Bram Stoker

The affable and popular theater manager Bram Stoker was born in Clontarf, Ireland, to Abraham and Charlotte Stoker in 1847, into an Irish Protestant (although not Anglo-Irish) family. After a sickly childhood he grew into a robust sportsman, and attended Trinity College Dublin from 1864 to 1866, finally graduating with a BA in 1870. Following in his father’s footsteps, he joined the Irish Civil Service in 1866, where he had the opportunity to travel around Ireland as a clerk of Petty Sessions, while also becoming an unpaid theater reviewer for the Dublin Evening Mail from 1871 to 1878, and publishing his first short story, “The Crystal Cup,” in London Society 1872. This he followed with a short novel, The Primrose Path, and two short stories, “The Chain of Destiny” and “Buried Treasures,” all in the periodical The Shamrock in 1875. In 1878 he left Dublin with his wife Florence to take up the position of acting manager of Henry Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London, and fulfilled this role until Irving’s death in 1905, also managing several American tours. In the earlier part of this period, Stoker managed to publish more fiction, including a first collection of short stories, Under the Sunset (1881), and then his first truly accomplished novel, The Snake’s Pass, set in rural Ireland, in 1890. Short but memorable pieces, “The Squaw” and “The Man from Shorrox,” appeared in periodicals in 1893 and 1894, and then two novels, The Watter’s Mou’, based on his knowledge of Cruden Bay near Aberdeen, and The Shoulder of Shasta, both 1895. Dracula, his most famous work, the product of seven years of research and rewriting, appeared in 1897, followed by a Restoration-era romance of much less merit, Miss Betty, in 1898. The Edwardian era saw his rate of productivity increase with The Mystery of the Sea (1902), another romance set in Cruden Bay, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), a Gothic “mummy” story, The Man (1905), Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906 (his most successful work in sales terms), and Lady Athlyne and Snowbound (a collection of theatrical short stories), both in 1908. His final, post-theater years were beset with ill health and monetary problems, as he resorted to journalism to supplement his income. However, he also produced the topical Balkan romance The Lady of the Shroud in 1909, and the chaotic The Lair of the White Worm in 1911, before dying the next year, his vibrant personality quietly mourned by London society.

Samuel Beckett's The North

This essay closely inspects the manuscript cluster relating to The North (held by the Beckett International Foundation, University of Reading) to provide insight into Beckett's collaboration with Enitharmon Press and its publisher, Alan Clodd, on an eponymous livre d'artiste illustrated with three etchings by Avikdor Arikha. It outlines the intricate publication details of a short excerpt from (then unfinished) Le Dépeupleur, which was the first part of the late prose text to be translated by Beckett into English. With the help of Beckett's published and unpublished correspondence with Clodd, Arikha, and Barbara Bray in particular, the essay traces the translation process of both The North and what was to become The Lost Ones. Extending over several months, the translation of the short novel gave Beckett considerable trouble and, as appears from his letters to Bray, her involvement in it was tangible. Beckett's linguistic choices surrounding the image of a crouching woman at the centre of this limited-edition artist's book and the English title of the master text, The Lost Ones, are also considered in relation to other art forms, namely Auguste Rodin's Dante-inspired La porte de l'enfer and the statue extracted from it, La femme accroupie. In addition to that, the publication particulars of the Calder & Boyars edition of The Lost Ones (1972) are discussed in parallel to those of Clodd's The North (1973), unearthing the differences between the two translations as well as contractual obligations that shaped them.

In Search of “That Archimedean Point”: The Development of Selfhood in Kierkegaard’s Journal of Gilleleje

This article offers a philosophical account of the so-called journal of Gilleleje. I would like to argue that in this text from 1835 one can trace the early philosophical musings of Kierkegaard on the existential question of the discovery of the self and the development of selfhood, one of the main motifs in the authorship of the Dane. Additionally, I discuss the literary trends of the 1830s in Golden Age Denmark, particularly the boom of the Danish short novel and Heiberg’s admiration of Goethe, analyzing in what way this local context impacted Kierkegaard’s ideas in the journal of Gilleleje.

HISTORICAL SYMBOL BETWEEN THE CONTROVERSY OF HISTORY AND REALITY :THE NOVEL OF LOVE, WHO CROSSES THE BORDER, AS A MODEL

This approach is based on observing images, events, and symbolic characters, then encompassing them in all their aspects, then showing the symbolic method that the novelist adopted to draw and present them in the narration of the novel. (A Lover Who Crosses the Borders) We find the mythical and symbolic tendency in building the narrative, as the novelist exploits the mythical environment that opens up to the past to record the conditions of the main character, and the nature of adaptation to the external environment, in addition to how to face life and its circumstances in different ways, most of the symbolic characters symbolized the pain of reality and the fragmentation of life, so the narrator built (his long story) or (his short novel) in a way that mixes the imagined and the reality. Most of the events and characters are realistic that embodied an imaginary narrative that confronted the Iraqi reality for psychological, social and political purposes. When the stage expanded with multiple crises, success was an ally of those who archive of Iraqi pain, and who embodied the interaction and communication between its past and present, as the novelist wrote in a modernist way that drew its visions from the imagination of Iraqi pain, and the stage recognized the creative exceptions that promote the literary face, and the task of expression is an occasional product of culture.

METAPHORS OF LOVE IN THE BELARUSIAN DISCOURSE OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The purpose of the work is to identify the functional and stylistic role and semantics of metaphors of love used in the modern Belarusian language. The source of the material was the texts of the belles-lettres and journalistic style written in the 21st century, in which the issues of the relationships between a man and a woman are raised. The article is based on the short novel “Between Day and Night” by N. Rybik, materials from collections of stories by Belarusian writers, periodicals and the Belarusian N‑corpus were also used. The descriptive method was chosen as the main one; the article uses elements of functional and stylistic and contextual analysis. Analysis of the metaphorical use of words used by modern Belarusian authors to describe various stages of the appearance of feelings and the degree of their manifestation shows that the attitude towards love in the modern Belarusian society is changing significantly. Love is often perceived not as something mysterious and extraordinary, but as something that you need to create yourself, using all available means for this (play, imitate, apply witchcraft, etc.). The main thing in love is to subjugate a person, bind them to oneself, which is realized in the use of the words ‘to hook’, ‘to woo’, etc. Marriage is perceived as something fickle (to try marriage) and divorce is perceived as a temporary measure (to part). Love is also considered as a disease that subjugates the will of a person, destroys them, which is emphasized by the use of metaphors like madness, to go nuts, etc. Lovehunting appears, which requires a large selection of partners (casting, asset), special skills and long practice (maneuvering). The external traits of a person become most important in relationships, therefore, the metaphors supermodel and swan princess are often used to describe young and beautiful women. Significant changes in the feeling are reflected in the choice of synonyms for the word ‘love’: surrogate, syrup, etc. Thus, the analysis of the figurative use of words allows us to outline the main changes that are taking place in the sphere of human relations in the Belarusian society of the 21st century.

UTOPIA AS AN ANTI-UTOPIA (ANDREY PLATONOV'S SHORT NOVEL BREAD AND READING)

The article analyzes A. Platonov's novel Bread and Reading, which is the first part of an unfinished trilogy called Technical Novel. Different approaches to the analysis of the writer's anti-utopian strategy are considered, and certain terms related to the intra-genre typology of his works, which are still the subject of controversy in Platonov studies, i.e., utopia, anti-utopia, metautopia, dystopia, and cacotopia are clarified. The article offers a new perspective on this problem and concludes that the short novel is characterized by a complex conflict between utopia and anti-utopia, namely, utopian consciousness is embodied in the form of anti-utopia, which leads to the ambivalence in meaning and the appearance of internal antinomies. This mainly revealed in the title of the story, the epigraph, a special type of plot situation and the character system structure. Platonov's work is characterized not only by the problem of the relationship between man and nature, but also that of between man and technology, which becomes a part of the anthropological worldview and acquires human features. Platonov's characters dream of a time when technology, nature and man are in a harmonious relationship, helping each other overcome universal entropy. The motif of construction sacrifice, traditional in the poetics of Platonov's works, plays an important role in the story: it is premature and shameful to think about personal happiness in the world of socialism that has not yet been built, without enough “bread and reading.” The work reflects Platonov's own hopes and doubts, and if the “principle of hope” (E. Bloch) is the main principle of utopian consciousness, then the writer's doubt becomes the main feature of his anti-utopia strategy. On the one hand, this makes it difficult to identify the genre of the short novel Bread and Reading (utopia or anti-utopia), on the other, it does not lead to an “imbalance” of forces, but, rather, to a meek awareness of the place of man in the world and his limited capabilities. An important role is also played by the fact that The Juvenile Sea was supposed to become the second part of the trilogy, and Dzhan may have made up the third part: the three works not only complement, but also “explain” each other. In the finale of Bread and Reading, the characters remain focused on the “distant,” as they stay in the same utopian dream space. Likely never having found a way out of the “impasse of utopia,” Platonov leaves Technical Novel unfinished.

The Image of an Architect and Masonic Symbols in Works by Milorad Pavić

The paper analyzes works by the Serbian postmodernist writer Milorad Pavić. It attempts to prove that he possesses knowledge of royal art and uses masonic symbols in his writing related to geometry and architecture, including the radiant delta, compass, masonic gloves, and clepsydra. It is assumed that under the influence of these particular ideas, the writer creates the leading image of an architect and the motif of construction as freemasons believe in the Great Architect of the Universe. In the short novel Damascene, according to speculative masonry’s beliefs, the building of the church projects the building of a temple in a human soul. M. Pavić, as an architect, creates a structure of every novel, which he identifies with the golden section. This paper finds special symbols of the divine proportion in his prose, including snail’s shells, pyramids, and violins. A dynamic structure as an embodiment of the open work concept and a broad spectrum of themes provide artistic communication with a creative recipient. A reader has an opportunity to choose their own style of reading and solving textual puzzles because Pavić’s prose represents a wide variety of themes, symbols, images, and allusions that embody the secrets of Freemasonry, allowing for various interpretations.

Deep Learning for Novel Antimicrobial Peptide Design

Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing issue in healthcare as the overuse of antibacterial agents rises during the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for new antibiotics is high, while the arsenal of available agents is decreasing, especially for the treatment of infections by Gram-negative bacteria like Escherichia coli. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are offering a promising route for novel antibiotic development and deep learning techniques can be utilised for successful AMP design. In this study, a long short-term memory (LSTM) generative model and a bidirectional LSTM classification model were constructed to design short novel AMP sequences with potential antibacterial activity against E. coli. Two versions of the generative model and six versions of the classification model were trained and optimised using Bayesian hyperparameter optimisation. These models were used to generate sets of short novel sequences that were classified as antimicrobial or non-antimicrobial. The validation accuracies of the classification models were 81.6–88.9% and the novel AMPs were classified as antimicrobial with accuracies of 70.6–91.7%. Predicted three-dimensional conformations of selected short AMPs exhibited the alpha-helical structure with amphipathic surfaces. This demonstrates that LSTMs are effective tools for generating novel AMPs against targeted bacteria and could be utilised in the search for new antibiotics leads.

“The Wright Brothers” by Mikhail Zenkevich: Correspondence with Orville Wright and Other Contributors (1932–1933): New Archival Findings

As a result of the latest findings in the archives of Russia and the United States, the correspondence between Mikhail Zenkevich and Orville Wright is published for the first time (the originals in English are supplemented with the Russian translations). This correspondence was conducted between 1932–1933, which correlates to the time period Zenkevich was working on the first biography of the pioneer aviators in Russian, Brat’ia Rait (The Wright Brothers, 1933). Also included are excerpts from the letters of foreign literati and colleagues, such as Michael Gold, Harold Heslop, Maurice Becker, Helen Black, as well as domestic correspondents, K. K. Kuraev among them. The article deliberates upon the direct influence of the materials provided by O. Wright on the book. A review of the holdings on the theme of aviation in Zenkevich’s fund (IRLI Pushkinskii Dom) is provided. The examination of the little- known biographical details, as well as the parts of the poet’s epistolary legacy and his prosaic works, adds to the analysis. Taken together, this all has allowed for substantiation of certain presumptions about other possible sources of the book. The article interprets some literary features of Brat’ia Rait by tracing the development of the theme of aviation in the earlier poems by this former Acmeist, and by drawing parallels with some of his later short and long poems, such as “Al’timetr. Tragorel’ef” (Altimeter. Tragic Relief) and “Torzhestvo aviatsii” (The Triumph of Aviation), and a short novel “Na strezhen’” (On the River Bend) and fictional memoirs Muzhitskii Sfinks (The Peasant Sphinx). Finally, some intertextual parallels between “The Triumph of Aviation” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” translated by Zenkevich, are revealed. The conclusion is made that the materials received from O. Wright have subsequently influenced the long poem “The Triumph of Aviation” and other works by Zenkevich. The publication is equipped with detailed notes, commentaries and illustrations.