИЈИ СРПСКЕ ПЕСНИКИЊЕ ДАНИЦЕ ЗОРКЕ РАШКОВИЋ

The subject matter of this paper is the work of the first romantic poetess Danica Zorka Rašković (1849–1910) from Belgrade, which is observed in the context of searching for common elements in Serbian and Romanian culture. Her work has remained unknown to a wider readership, and this time the focus will be on a lyric poem about Serbian-Romanian saint (Saint Petka). As a very young poetess, Danica Zorka Rašković published four poem collections in Belgrade: Slavopoj (two collections, 1866 and 1867), Milosplet (1868), Tugospev (1868). Literary critique had no positive reaction to the poetic texts by the young poetess (S. Novaković, V. Jagić). The collection of religious poetry Milosplet (1868) contains lyric and epic poems, and among the lyric texts there is a poem Saint Petka, which speaks about this uniquely revered Serbian-Romanian saint. The cult of Saint PetkaParaskevahas been nurtured since the 15th century, owing to Princess Milica and a poetess Jefimija. Saint Petka Paraskeva is a patron saint of the Rašković family, which had special privileges in the region of Stari Vlah in western Serbia during the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Ages. The Rašković family gave a great number of warriors and elders in the Serbian uprisings, as well as a great number of cultural intellectuals.

One Homer, or Two? Some Suggested Stylistic Separators in the Homeric Poems

How many Homers (if any)? This is a question that has bedevilled professional Hellenists since the Alexandrian period. Luckily, such misgivings have not, in general, disquieted students or casual readers, who simply read, study, and enjoy the two lengthy epic poems traditionally ascribed to a composer or, if you lower the date a little, an author, to whom generations have given the name “Homer.” In 1955 the distinguished British Classicist D. L. Page delivered a set of lectures at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, entitled The Homeric Odyssey whose main thesis was that the two epics were composed in separate places ( a fortiori by different authors), independently of each other. My project in the study that follows is to examine more closely the stylistic features called into court by Page to attest to the separateness of the two works in respect of authorship. My ulterior motive is to look for explanations of the discrepancies Page claims to have found on a hypothesis other than separate authorship. Page’s linguistic “separators,” as they might be termed, fall into several categories: dialectal, the words used and especially those with the intensifying prefix ἐρι- “exceedingly”; morphological, e.g. datives plural with the short termination -οις vs. the long -οισι; metrical, the lengthening (or not) of naturally short vowels before mute + liquid or nasal; lexical, words, phrases and formular expressions that are favoured by the Iliad and which might be expected to occur also in the Odyssey but don’t, and vice versa, words and formular phrases found exclusively or predominantly in the Odyssey but which are rare in or totally absent from the Iliad.

The images of priests in the epic poems “Who Is Happy in Russia?” by Nikolay Nekrasov and “The Land of the Fathers” by Sergey Gusev-Orenburgsky

The article analyses the symbolic correspondences between the image of the priest in the epic poems “Who Is Happy in Russia?” by Nikolay Nekrasov and “The Land of the Fathers” by Sergey Gusev-Orenburgsky. The author of the work turns to the process of creating the image of the priest by Nikolay Nekrasov and shows the duality of this figure, which arose due to the fact that at first the poet used to take a dislike to the priest, but gradually Nikolay Nekrasov approached the assessment of the environment precisely from the position of religious consciousness in his best works. In the final text, the poet, as it were, combined two views: the impression of the priest’s well-fed and contented life, expressed by Luka the peasant, and the peculiar ideal of the life of a priest as the spiritual father of the people. Creatively mastering many of Nikolay Nekrasov's finds and achievements, his images of fighters and truth-lovers, at the turn of the 19th century, Sergey Gusev-Orenburgsky created an example of an autobiographical hero breaking with his environment, embodying in the artistic world of the story, but this time in relation to different heroes, the dual assessment of Nikolay Nekrasov’s priests. Following Nikolay Nekrasov, Sergey Gusev-Orenburgsky looked for real figures among the people who acted in accordance with Christian ethics, who could not isolate themselves from the world and who thought about the happiness of the people.

The Mind as Container

One of the most widespread and natural ways of conceiving of the human mind in European culture is the image of the mind as a container for thoughts, images, memories, reasonings, etc. In this article, we explore the evidence of this metaphor in the Ancient Greek epic poems, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as well as Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, and, for comparative purposes, the evidence of the analogous metaphor in the Ancient Indian epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. We examine how the metaphor is used, what its functions are and what it implies for the conception of mind in both ancient traditions. Additionally, we offer a brief comparison with the image of the mind-container that emerges from the use of this metaphor in modern English.