Who Understand to Cry of the Characters – for the Interpratation of Several Miniatures of Givi Margvelashvili

What creates Givi Margvelashvili's work? "In the language of aesthetics, this is called an artistic game, in the language of the heart, it creates an boundless thirst for goodness, which, if it is not satisfied in real life, if it can not eliminate violence here, spreads its wings in the world of books" (Margvelashvili 2018: 18). Changing the conditioned story with a literary game - this is the starting concept of the German-speaking Georgian author and "at the core of his poetics is an attempt to return man to his original, fundamental state - the openness of the world," writes Margvelashvili's book "Life in Ontotext" Das Leben im ") German editor" (Margvelashvili 2018: 11).Givi Margvelashvili is a victim of two dictatorships, Nazism and Communism. He started writing at the age of 30, when after leaving the Saxenhausen concentration camp, he found himself in a completely foreign environment, in his historical homeland, and his aunt's family was connected to his old life with only German. Later, when writing about his own identity, the writer always emphasized the fact that the German language is his linguistic homeland (emphasis add lexo doreuli). "From the past, only language was selected for him, language was a living part of a deprived life, which no one could take away except time. At times, however, his memory and talent met with unprecedented resistance. This is how it became a living island of the German language in the Georgian environment and in a huge prison, on this doubly lonely island the Georgian-German built a huge oil rig of freedom with ascetic loneliness and hard work ”(Margvelashvili 2018: 216).As we know, the writer was sick earlier, the boy brought up under the supervision of German nannies did not understand the Georgian language and essentially this aspect of his life should have become a feature of fate - "he was not bothered by a wordless, internal deal with censorship. Locked in complete solitude with his characters, unknown, he experienced the joy that comes with complete freedom of expression: he wrote as he wanted ”(Margvelashvili 2018: 218). On the one hand, working on German-language literature, and on the other hand, the literary disagreement that Margvelashvili showed against the current regime, increasingly formed the basis for saying that "language and theme choose the writer" (emphasis added Naira Gelashvili) and not vice versa. That was why his characters, the inhabitants of his inaccessible book world, had to meet the reader in a new reality.This other reality was the book "New America" ​​discovered by Givi Margvelashvili (emphasis added by Naira Gelashvili). He is the hero of this book and he is looking forward to the visit of a real person (reader) between the two covers, he even says: "Once the door of your house is opened ... and write a poem of your own" (Margvelashvili 2018: 110). And thus in a one-room apartment the lone author creates a new reality in which the stories take on a grotesque look and the reader is also entangled in a dizzying labyrinth of fantasy.

An Analysis of World Protests 2006–2020

This section of the book “World Protests: A Study of Key Protest Issues in the 21st Century” analyzes in-depth 2809 protests that occurred between 2006 and 2020 in 101 countries covering over 93% of the world population. This section focuses on: (i) major grievances and demands driving world protests, such as the failure of political representation/systems, anti-austerity, and for civil rights and global justice; (ii) who was demonstrating; (iii) what protest methods they used; (iv) who the protestors opposed; (v) what was achieved; and (vi) violence and repression in terms of arrests, injuries, and deaths.

Selected Key Issues in World Protests

This section of the book “World Protests: A Study of Key Protest Issues in the 21st-Century” analyzes: (i) trends such as the rise of populism and radical right protests; (ii) anti-corruption and women’s protests; (iii) the link between inequality and protests, as well as the link between protests and perceptions that governments serve only the few; (iv) the Arab and the Latin American Springs; and (v) the link between protestors’ policy demands, Human Rights and internationally agreed UN development goals, calling on governments to act on them.

Bookbinders in the Early Modern Venetian Book Trade

Bookbinders are still among the least known of the professions of the early modern Italian book trade, partly because they rarely signed their work. However, they had an undeniably fundamental role in the production and circulation of books (both manuscript and printed) across Italy, and especially in Venice, where the book trade was a particularly lively industry. In recent years, there has been a strong interest in early modern material culture but little attention has been paid to bookbinders, who quite literally shaped the materiality of books. This article looks at the scarcity of documentary sources on Venetian bookbinders between 1450 and 1630 both as a methodological challenge and as evidence of their role in local production and consumption of books. It explores both the lack of sources documenting the professional lives of binders, and sources traditionally underused in book history, to highlight the social lives of binders. Evidence of binders’ family finances, marriages, and social and geographical mobilities is used to identify their lower social standing in the early modern Venetian book world in comparison to booksellers, the overlapping of their professional roles, and the locations of binders’ workshops in the topography of the city.

“Book-Life” Metaphor in Medieval Literature and Russian Literature of First Half of 19th Century

The article deals with the semantics of the “book-life” metaphor. Variations in its lexical composition, changes in meaning are described using the material of medieval literature and Russian literature of the first half of the 19th century: on the example of N.M. Karamzin, N.M. Yazykov, P.A. Vyazemsky, A.S. Pushkin. The textual analysis carried out allows us to conclude that the most significant vital bibliometaphors for two cultural epochs were “the book-treasure of eternal life”, “book-world”, “life-edifying Scripture”; “Expense book of being”, “life is a book read a hundred times”, “novel is life”. They express a range of value judgments: in ancient Russian texts, the bibliometaphor ex-presses respectful admiration for the secrets of God’s creation. The axiological component of the vital metaphor of the 19th century is more varied: religious reverence is noticeable in it, indignation at the boredom of the “book of life,” an understanding of Life as an unfinished novel. The novelty of the conducted research lies in the fact that a spectrum of vital bibliometaphors, that nuances the meaning of the metaphor-invariant (“book-life”) is established. An appeal to the diachronic aspect makes it possible to more clearly notice the semantic shifts in the metaphorical language: in the 19th century the comprehension of fate as a “reading” of the Holy Book common to all is complemented by the metaphor of a personal “book of life”.

THE TOPOS HOME AS HETEROTOPY IN THE NOVEL BY M. PETROSYAN “THE HOUSE IN WHICH…”

The article is devoted to the study of the topos home as a stable image with spatial characteristics in the book by M. Petrosyan “House in Which ...”. The aim of the article is to identify the possibility of functioning of the topos home in the novel as a heterotopy, i.e. a space that is outside other places, but certainly interacts with them according to the principle of juxtaposition or opposition. To achieve the aim, a complex method was used, including structural-semiotic, mythological, cultural-historical methods, which made it possible to describe the structural and semantic features of the topos home (basic binary oppositions and metaphors that make up the core of the topos), as well as its role on the real, perceptual and conceptual levels of artistic space. The main results of the study include the following statements. The topos home in the book of M. Petrosyan is presented both as a place of action of the characters, as an anthropomorphized environment, and as a space of the author’s consciousness, and as an image-symbol, a space of memory. The concept of “house“ is associated with all aspects of human existence, and therefore the main oppositions that form the structure of the topos home in the novel reveal ontological, axiological, social, psychological, epistemological problems. The topos home approaches the topos world and the paradigm of its subtopos (world is a book, world is a temple, world is a garden, world is a person) and performs a world-modeling function that is actualized in the transitional periods of historical and cultural development. It functions as a heterotopy, overcoming the principle of binarity, suggesting the “opening of time” (a break with traditional, real time, the emergence of perceptual and mythological time), isolation and at the same time permeability of spaces (House, appearance, wrong side are only relatively closed and suggest the possibility of communication), which raises the question of the degree of reality or illusory nature of space through the creation of places-heteroclites (in the novel, this is the exterior, the wrong side, the forest, the mirror, human consciousness, etc.).

AI and Publishing

Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely seen as the most important technology of our time and has attracted a huge amount of interest regarding not only its technological capabilities but also its economic and ethical impact. It has, however, been less discussed with regard to the book world and publishing. AI is applicable to publishing at multiple levels, all of them significant. It could change the business-processing aspects of publishing; but, even more importantly, the latest advances in machine learning from the likes of Google and OpenAI demonstrate a powerful capacity to translate and even compose text. Publishing and publishing studies alike need to grapple with the implications of a world where machines as well as humans can produce the core product.

Programs about Books and Reading in Central Television

For a long time, various programs about books and reading appeared on TV and then disappeared. They were lost in the TV broadcasting and programs among other programs, cinema films and TV movies. And when programs were closed, they were quickly forgotten. The purpose of this article is to reveal all such TV programs. The author studied the period of more than 50 years. The article gives the names of TV shows about books and reading, belonging to certain channels, and the time of airing. As possible, the author discloses their intent, concepts, content and the names of TV presenters. The sources for the article were weekly bulletins about TV programs, and in the last 30 years — also articles, notes, interviews in professional and general periodicals.In Soviet times, there were TV programs “In the world of books”, “Bookshop”, “Reading circle”. In 1978—1979, the TV presenter of the “Reading circle” was N.M. Sikorsky, then Director of the V.I. Lenin State Library of the USSR. In post-Soviet Russia, there got more broadcasts of that kind. These were both educational programs (“Book yard”, “Graphoman”, “Exlibris”, “Book storehouse”) and numerous commercial ones (“Bookstore”, “Home library”, “Bibliomania”, “World of books with Leonid Kuravlev”, “Book news”, “Book world”). The author gives more details are tells about the program “Graphoman”, which was invented and presented by A.N. Shatalov, the poet, critic and publisher. The program originated in 1994 and was broadcast on various channels for more than 10 years. Programs of the recent years are “Book for breakfast”, “Various Readings”, “Words order”, “Figure of speech”, “Pro-Reading”, “Book measurement”, “What to read?”. For over half a century, television actively supported the initiators and creators of various programs that promoted books and reading. This activity has slightly declined in recent years. But viewers continue to learn from the TV screen about new books and watch events in the book industry.