Russian Epistolary Writing from the Middle Ages to the Turn of the 19th Century

Epistolary writing is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Russia’s contributions to world literature—despite the landmark theoretical work of the Russian Formalists in the 1920s, which presciently highlighted the literary interest of the letter and paved the way for the explosion of scholarship on epistolarity in the West in the late 20th century. Nevertheless, the epistolary mode has accompanied and helped to shape Russian literature since its beginnings. For many centuries, epistolary texts offered a space for unusually vivid expressions of unique authorial selves while at the same time encouraging self-conscious play with literary form. Within a century of the adoption of writing by the Eastern Slavs in the mid-10th century, people across the social spectrum were writing letters on birchbark; in the Middle Ages, when Russian writing aimed above all to teach religious truths and build a Christian community, epistolary forms facilitated the creation of exceptionally individualized representations of the author(s) and/or addressee(s) of letters. In the early modern period, epistolary forms played an important role in the development of literature, since they were among the first types of text to be recognized as distinct genres. The late 18th and early 19th centuries witnessed the heyday of the European-style familiar letter, which became a primary literary genre through which elite writers maintained emotional, social, and professional ties, projected a sophisticated self-image, and wrestled with the implications of Russia’s participation in Western cultural life.

Escreva-me e te direi quem és: fazer epistolar e suas facetas em “Os romances da Bahia”, de Jorge Amado / Write Me and I’ll Tell You Who You Are: Epistolary Writing and his Facets in “Novels of Bahia”, by Jorge Amado

Resumo: O artigo se propõe a analisar as facetas da arte epistolar em três obras de Jorge Amado: Cacau (1933), Suor (1934) e Jubiabá (1935), que compõe o ciclo de “Os romances da Bahia”. Empreendido por Jorge Amado nos anos 1930, quando debutava na vida literária e tinha 20 anos, o projeto ficou conhecido pela crítica como “romance proletário”. Nele, o escritor se volta para as questões do povo e inaugura um período de forte militância política e de acentuada voltagem social. Amado confere grande relevância às cartas nas obras em tela, reconhecendo sua popularidade e vislumbrando sua importância para captar/retratar a vida daqueles em situação de vulnerabilidade. O artigo estuda procedimentos e mecanismos colocados em cena pelo jovem escritor e propõe novos conceitos no âmbito das correspondências, dentre os quais: a carta democrática, a epistolografia e a ascensão social, a redenção epistolar, a renúncia epistolar, o silêncio epistolar, a carta coletiva, o binômio carta e verdade e o dispositivo da carta-documento.Palavras-chave: Jorge Amado; Romances da Bahia; carta; epistolar; correspondência.Abstract: The article proposes to analyze the facets of epistolary writing in three books by Jorge Amado: Cacau (1933), Sweat (1934) and Jubiabá (1935), which composes the cycle of “The novels of Bahia”. Undertaken by Jorge Amado in the 1930s, when he debuted in literary life and was 20 years old, the project became known to critics as “proletarian romance”. In it, the writer turns to the issues of the people and inaugurates a period of strong political militancy and marked social tension. Amado confers great relevance to the letters in the works on canvas, recognizing its popularity and envisioning its importance to capture /portray the lives of the humblest. The article studies procedures and mechanisms put on stage by the young writer and proposes new concepts in the context of correspondence, among which: the democratic letter, epistolography and social ascension, epistolary redemption, epistolary renunciation, epistolary silence, collective letter, binomial letter and truth and the device of the letter-document.Keywords: Jorge Amado; Novels of Bahia; letter; epistolary; correspondence.

Intimacy, Memory and Revelation: HIV/AIDS Representations in Néstor Perlongher’s and Caio Fernando Abreu’s Epistolary Writing

This article analyzes the epistolary works of writers Néstor Perlongher and Caio Fernando Abreu. Both authors share their experiences living with HIV/AIDS in their personal correspondence that has been recently published in different publishing houses in São Paulo and Buenos Aires (Agir and Santiago Arcos editor). This article reads through this affective archive that both authors left for posterity and suggests Perlongher and Abreu have a contrasting system of writing about the epidemic and what it represents for gay men in the region. Despite being authors that followed different paths to develop their literary interests, Perlongher and Abreu left for posterity an archive that provides a comprehensive understanding of the social, medical and political aspects of living with HIV/AIDS in Latin America.

ICONOGRAPHIC DEPICTION AND LITERARY PORTRAYING IN BERNARD BERENSON'S DIARY AND EPISTOLARY WRITING

The paper focuses on the interlacement of literary and iconographic elements by displaying an innovatory philological and stylistic approach, from a comparative perspective, in thematizing multilingual translational and adaptive aspects, ranging across Bernard Berenson's diaristic and epistolary corpus, in conjunction with his works on Italian visual culture. This interweaving gives occasion to the elaboration of multilinguistic textual influences and their verbo-visual artistic representations deduced from his innovative interpretative readings in the domain of world literature in modern times. Such analysis of the discourse of theoretical and literary nature, and of the pictoricity, refers to Bernard Berenson's multilingual considerations about canonical authors in English, Italian, French, German language, belonging to the Neoclassical and Romantic period, as well as to the contemporary era, as conceptualized in his autobiographical works, in correlation with his writings on Italian figurative art. The scope of this presentation is to discern and articulate Berenson's aesthetic ideas evoking literary and artistic modernity, that are infused with crucial notions of translational theory and conveyed through the methodology of close reading and comprising at the same time, in an omnicomprehensive manner, a plurality of tendencies intrinsic to social paradigms of cultural studies. Unexplored premises reflecting Berenson's vision of Italian culture, most notably of a visual stamp, will be analyzed through author's understandings of such adaptive translations or volumes to be subsequently translated in Italian, and through their intertwined intertextual applications, significantly contributing to further critical and hermeneutic reception thereof. Particular attention is drawn to its instancing in the field of Romantic literary production (Emerson, Byron), originally underscoring the specificities of each literary genre and expressive mode, of the narrative, lyric or theatrical nature, as well as concomitantly involving parallel notions as adapted variants within visual arts, and in such a way expressing theoretical views pertainable to Italian artworks too. Other analogous elements relevant to literary expression in the most varied cultural sectors such as philosophy, music, civilisational history (Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Wagner, Chateaubriand, Rousseau, Mme de Staël, Taine) are furnished, as well as the examples of the resonances of non-western cultures, with the objective of exploring the effect among readership bringing also to the renewal of Italian tradition.

Tomás Navarro Tomás, entre dos continentes

The Spanish Civil War led a lot of people into exile and marked a before and after in their lives, many of whom had to a great extent reinvent themselves and as is the case of those mentioned here never returned to Spain. The United States of America and Mexico were two of the countries that received many of the Spanish intellectuals as was the case of Navarro Tomás and Giménez Siles, respectively. United through blood ties, both of them resolved to carry on their lives pursuing their careers as a university professor and researcher, and a bookseller and publisher; some of their friends, like Federico de Onís and Juan Ramón Jiménez, whom they were reunited with in exile, found a similar solution. All of them left Spain with their families and had to adjust to a new situation, to a new way of life and their grief for Spain. Epistolary writing, so frequent and common during XX Century, is an endless source of life stories, expressions of feelings, attitudes towards life in all its various facets of information.

Письмо нойона Замьяна астраханскому губернатору Н. А. Бекетову о планах ухода калмыков на историческую родину

Introduction. The article introduces a 18th-century archival document ― letter addressed by Kalmyk Noyon (Landlord) Zamyan to the Governor of Astrakhan N. A. Beketov. Materials. The study examines an archival document contained in the National Archive of Kalmykia (Collection И-36). Results. The letter reports the then sentiments of Kalmyk nobility preceding the mass exodus of 1771 to ancestral lands. Surrounded by peoples differing in religion, language and traditions, the Kalmyks naturally kept identifying themselves as Asians and never gave up the idea of return, the latter having been strengthened by active colonizing policies of Russian government. Still, not all intended to leave the newly inhabited areas for a dangerous journey towards the unknown. And one of such individuals was Noyon Zamyan. His letter to the Governor expresses anxiety and wish to prevent Kalmyks from migrating backwards with the aid of Russian authorities. And more than that, the author explains why the people want to leave Russia’s borders. This precious historical document is also an essential linguistic source on mid-to-late 18th-century Kalmyk language. Conclusions. The document is a typical sample of official epistolary writing in terms of style, structure, and other details, serving a useful source for further linguistic research. It also contains important information related to actual circumstances of the 1771 exodus, and may be of certain interest for historians.

Cartas de Graciliano Ramos: diálogos entre o AEM e outros arquivos / Letters from Graciliano Ramos: Dialogues Between the AEM and Other Archives

Resumo: Nesta edição comemorativa de trinta anos do Acervo de Escritores Mineiros (AEM), da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), escolheu-se pensar a questão do arquivo literário a partir da leitura de algumas cartas de/para Graciliano Ramos que, apesar de não ter nascido na terra de Carlos Drummond de Andrade, tem seu espaço nas “Coleções especiais” do referido acervo. Em virtude deste número festivo de O eixo e a roda, portanto, são colocadas em diálogo duas cartas de Graciliano Ramos domiciliadas no AEM – uma escrita a Octavio Dias Leite e outra, a Getúlio Vargas –, juntamente com correspondências adicionais residentes em outros arquivos, a fim de perscrutar o universo literário do autor por meio de sua escrita epistolar. Com este trabalho, verificou-se que as cartas são um espaço privilegiado de reflexão literária do autor de Vidas Secas e que o Arquivo Graciliano Ramos está cada vez mais vivo, à espera de novas leituras, consignações, reciclagem.Palavras-chave: Graciliano Ramos; cartas; arquivo.Abstract: In this thirty-year commemorative edition of the Acervo de Escritores Mineiros (AEM), from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), we chose to think about the issue of the literary archive from the reading of some letters from/to Graciliano Ramos who, although not born in the land of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, has his space in the “Coleções especiais” of that collection. Due to this festive number of O eixo e a roda, therefore, two letters from Graciliano Ramos domiciled in AEM – one written to Octavio Dias Leite and other to Getúlio Vargas –, are put in dialogue, along with additional correspondence residing in other archives, in order to scrutinize the literary universe of the author through his epistolary writing. With this work, it was verified that the letters are a privileged space for literary reflection of the author of Vidas Secas and that the Graciliano Ramos Archive is increasingly alive, waiting for new readings, consignations, recycling.Keywords: Graciliano Ramos; letters; archive.

Letters

Epistolary writing finds expression everywhere in Charles Brockden Brown’s career. We see it in his praxis, as he writes epistolary novels, periodical essays, and letters. We also see Brown articulate a theoretical explanation for his devotion to the form in his actual correspondence and his fiction. A letter writer, unlike a narrator, self-consciously constructs identity as a textual performance. And letters, unlike prose narratives, draw conspicuous attention to communicative exchange and to the ways that communication links (and fails to link) individuals and groups across time and space. This chapter focuses on two longer sequences in Brown’s correspondence and the epistolary fragment the “Henrietta Letters” as source material for Brown’s epistolary praxis and theory.