James McAuley’s Verse Collection Music Late At Night: Poems 1970-1973 and Georg Trakl’s Poetry

The article discusses James McAuley’s translations of the poems by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914), as well as the latter’s influence on McAuley’s own late verse in Music Late at Night: Poems 1970-1973. This is especially true of Trakl’s collection of verse Music in the Mirabell Garden translated by McAuley. Some of James McAuley’s early and later work also bears an indelible stamp of Trakl’s poetry.

Le sage et son mystique

The Sage and His Mystic. A Look at the Correspondence Between Henri Pourrat and Jan Čep Henri Pourrat (1887-1959) is inextricably linked to his region of Auvergne and his work as well as his personality have left an indelible mark there. Although his influence gradually faded away after the Second World War, it can be measured by a veritable mass of letters exchanged with countless correspondents. He enjoyed a reputation as a writer, the success of which was confirmed by the award of the Grand Prix du Roman de l’Académie Française to the whole of Gaspard des montagnes in 1931 and by the award of the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 1928. Jan Čep (1902-1974) was the translator of his works into the Czech language. Pourrat had sympathy for him because of the poetic inspiration that Čep drew from the same sources as him-self, that is, from the rustic world of the countryside, from its myths and legends. Pourrat perceived Čep as mystical because his work emanates from the deep metaphysical dimension. Faith thus plays the role of a bridge between the two men. For both of them it is the moving force in their lives. This is a full literary and spiritual contact that this article highlights.

Hamlet – A Never-Ending Story

This article fuses a survey of the play’s most important standard interpretations with those aspects which may be considered particularly fascinating about this text: the conflict of England’s catholic past with the rise of protestant culture in the early modern period; the meta-dramatic dimension of the play; the theatricality of Renaissance court life; the play’s reflection of the emerging modern subject triggered off by the rise of reformation discourse. To elucidate some aspects which tend to be overlooked in the scholarly discussion of Hamlet, the article will bring two important topics into focus: the courtly discovery of perspective and the dying Hamlet’s request to tell his story to the afterworld at the end of the play.

La tension est-ouest comme ressort dramatique chez deux écrivains francophones d’origine chinoise

Dans le présent article, nous nous proposons donc de définir en quels termes la relation « est-ouest » s’articule dans deux romans écrits par des écrivains francophones d’origine chinoise à la fin du XXe : Le Jeu de l’eau et du feu de Ya Ding (1990) et Le Dit de Tian-yi de François Cheng (1998). Dans les deux cas, l’expérience de la rencontre entre les cultures française et chinoise est un ressort entre les cultures française et chinoise est un ressort dramatique essentiel et crée dans la littérature créée en France un espace littérature spécifique, une sorte « d’entre-deux » que l’on peut considérer comme un sous-genre littéraire à part entière.

Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960) lettore di Stendhal e il pubblico della società di massa alle soglie della Terza epoca

Nella prefazione all’edizione italiana del Rosso e il nero di Stendhal (1913), Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960), il traduttore del romanzo, presenta alcune sue opinioni relative al necessario rinnovamento culturale e letterario che costituirà poi il suo Novecentismo, difeso nella rivista letteraria “900” (1926-1927). Il presente articolo esplora come Bontempelli, attraverso le osservazioni sulla vita di Stendhal e la tragica esperienza di Julien Sorel, traccia un parallelo implicito con il proprio momento storico, considerando il ruolo dello spirito rivoluzionario delle avanguardie in tale rinnovamento. Tuttavia, implica anche che ciò debba essere controbilanciato dall’idea classica di arte e letteratura, dove la tradizione è vista come un’intima e profonda continuità tra manifestazioni di inaspettata novità. Anche se Bontempelli simpatizzerà in seguito con il Futurismo italiano, è proprio tale equilibrio che rende la sua proposta culturale e letteraria per la “Terza Epoca”, il Novecentismo, unica nel panorama letterario italiano. Questo saggio considera i suoi scritti del 1913 nel contesto della società di massa emergente, e quindi gli aggiustamenti editoriali e linguistici che furono necessari per l’edizione, e li paragona contemporaneamente alle riflessioni bontempelliane fatte sul tema negli anni a seguire.

Ishiguro’s Japanese-English Identity and His Reception Internationally and in Slovenia

Kazuo Ishiguro is a British author of Japanese descent who has established himself globally as an award-winning writer of bestselling books. This article deals with the hybridity of the author, who is both Japanese and English, a popular writer who stirs reader emotions but is at the same time respected by critics. The article begins by addressing the ‘Japaneseness’ in Ishiguro’s work that is both obvious and skilfully concealed. In the second part, the article examines the reception of Ishiguro’s work by Slovenian readers and discusses potential reasons for their seeming lack of response.

The Genealogy of Civilization

Civilization is a concept that ontologically defines the individual and the communities in which it develops. The most global civilization is the one that has emerged in the West. Civilization is not something static, but an organism that draws its roots from the distant past. In this sense, it is fundamental to answer the question of what are the constitutive elements that define Western civilization. This question only makes sense if it is asked in a historical perspective. In this direction the Freemasonry, A Very Short Introduction is a crucial one. It presents the analysis revealing how the history of freemasonry is related to the evolution of Western identity. It has to be read in the light of Niall Ferguson’s monograph The West and the Rest. The present text does so. The book then brings to light the contribution of the brotherhood to the intellectual habitus of what is called the Judeo-Christian civilization, at the present time still predominant on the Planet. The intellectual apparatus of the Freemasonry, A Very Short Introduction permits to elucidate the history of the masonic movement and its influence on events that seem unconnected and coincidental. Thus, this article tries to explain certain historical turning points in South-Eastern Europe, precisely in the light of the masonic alliances, in particular the case of the Illyrian Provinces and the first Slovenian poet, Valentin Vodnik, and secondly, what concerns the emergence of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which the author of the article defines as the result of the masonic strategy (the Grand Lodge of France and the Grand Orient of France).

Responses to Gone with the Wind among Slovenians on the Other Side of the Atlantic

The article discusses the reception of the novel and the film Gone with the Wind in serial publications published by Slovenian immigrants in the United States of America. The analysis encompassed relevant articles that appeared in publications with different ideological orientations before the mid-1950s, i.e. until the onset of the modern African American civil rights movement. The reception by Slovenian Americans is compared with the contemporary general reception of the novel and the film in the United States. Taking the historical context into consideration, the article also endeavours to establish the reasons for the differences in the reception.

Moral Code of a Person

The paper reveals the moral code, extolled in the renowned Kipling’s poem “If” by means of cognitive interpretation. The author’s message containing his idea of moral code is unraveled in minimum meaningful spaces of the poem (usually one or two lines), which are analyzed in depth. Each space highlights the trajector features of character and the corresponding reference frames (domains), which serve as background for their understanding. The peculiarity of moral concepts consists in the fact that they are based on the evaluative component and therefore they form binary oppositions. The antagonist for the moral concept within such opposition serves as its benchmark, since the essence of a moral value is revealed only when it is contrasted to its opposite, therefore the paper makes an attempt of alignment trajector domains with the benchmarks. In order to delve into the Kipling’s understanding of moral code the distinguished ethical values were arranged in the form of field model. The nucleus of the model comprises most frequently actualized values from the moral code, while periphery includes values with lower rate of actualization. Along with cognitive analyses of Kipling’s moral doctrine the paper highlights the peculiarities of poetic narration, which include abstract dictum, use of subjunctive mood and symbolism. Particular attention is also paid to the use of personification and metaphor.

“I am not what I am”

The paper uses keyword analysis as the empirical basis for the characterization of Shakespeare’s character Iago from Othello, the Moor of Venice. The aim of the paper is to determine how Iago’s manner of speech reflects his deceitful and manipulative nature and how it differs from the speech-styles of non-deceitful prominent characters: Othello, Cassio, Roderigo, Desdemona and Emilia. Keywords for the chosen characters are based on the corpora of character speech and the Sketch Engine tool is used to process the data. The results are then interpreted and discussed on the basis of six interconnected points of discussion: focus, adjectives, use of the expression Moor, references to the handkerchief, poisoning-the-ears technique, and pronouns, all of which confirm that Iago’s manipulative nature is indeed evident in his speech and that there is a clear difference between his speech-style and the speech-styles of other, non-deceitful, prominent characters.