FINNISH AMERICAN IDENTITY AND STRATEGIES FOR ITS DETERMINATION IN FINNISH AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

The article focuses on one of the pressing problems of modern humanitarian knowledge - the problem of self-identification of hybrid cultures, in particular, the culture of the Finnish Americans. The ethnic diversity of the United States leads to a constant intersection of various cultures, giving rise to the uniqueness of contemporary American literary life. National, cultural, personal identity associated with the revision of the traditions that were assimilated in their diaspora acts as the main problem of multiculturalism - the ideology of plurality and diversity. Self-identification strategies may include the definition of one's religious, ethnic, gender determination. Very often, the community's collective trauma and collective memory of the historical past can act as a strategy. The main strategies of ethnic and cultural self-identification of Finnish American literature are represented by the collective memory, collective trauma, “Finnishness”, and the national Finnish epic “Kalevala”, which is used as a source of archetypal images and poetic imagination. Basing on a number of works by Finnish American writers of the second half of the 20 and 21 centuries in different genres (science fiction, historical novel, short stories), the article examines the creative application of the Finnish epic “Kalevala”, integrated into the experience of American existence as one of the main strategies for self-identification of its own culture, which is built on the dialogical interaction of the Anglo-Saxon and Finnish cultures. The article actualizes the problems of the interrelations of the two cultures, the transformation of archetypal images, the reflection of collective memory in the works of contemporary Finnish American writers.

Creativity and Receptivity in De Quincey's 1821 ‘Confessions’ and Baudelaire's 1860 Adaptation

The 1821 ‘Confessions’ is an oft-cited example of the Romantic association between creativity and drug use. However, upon closer inspection, De Quincey's memoir appears less concerned with questions of creativity than with questions of receptivity and interpretation. This sets him apart from otherwise similar authors of addiction with whom he is frequently conflated: from Coleridge, naturally, but also from Baudelaire, whose 1860 Les Paradis artificiels, ostensibly a translation of De Quincey's work, diverges considerably from its source material. Baudelaire, a poet, uses De Quincey as a starting point to investigate the effects of drug use on the poetic imagination. But De Quincey himself is less interested in the effects of opium on creativity than its effects on memory and the intellect. Differently from Les Paradis artificiels, his memoir is concerned from beginning to end with the capacity of the opium-eater to feel, to analyse, and to interpret – and not necessarily to create.

The Mythic Elements of Chinatown

In Chinatown, Jerry Goldsmith’s score negotiates conflicting senses of mythic atemporality and expressive immediacy. The score draws upon avant-garde sounds, a “presentist” gesture that allegorizes the film’s tale of corruption for the world of the seventies, negating the “period” quality associated with genre pastiche. At the same, a jazz-inflected main theme and director Roman Polanski’s neoclassicist formalism balance seventies allegory with a sense of “pastness.” The tension between these two dimensions of the score suggests a mythic suspension of temporality, whereas the elemental connotations of musical timbre (water, earth) convey the film’s atmosphere of paranoia with discomforting immediacy. Drawing upon philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s work on the phenomenology of elemental images within the poetic imagination, this chapter attempts to understand musical timbre as a form of mythic immanence that allows us imaginative access to modernity’s terrors, whose actuality we must wrestle with in order to claim a position of ethical engagement.

Imaginação poética e técnica neobarroca no romance A serviço del-Rei, de Autran Dourado / Poetic Imagination and Neo-Barroque Procedures in the Novel A serviço del-Rei, Written by Autran Dourado

Resumo: O presente estudo consiste em uma leitura crítica de A serviço del-Rei, de Autran D/ourado, contemplando o caráter metaficcional da mediação narrativa e a formulação de um alter ego do autor. Além desses pontos, recebe destaque o diálogo que o volume estabelece com outras obras do escritor mineiro e da literatura ocidental a partir da composição de metáforas. A fim de cumprir a finalidade a que se propõe, a pesquisa tem como fundamento teórico os estudos sobre metáfora e imaginação poética de Philip Wheelwright (1968) e Gaston Bachelard (1990, 2001, 2002), e as reflexões sobre a ficção do século XX que Haroldo de Campos (1972) e Severo Sarduy (1972) denominam neobarroca.Palavras-chave: Autran Dourado; ficção brasileira; metáfora; imaginação; neobarroco.Abstract: The ongoing work aims at presenting a critical reading of A serviço del-Rei, written by Autran Dourado. Throughout the analysis, we focus on the metafictional characteristics of the narrative status as well as on some formulation of the author’s alter ego and on the dialogue established by the volume with other works also written by Dourado. Regarding the metaphorical construction, another relevant connection is with Western literature. In order to follow the purpose of this research on the topic, we rely on Philip Wheelwright’s studies and Gaston Bachelard’s thoughts about metaphor and poetic imagination. In addition, we consider Haroldo de Campos and Severo Sarduy’s reflections on Neo-Baroque tendencies of the twentieth century.Keywords: Autran Dourado; Brazilian fiction; metaphor; imagination; neo-barroque.

Liberation, Reconciliation and Peace: Reading Samih-al-Qasim as a Palestinian Resistance Poet

This paper aims to study Samih al-Qasim as a Palestinian resistance poet and to analyze his act of resistance against the Zionist agenda, his poetic imagination about Palestine, and the impact of colonization over the land. The paper also discusses Al-Qasim’s optimistic thoughts about the future of Palestine and the possible solutions for the Palestinian historical issue. A critical analysis of Samih al-Qasim’s resistance poetry is presented, focusing on his response to the Israeli narrative regarding Palestine. Through his poems, al-Qasim asserts and justifies the Palestinian cause. His poetry is counter-narrative, embodying considerable resilience and emitting rays of hope.

Other Worlds

Chapter 4 turns from social fictions to fictive renderings of the wide and variegated world of trade. Early modern merchandise mirrored—and fueled—the poetic imagination. In turn, poets conjured fantastic visions of the world structured by trade. Ben Jonson’s Volpone exemplifies the period association of circulating commodities with poetic creativity: between world and word. Yet the play, remarkably, lacks debt relations. Decades later, Jonson revisits the relationship between word and world in his late, strange The Magnetic Lady, where credit takes center stage. The play’s figure of commerce, Moth Interest, is a moneylender whose verbal and imaginative capacity marks him as an heir of Jonson’s Volpone but renders him out of place in an economy increasingly oriented towards abstract capital and away from tangible wealth. Reading this play alongside tables of compound interest and tables of logarithms, the chapter argues that the play represents a world turning toward the abstract and numerical, and away from the verbal and material. It thus signals an end to the fictions of credit that had animated the Shakespearean stage: fictions that were fundamentally local and dialogic, developed in the interplay of artifice and interpretation.

Żywioł ziemi jako siła poezjotwórcza w wybranych utworach Eugeniusza Tkaczyszyna-Dyckiego

The article is an interpretation of works by Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki focused on the earth element as a poetic force. The motif of the stone is realized in this poetry as the image of the element, referring to the perception of existence in its cosmic and geological forms, as well as in the concrete and local form of the Bruśnie stone. This allows to characterize the poetic imagination of Tkaczyszyn-Dycki as both inspired by the material properties of stone, as well as the culture and history of Lubaczowszczyzna. The poet can be characterized as creatively transforming the cultural, ecological and geological landscape of an autobiographical site.

Murilo Mendes, a disciplina do indisciplinado

With the rebelliousness characteristic of his self-description as an “experimental youth,” Murilo Mendes creates a critical distance between his poetic consciousness and his liberty of action. With the term, he retrospectively characterizes his entire literary production, from the poetry of the 1930s to the 1960s and 70s. To be indisciplined is to challenge norms and introduce thematic and graphic innovations, such as linguistic play, kitsch, graffiti, miniaturization and new tendencies of visual arts and electronic communications. Murilo is always attentive to the independence of the word and the musicality of poetry. Indiscipline is his self-described source of expression and method, thus a discipline in reverse that motives his poetic imagination