Transculturalism and Its Manifestation in the Poetics of Lyric Texts

Using the example of the work of the Soviet Russian poet Pavel Nikolaevich Vasilyev, the author shows the representation of transcultural aesthetics in a literary text created in Russian by a Russian author, formed in the conditions of the borderline coexistence of two cultures: Russian and Kazakh. His works can be classified as borderland literature, in which the combination of the Russianlanguage discourse and the paradigm of the steppe, nomadic culture generates a hybrid text with a peculiar artistic aesthetics and poetics, which can be traced at the external and internal deep levels. The I of the author with borderline thinking has a stable ethnic identity, while openly showing its bicultural affiliation, which is quite consistent with the thesis about the flexibility of the cultural identity of a transcultural poet or writer. At the external text level of works of art, transculturalism finds expression in themes, in exoticisms, in foreign language insertions. The transcultural essence of the authors consciousness generates hybrid texts containing symbiotic verbal images and techniques that demonstrate hybrid canons and symbols (symbols of wormwood, horse), incorporating elements of Kazakh and Russian cultural stereotypes and codes (stereotypical ideas about the Asian appearance of Kazakhs), which coexist without conflict in the artistic picture of the world of Vasilyev. As a result, a poetic picture of the world, unique in aesthetics, enriched with the paradigms of two different cultures, which is the property of the Russian cultural space, appears.

God, Evil, Freedom. Reception and Interpretation of Dostoevsky in Luigi Pareyson and his Heirs

The essay aims to focus on reception and interpretation of Dostoevsky in the thought of Luigi Pareyson (1918-1991) and his heirs, who have developed a deep and original theoretical reading of Dostoevsky's work, able to bring out not only its ethical stance, but most of the essential aspects of his thought, and to investigate its current relevance. The reflection of Pareyson – who promoted the introduction of Dostoevsky's thought into the academic circles of Turin, being convinced that philosophy cannot avoid confronting the issues it explores – consists of three main moments: the experience of good and evil, the experience of freedom and the experience of God. Starting from consideration of Dostoevsky's characters as ideas, Pareyson proposes a new and coherent philosophical interpretation of his work, which can undoubtedly be compared to those of Ivanov, Berdjaev, Evdomikov, Šestov. His observations around the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor and the "refutation of Ivan" – which, according to him, constitute the most significant and theoretically prolific moments of Dostoevsky's production – seem unaffected by the flow of time and could still represent a valuable and indispensable contribution to the understanding not only of the great Russian author, but of human nature itself.

On hate and the typology of the misfit in Dostoevsky’s and Salinger’s Works

As part of the death drive, hate, so prevalent in world literature as the natural state of so many characters, has led the creative spirits, preoccupied invariably with metamorphosis and ascension, to produce genuine masterpieces. Whether malignant or benign (socially justified), hate, along with its many shapes and forms, generates attitudes which characterize a fundamental concept in Dostoevsky’s fiction, namely the antihero. Displaying typical features that are traceable throughout literature from the great Russian author on, the character dominated by hate withdraws from the world, thus fueling his alienation.

The Power of Irony

The 1970s saw a mass exodus of younger, artistically ambitious directors from moviemaking for the big screen into TV. Among the beneficiaries of the new medium was Igor Maslennikov, who had struggled to establish himself as more than “promising.” Maslennikov’s TV adaptations of Sherlock Holmes rapidly made him one of the most famous filmmakers in the USSR. The main subject of this chapter, however, is an adaptation for “quality TV” of a different kind, The Queen of Spades, by Russia’s most famous writer, Alexander Pushkin. Where Maslennikov’s Conan Doyle adaptations were studiedly casual (The Hound of the Baskervilles is an exercise in playful eccentricity rather than a plunge into Victorian Gothic), his reworking of Pushkin went precisely in the other direction. This “hyperauthentic” interpretation of the Russian author sought to retain “every last comma” in the original, right down to scene-setting commentaries presented by an on-screen narrator. As this chapter argues, had it not been for the exceptionally vexed history of attempts to film The Queen of Spades (Maslennikov was the fourth director selected to make the movie), his “hyperauthentic” approach might have proved more controversial. Whichever way, the adaptation more closely resembles late modernist films of the era such as Eric Rohmer’s The Marquise of O than the conventional literary adaptations of the later Soviet era, which came from a tradition where reconstructing the source text was the accepted norm.

The motive of overcoming history and fate and the Buddhist worldview in A. L. Ivanchenko’s novel “Monogram” and Mo Yan’s “Tired of being Born and Dying”

The article analyzes the motives of overcoming history and fate in the novels by A. L. Ivanchenko “Monogram” and Mo Yan “Tired of Being Born and Dying” in the context of the Buddhist worldview of both authors. The images of the main characters, the chronotope, the themes and problems of the works are examined through the prism of the Buddhist attitudes presented in the books; and life strategies and escape strategies of the Russian and Chinese characters are compared. The reborn Ivanchenko and Mo Yan's characters overcome their karma and their family's karma by conquering affective conditions and coming to the end of the life cycle. They discover the conventional nature of a human's existence through the motif of mirroring (the Russian author) and proximity to the wildlife (the Chinese author). The protagonists in the Russian and Chinese novels are characterized by a complex structure of consciousness, which tends to multiply and reveal its illusory nature. Time in both novels is cyclical and virtually devoid of movement, despite the presence of the characters in the actual political history. The space of both books tends to turn into a myth, revealing images of eternity through the earthly specifics of the place: the heroine of “Monogram” is in the Buddhist “looking glass”, while the hero in “Tired of being born and dying” is in the manor, which is a model of mythological cosmos. The controversial history of China and Russia of the previous century, A. L. Ivanchenko and Mo Yan's political extremes become a starting point for unfolding the internal plot, the plot of the heroes' Buddhist transformation and finding their Buddhist peace.

Letter of King Hugh IV of Cyprus and its Interpretation in the 17th-Century Russian Literature

This article contains two sources concerning the history of Russia and Cyprus: an unknown and previously unpublished letter of King Hugh IV of Lusignan of Cyprus to Giovanna, Queen of Naples, and a work of an unknown Russian author of the seventeenth century about the victory of the Cypriot Christian army over the Turks. A textual and comparative analysis of both sources carried out in the article proves a borrowing of information by the Russian author from the letter of the Cypriot king. The work of the anonymous author is an almost liberal literary translation of Hugh’s letter. At the same time, the Russian translator did not borrow the plot of the letter directly, but most likely through later Cypriot literature, in which the story told by the Cypriot king was probably extremely popular. The events of the history of Cyprus of different times intertwine in the Russian text in order to show the heroic past of Cyprus. The Russian author dates his story to 552 and connects it with Emperor Justinian I, the most revered and heroic Byzantine ruler. He cannot separate the history of Cyprus from the history of Byzantium, just as the Cypriot and Greek-Byzantine authors of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries could not do it. However, both texts speak of Latin Crusaders, who are fighting against the Turks under the leadership of the King of Cyprus. The Russian author remains faithful to the Orthodox tradition of rejection of the idea of crusades and replaces the idea of martyrdom of a crusader in the name of the Lord with heroic battle scenes traditional for Russian literature. He acknowledges that warriors are fighting for the Christian faith and for the church but denies the idea of guaranteed salvation and eternal life for military feats. At the end of the article, the full text of the letter of Hugh IV of Lusignan based on a manuscript of the fifteenth century kept in the manuscript department of the Bavarian State Library is published.

“Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent in German-Speaking Countries

The article analyzes the reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Adolescent in German-speaking countries, covering the period from the first translations of the novel into German and the first reactions by writers, critics, and researchers to the present day. The material here analyzed (reviews, essays, prefaces to publications, and numerous reprints of The Adolescent throughout the 20th century, scientific articles, monographs) indicates a quite stable interest in this novel by German intellectuals. The available material shows that the recipients were somehow interested in all aspects of the novel, from its themes and main problems to the peculiarities of its poetics. The analysis and the evaluation of the novel are usually carried out in direct connection with the writer’s life, his worldview, religious and aesthetic beliefs, and consider the cultural context of his era. The article shows how the novel was differently received at different times, as well as the connections with ideological and individual peculiarities, due to the specific task that the recipient set himself. The common denominator can be found in the recognition of The Adolescent as one of the most famous novels of Dostoevsky (as it is always considered as one of the “five great novels”, or “Pentateuch”); however, it is also true that The Adolescent presents less value and popularity than Dostoevsky’s other novels, as it is proved by the smaller quantity of research about it. Nevertheless, The Adolescent receives well-deserved recognition to this day not only as a relevant work of the famous Russian author but also for the experimental, modernist nature of its artistic structure, thereby consolidating the canonical significance of the novel in the European literary process of the 21st century.

Active processes in Russian author lexicography

The active processes observed in modern Russian author lexicography are considered. A review of dictionaries and an analysis of scientific literature show that such processes include: the complication of the internal structure of the author lexicography, the modification of some traditional vocabulary genres, preparation of new types of author dictionaries, etc.

Эстэтыка i паэтыка «садысцкiх вершыкаў» у полiсiстэме сучаснай беларускай i замежнай паэзii

The article describes peculiar features of aesthetics and poetics of “sadistic verses” in the creative work of modern Austrian poet E. Yandle, Russian author A. Grygoriev and Belarusian masters of artistic word V. Zhybul and V. Burlak. Using the means of grotesque, carnivalization, illogic and black humour the authors show their protest against an excessive normativity and nihilistic pathos to modern reality with its standards, and create a peculiar lyrical hero – a weirdo, an eccentric person who falls into the chain of catastrophes, crashes and accidents.

Versification and Authorship Attribution

The technique known as contemporary stylometry uses different methods, including machine learning, to discover a poem’s author based on features like the frequencies of words and character n-grams. However, there is one potential textual fingerprint stylometry tends to ignore: versification, or the very making of language into verse. Using poetic texts in three different languages (Czech, German, and Spanish), Petr Plecháč asks whether versification features like rhythm patterns and types of rhyme can help determine authorship. He then tests its findings on two unsolved literary mysteries. In the first, Plecháč distinguishes the parts of the Elizabethan verse play The Two Noble Kinsmen written by William Shakespeare from those written by his coauthor, John Fletcher. In the second, he seeks to solve a case of suspected forgery: how authentic was a group of poems first published as the work of the nineteenth-century Russian author Gavriil Stepanovich Batenkov? This book of poetic investigation should appeal to literary sleuths the world over.