On the life and artistic activity of Khurshidbanu Natavan

Khurshidbanu Natavan is remembered in the history of Azerbaijani literature and culture as a lyric poet and artist. He began his artistic career in the 1950s, when most of the poems he wrote under the name “Khurshid” disappeared, only a small part has survived. From 1870, the poetess took the nickname “Natavan” (helpless, weak, sick) and created ghazals with deep content. His poems were spoken during his lifetime and spread among his contemporaries in the form of manuscripts. As it is known from his pseudonym, Khurshidbanu came to our poem with an anxious inspiration and a complaining spirit. As in Fuzuli, in his lyrics, joy and sorrow are united. Standing behind these contradictions, the poet sought the deep philosophical meaning of social contradictions, tried to reveal the essence of the causes of justice and injustice, happiness and misery. Realizing that there is a big gap between his dreams and the realities of life, Natavan could not reconcile with the laws of society and nature, nor with creation. Key words: Natavan, selfless mother, unfortunate woman, poem, ghazal, complaint about the cycle, literary meeting

The Lyric Mode

Dante is before all other things a lyric poet and this chapter explores his commitment to lyric from his earliest compositions to the Commedia. For Dante, lyric is the natural mode for expressing desire and is particularly marked by pleasure. Indeed ‘modo’ is the word he uses in both Vita Nova and Commedia to represent the indissoluble bond between love and speech that animates the desiring subject and leads to the production of poetry. This chapter traces the significance of this word in the Occitan and early Italian love lyric, especially in its associations with measure (misura) and desire’s tendency to transgress it. It considers how the lyric mode is employed to convey the intensity of the love experience and the porous nature of the desiring body, especially in Dante’s relationship to Beatrice and as expressed in flexible and expansive forms of textuality that resist closure.

Early Italian Lyric

In order to examine the relationship between Dante and the early Italian lyric, this chapter focuses on two key moments of Dante’s rewriting of his own story as lyric poet: first in the Vita nuova, which traces the relationship to fellow poet Guido Cavalcanti, and second in the encounters with Bonagiunta da Lucca and Guido Guinizzelli in Purgatorio XXIV and XXVI, which redefine the roles of the major poets of the past generation. These passages are less ambiguous than has often appeared: they doubtless intend to promote Dante’s poetic choices and literary authority, but they also testify to objective developments in the history of vernacular love poetry.

The Role of Michaś Skobla in the Belarusian Literary Process

The many-sided work of Michaś Skobla (b. 1966) takes a variety of forms, including that of prose writer, critic, editor, anthologist, parodist, translator, radio correspondent and lyric poet. The article aims to outline the main features of his writing, with particular emphasis on his parodies and lyric poetry, in this way showing his central role in the Belarusian literary process of today.

“A Healer and a Wandering Poet”: The Spells, Incantations and Prayers of Varvara Malakhieva-Mirovich

В статье рассматривается та часть поэтического наследия Варвары Малахиевой-Мирович, которая представляет собой стихотворные тексты, претендующие, по замыслу автора, на полную функциональную тождественность с реальными восточнославянскими заговорами и заклинаниями. При этом устанавливается, что Варвара Малахиева-Мирович позиционировала себя не только как лирического поэта, сохраняющего верность художественным канонам Серебряного века, но и как прямого наследника «псковских кудесников», практиковавших когда-то различные виды магических практик и обладавших ярко выраженными сверхъестественными способностями. Схожая антиномичность является регулятивным принципом всего творчества Варвары Малахиевой-Мирович, нейтрализующего традиционные оппозиции низменного и возвышенного, устного и письменного, фольклорного и книжного, интуитивного и дискурсивного. Стихотворные заговоры Варвары Малахиевой-Мирович тяготеют к единому сюжету (движение протагониста к состоянию целительного сна), оперируют устойчивыми формулами народной магической поэзии, обнаруживают близость к жанру колыбельной песни и активно используют образную систему русского символизма. Вместе с тем в художественном сознании Варвары Малахиевой-Мирович стихотворные заговоры достаточно четко отделены от таких смежных жанровых форм, как молитвы и заклинания. Именно заклинания в творческом наследии Варвары Малахиевой-Мирович минимально соприкасаются с фольклором и максимально приближаются к символистским литературным опытам. Однако и в тех случаях, когда словесные магические эксперименты Варвары Малахиевой-Мирович мало напоминают воссоздание аутентичных заговорных текстов, они в полной мере сохраняют суггестивность и способность оказывать фасцинативное воздействие. This article examines the poetic legacy of Varvara Malachieva-Mirovich (1869-1954) and in particular the poetic texts that she intends as fully identical in terms of functionality with actual Eastern Slavic spells and incantations. At the same time, the study establishes that Malakhieva-Mirovich positioned herself not only as a lyric poet who remained faithful to the artistic canons of the Silver Age but also as direct heir to the “Pskov magicians” who once practiced various types of magic rituals and were said to possess definite supernatural abilities. A similar antinomy serves as the regulatory principle of Malachieva-Mirovich’s entire oeuvre, which nullifies traditional oppositions such as low and sublime, spoken and written, folkloric and bookish, intuitive and discursive. Malachieva-Mirovich’s poetic spells tend to a single plot (the protagonist’s movement to a state of healing sleep); operate with stable formulas of magic folk poetry; reveal an affinity to the genre of lullaby; and actively use the figurative system of Russian Symbolism. At the same time, in the poet’s artistic consciousness poetic spells are clearly distinguished from such related genre forms as prayers and incantations. Malachieva-Mirovich’s incantations have minimal contact with folklore and come as close as possible to Symbolist literary efforts. However, even in cases where the poet’s verbal magic experiments do not resemble authentic spells, they fully retain their suggestiveness and ability to exert a fascinating (enchanting) effect.

Coral Reef Degradation Due to ‘Ship Grounding’ in Indonesia: Case Study of Ship Aground in Bangka-Belitung Waters by Mother Vessel MV Lyric Poet

HighlightDamage to coral reefs by ship aground is twice the area of a football fieldFound four zones of damage including runoff, dune, blow and dispersalMortality of live coral and other benthic biota ranges from 75-100% in the affected locationThe form of damaged live coral growth is predominantly slow growing.Eight hard coral species were found on the IUCN-Redlist list with a vulnerable status.AbstractShip grounding on coral reefs often results in physical and biological damage, including dislodging and removal of corals from reefs, destruction of coral skeletons, erosion and removal of sediment deposits, and loss of three-dimensional complexity. Indonesia, as an archipelagic country, is very vulnerable to various pressures; for example, the case of ship grounding is a great concern of scientists, managers, divers, and sailors themselves. Most of the damage is very severe. The purpose of the research conducted is to identify the condition of the live coral cover, mapping the type and extent of coral reef damage, affected coral species, their conservation status, and to quantify the extent of the area of coral reef damage. Measuring the extent of damage to coral reef ecosystems using the fishbone method, while the level of damage and its impact was measured using the Underwater Photo Transect (UPT) and belt transect method. The event of the grounding of the MV Lyric Poet on the Bangka Waters, Bangka-Belitung Province, has caused damage to the coral reef ecosystem. There are four damage zones identified, i.e., trajectory, mound, propeller, and dispersion zone. Corals are damaged with a total area of 13.540m2; equivalent to twice that of an international football field. Diversity of hard coral found as many as 49 species included in the CITES-Appendix II. A total of eight protected species are included in the IUCN Red List with extinction-prone status.

Narrative and Lyric Levels in Catullus

This chapter revisits the challenges of thinking about narrative metalepsis in lyric contexts by considering the diverse corpus of Catullus. Catullus’ most obviously narrative poem—poem 64—offers rich possibilities for metaleptic readings, and the chapter particularly investigates the ways in which the boundary between the poem’s outer narrative and its inset, ostensibly ecphrastic story is navigated by two powerfully subjective presences, the narrator and Ariadne, by such means as apostrophe and mise en abyme. Yet Catullus is typically classified as a lyric poet, and the chapter also examines poems that fuse the narrative and lyric modes, looking at potentially hymnic addresses to divinities across the corpus, and the tension in poem 68 between, on the one hand, the tendency to establish a whole series of nested narrative levels through ring composition and simile, and, on the other, the pull of the lyric mode towards a unified poetic ‘present’. There is a particular emphasis on the interaction among speech acts in the first, second and third person. Catullus himself appears in all three ‘persons’ as a character in the corpus, but is also a Roman author in whose real existence we believe, and the chapter concludes by returning against this background to Genette’s concern that metalepsis prompts us to ask whether we may belong to some narrative—as Catullus indeed does.

Canzoniere Francesco Petrarch in a new translation by Vladimir Maransman

The review presents a new book by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Education Vladimir Georgievich Maransman — a translation from Italian of the Book of Songs (Canzoniere) by Francesco Petrarch. This translation is a real event in the history of modern Russian culture, since it turned out to be one of the first full translations into Russian of the main book of the great Italian poet of the Renaissance, the first lyric poet in the history of European poetry — Petrarch, made by one translator. The translation was carried out taking into account the long tradition of Russian translations of Petrarch poetry and has a significant amount of author's text (poet's property). The translation uses the original method of V. G. Marantsman, already used in his previous work — the full translation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, and which has been recognized by many readers and critics; a method of conveying the stylistic features of Italian poetry of the era of its occurrence by similar means of the Russian language.

The Race for Hafiz: Scholarly and Popular Translations at the Fin de Siècle

The great Persian lyric poet Hafiz was first translated into English by Sir William Jones in the 1780s. In the course of the nineteenth century many further translations would appear, initially intended for the use of oriental scholars and students of the Persian language, but increasingly also for the general reading public. The paraphrasers or ‘popularizers’ who devised the latter category of translation competed with professional scholars to shape the dissemination and popular perception of Persian poetry. Owing to a variety of factors, the middle of the nineteenth century saw a marked decline in the number of new Hafiz translations, and it is not until 1891 that a complete edition of Hafiz's works finally appeared in English. This led to an unusual situation, particular to Britain, in which scholars (Edward H. Palmer, Henry Wilberforce-Clarke, Gertrude Bell), and popularizers (Richard Burton, Herman Bicknell, Justin McCarthy, Richard Le Gallienne, John Payne) all jostled to fill the vacuum created by the absence of a definitive version. Their competition created, in short order, a diversity of versions presented to consumers, which allowed Hafiz's influence to be felt in twentieth-century poetry untrammelled by the impress (as became the case with Omar Khayyam) of one dominant translator. While the refraction of Hafiz through the biases and predispositions of multiple translators has been regarded as hopelessly distorting by Julie Scott Meisami, I argue instead that it highlights lyric, in the richness and diversity characteristic of Hafiz, as the Persian poetic mode which has been more influential on English writing and yet the most difficult to categorize and integrate. Lastly, by paying heed to the popular transmission of Hafiz in English, we might better understand the reception of Persian poetry in its generic, rather than only its formal character.

Giacomo da Lentini

Giacomo da Lentini was the central figure in the formation of the Sicilian school of poetry in the early 13th century at the court of Frederick II. He is plausibly considered to be the inventor of the sonnet and his poetic corpus of sixteen canzoni, twenty-two sonnets, and a discordo amounts to by far the most numerous of any poet associated with Frederick’s court. We might thus say that he is the first major lyric poet of the Italian vernacular tradition. Giacomo demonstrates the influence of the earlier Occitan poetry of courtly love in his borrowings of themes, technical vocabulary, and metrical forms; he also innovates considerably in experimenting with the new sonnet form and crafts a refined poetry that actively distills the intellectual culture of Frederick’s court by way of similes that open up his love poems to science, philosophy, and politics. Giacomo’s influence on the subsequent developments of Italian poetry can be widely felt and perhaps most easily perceived in Dante Alighieri’s mention of him as an illustrious poet in his treatise on vernacular eloquence, De vulgari eloquentia, as well as his occupying the prime position of founding father in the poetic genealogy of Purgatorio 24.