THE LOST ‘BEAD’ OF “THE WITHERED LEAVES”

The paper deals with the poem by Ivan Franko “My soul! The soul of my soul!”, which wasn’t published during the poet’s lifetime. As one of the poems from Franko’s poetic cycle “The First Bunch” it might have been included in the forthcoming collection “The Withered Leaves”. That’s why the general context of this collection is relevant. The researcher reviews the genre and creative history of the poem and gives attention to its psychobiographical context. The comparison of the published text with the autograph revealed a discrepancy that modifies interpretation. The basis of this poetic reflection is the poet’s intimate feelings for Celina Żurowska (married name Zygmuntowska), so the paper focuses on this Polish woman, in particular her attitude to the poet and her influence on his work. The research focus also includes other works of the writer, which somehow relate to Celina. Her pride, stubbornness, and sometimes even contempt caused pain in the poet’s soul, which gave rise to poetic masterpieces. The memories of Franko’s contemporaries, as well as the ones of Celina herself, help to interpret the poem. The researcher analyzed the work in terms of its structure, poetic composition, emotional tone, and iconosphere. The images of the pearl (shell) and the soul, which are the central symbols of this work, show semantic similarity. The pearl is a symbol of love that grows and becomes stronger due to patience, and at the same time, it is a metaphor for the soul. The poetic language and versification have been examined as well.

“You Say I am a King”

In modern parlance, it is only the guilty who confess. Yet we read in one of the New Testament letters, I Timothy, that Jesus “testified to the good confession in the time of Pontius Pilate”. What is an innocent man—or, in Christian belief, the most innocent man in human history—doing making a confession to a brutal official like Pontius Pilate? It is of immense historical interest that one of the preeminent legal theorists of early modern Europe, Hugo Grotius, commented on this verse in I Timothy in his fabulously learned twelve-volume commentary, Annotations on the Old and New Testament. This chapter shows how Grotius’ biblical exegesis, and his poetic composition Christ Suffering, illuminate the Christian idea of Pilate’s innocence.

Virgil’s Solitary Spheres

This chapter argues that Virgil was a poet not only of cosmos and of empire, but also of individuals. It analyzes, by turns, the solitude of figures, of language, and of literature in the Georgics and the Aeneid. It argues that the Georgics is a poem for humans, but not of them, culminating in the story of Orpheus and in the mannered circularity suggested by the Georgics’ revolutionary envoi. The chapter looks to Virgil’s adaptation of Homer’s Shield of Achilles as a touchstone for the poet’s solitary model of poetic composition and of reading, testing it against the poem’s narrative joints. From scenes of soliloquy to dream scenes, solitude, it shows, is a characteristic quality of the poem’s settings, figures, form and its poet’s persona, that last of which, the chapter argues, contributed to the biographical tradition’s Lives of Virgil from antiquity to the Renaissance.

‘The Restful Place’

Addressing the apparent absence of vernacular literary criticism in early Tudor culture, this chapter argues that a nascent poetics lies within the period’s lyric poetry itself. The critical lexicon that laces this lyric poetry shows poets beginning to theorize literature in spatial, geometric, or formal terms. Recalling the place logic of Henrician pedagogy and the blurring of boundaries between poetic invention and critical judgement, the poetry of Wyatt, Surrey, and their early Tudor acolytes ventures a rudimentary theory of poetic composition as the constraining of memory into form. Responding to the Italian commentary tradition that locates Petrarch’s poems in allusive relation to other poems, early Tudor lyric gestures to an intertextual model of how to read texts in a network of remembered literary ‘places’. As imitation fuses into commentary, external places of criticism are constrained internally within Henrician poetry itself.

The Medieval Classic

This book considers how ancient and medieval commentaries on the Aeneid by Servius, Fulgentius, Bernard Silvestris, and others can give us new insights into four twelfth-century Latin epics—the Ylias by Joseph of Exeter, the Alexandreis by Walter of Châtillon, the Anticlaudianus by Alan of Lille, and the Architrenius by John of Hauville. Virgil’s influence on twelfth-century Latin epic is generally thought to be limited to verbal echoes and occasional narrative episodes, but evidence is presented that more global influences have been overlooked because ancient and medieval interpretations of the Aeneid, as preserved by the commentaries, were often radically different from modern readings of the Aeneid. By explaining how to interpret the Aeneid, these commentaries directly influenced the way in which twelfth-century Latin epic imitated the Aeneid. At the same time, these Aeneid commentaries allow us a greater awareness of the generic expectations held by the original readers of twelfth-century Latin epic. Thus, this book provides a new way to look at the development of allegory and contributes to our understanding of ancient and medieval perceptions of the Aeneid while exploring the importance of commentaries in shaping poetic composition, imitation, and reading.

The Image of the Birch in Esenin’s Poetry: Pre-Translation Analysis and Translation into Chinese

Стихи Есенина о природе всегда подчеркивают единение с ней человека. Есенин — создатель множества символов деревьев, среди которых первое место занимает береза. В статье рассматриваются образы березы в стихах поэта раннего и позднего периодов творчества, его психологическое состояние, философские размышления. Выявляются трудности перевода есенинской поэзии на китайский язык на примере стихотворений с образом березы, рассматриваются приемы преодоления трудностей в переводческой практике поэзии Есенина на китайский язык, соответствие перевода оригиналу по музыкальности, ритмической структуре, системе рифм. Самые сложные моменты перевода есенинской поэзии на китайский язык заключаются в передаче голоса поэта, его целостного мировосприятия, что проявляется в есенинских метафорических образах и общей композиции стиха. Esenin’s poems depicting landscapes always emphasize the kinship of man and nature. Among the trees that the poet uses as symbols, priority belongs to the birch. The paper examines the concept of the birch in Esenin’s early and mature poetry, the mood betrayed by the imagery of each verse, his philosophical contemplation expressed directly or obliquely. The author points out specific challenges of translating Esenin heritage into Chinese exemplified by verses containing the image of the birch. The paper discusses ways of overcoming translation challenges so that translation matches the original in its musical effect, rhythmic structure and rhyme pattern. The hardest challenge is that of preserving the poet’s voice, his integral perception of the world expressed through metaphorical language and general poetic composition.

CHRISTMAS STICHERON “ΣΉΜΕΡΟΝ Ὁ ΧΡΙΣΤΌΣ” AND CIRCLE OF ITS PROSOMOIA: GREEK-SLAVONIC PARALLELS OF THE 10TH–17TH CENTURIES

The subject of article is the history of the musical and poetic composition of the Christmas sticheron “Σήμερον ὁ Χριστός” by Johann Damascene with the Gospel quotation “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will toward men” (Lk. 2:14), as well as the circle of associated stichera in Byzantine, Old Russian and Kiev-Lithuanian traditions. The musical text of the hymns is represented in Greek manuscripts by Chartres, Coislin and middle-Byzantine neumes; Old Russian chant books were analyzed using znamenny neumes and singer notation; and Kiev manuscripts — using Kievan five-line notation records. The melody of the Christmas sticheron emphasizes the importance of the Gospel quotation with long melismatic musical fragments of the quotation itself and the previous sentence. This sticheron became a model for several hymns to Epiphany, Purification of the Most Holy Mother of God, Annunciation and Entry into the Temple of the Most Holy Mother of God, the majority of which were excluded from liturgical use. There are various ways of creating a new sticheron based on the model: prosomoion may be a calque or an independent composition with certain elements of model tune. The latter case of the sticheron to the Entry into the Temple “Σήμερον τῷ ναῷ προσάγεται” has its own musical text history in three traditions, independent from that of the model. Chants of Old Russian manuscripts of 11th—14th centuries are similar to those of a Byzantine origin, but in the 15th—17th centuries the music of these two traditions has developed in different ways. The Kievan chant tradition, similar to both Old Russian and Byzantine ones, is a point of intersection of chant cultures.

De la Delie de Scève en Diotima rediuiua, ou l’image d’un mentor sans le son

Made an exceptional mentor by her sex, her foreignness and her status as Socrates’ teacher, Diotima was a key figure of reference in Renaissance discussions about Love in revivals of Plato’s Symposium. The waters become muddied when Scève, following the examples of Castiglione and Speroni, uses the character of Diotima as a metaphor for the beloved woman in Delie (1544): the competition with other female characters, the finality of the metaphor, the ambiguous structure of the dizain, and the fact that the redeeming speech is absolutely silent combine to imply a certain irony, for here Diotima is supposed to teach Hatred as well as Love, and the mischievous side of a poetic composition that favours inscription over expression.

Features of Popular Resistance in Diwan "Glory Bows Before You" Approaches to Subject and Poetic composition

The study deals with the "Glory bends before you" by the poet Abdel Nasser Saleh, as an appropriate model to study the subject of popular resistance and its role in confronting the occupier through the use of popular resistance methods and means, and the statement of its foundations, and objective and poetic features.He lived the experiences of struggle and arrest in the Uprising. He practiced peaceful resistance on the homeland by his pencil and actions.The study attempts to dismantle the vocabulary of the texts of the Diwan by employing the analytical methodology in order to demonstrate the extent to which the text copes with the reality of the event "popular resistance" against the other Israeli, through the study of technical techniques and poetic formation, and the effectiveness of reality and practice, culture and ideology. The researcher found the poet's artistic ability to root the state of popular resistance, whether at the level of term or poetic image, and the resulting positive impact on the conscience of the resistance people.