THE PHENOMENON OF DISRUPTED COMMUNICATION IN THE NOVEL “EFFI BRIEST” BY THEODOR FONTANE AND IN THE FILM ADAPTATION BY RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER: SPEECH AND GESTURE

The subject of this article’s comparative intermedial analysis is the phenomenon of disrupted communication in the novel by the German writer Theodor Fontane “Effi Briest” (1895) and in the film adaptation of this work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder “Fontane Effi Briest” (1974). The article consists of five parts: 1) introduction; 2) analysis of dialogues in Fontane’s novel; 3) description of the means of creating the effect of disrupted communication in Fassbinder’s film; 4) comparative analysis of some fragments of two works by the method of close reading; 5) conclusions. Methodologically, the research is based on the achievements of the theory of communication, carpalistics, comparative and intermedial approaches to the study of film adaptations. The main point of the article is that the effect of disrupted communication, which is observed in numerous dialogues of Fontane’s novel, is also created by visual means in Fassbinder’s film, among which a significant place is occupied by a gesture. The gesture of turning away deserves special attention: the characters of the film turn away from each other, turn their backs to the interlocutor and the viewer, turn to their reflection. The unconventionality and intensity of such gestures accentuate the problematic nature of communication between the characters. This structure, peripheral in Fontane’s work, becomes central in the film of Fassbinder, grasping the viewers’ attention. In this regard, the article adds to a traditional discussion about the hierarchical relationship between a literary text and its film adaptation.

“TREES SWING WITHOUT WIND”: A RECEPTIVE AND INTERTEXTUAL GESTURE BY DENIS TRETYAKOV (“THE CHURCH OF CHILDHOOD”)

The article is based on the hypothesis of Yu. Kristeva on gesture as a semiotic text. The text of Denis Tretyakov’s song “Trees (Trees swing without wind)” is considered as a receptive and intertextual gesture. Оbservations made in this article offer the key to this text / gesture: step by step reconstruction of its creative communication with fragments of religious and mystical teachings (Kabbalah, Crowlianism, etc.), literary and journalistic works (“Apollo Bezobrazov” by B. Poplavsky, “Trees took the form of wind” by W.S. Burroughs). As a result, it is established that all the problematic and thematic fields and connections of the text are transferred to the cosmic sphere, and this allows its author to create a universal ontological model of the world.

EXPERIENCE OF READING GABRIELA KLEIN’S BOOK “PINA BAUSCH. THE ART OF TRANSLATION”

This article reviews a book by the German art historian and dance researcher Gabriele Klein, Pina Bausch. The Art of Translation, one of the first monographs on Pina Bausch to be published in Russian (see also the book published by Garage in 2021). The key concept of the book is the praxeology of translation, which addresses not the subject of translation, but the way it is performed. Thus translation is understood in a broad way as the transfer of the Wuppertal Dance Theatre event into the languages of the audience and critics, into other technical media, into other cultural and historical contexts. Particular attention is paid to the mechanisms of this transfer. The author of this book does not analyze the dramatic narrative of dance, as it is common in theatre studies, but explores dance as gesture delivered with the help of the latest technologies.

“CRAZY ZOOM MAKES EVERYONE TO FIND HIMSELF IN A DOUBLE ROLE OF A SPECTATOR AND AN ACTOR”

Oksana Bulgakowa is a researcher of visual culture, a film critic, a screenwriter, a director, and a professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. She has taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Leipzig Graduate School of Music and Theater, the Free University of Berlin, Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley. Author of the books “FEKS: Die Fabrik des exzentrischen Schauspielers” (1996), “Sergei Eisenstein – drei Utopien. Architekturentwürfe zur Filmtheorie” (1996), “Sergej Eisenstein. Eine Biographie” (1998), “The Gesture Factory” (2005, a renewed edition to be published by NLO publishing house in 2021), “The Soviet hearing eye: cinema and its sensory organs” (2010), “The Voice as a cultural phenomenon”(2015), “SINNFABRIK/FABRIK DER SINNE” (2015), “The Fate of the Battleship: The Biography of Sergei Eisenstein” (2017). Author of the network projects “The Visual Universe of Sergei Eisenstein” (2005), “Sergei Eisenstein: My Art in Life. Google Arts and Culture” (in collaboration with Dietmar Hochmuth, 2017–2018), and the films “Stalin – eine Mosfilmproduktion” (in collaboration with Enno Patalas, 1993), “Different Faces of Sergei Eisenstein” (in collaboration with Dietmar Hochmuth, 1997). In this issue of P&I, Oksana Bulgakowa talks about medial giants and midgets, obscene gestures of Elvis Presley, “voice-over discourse” of TV presenters, and the birth of Eisenstein’s “Method” from psychosis and neurosis. Interview by Ekaterina Maksimova. Photo by Dietmar Hochmuth.

MARK FISHER: FREE CRITICISM AS GESTURE

The review analyzes the Russian edition of Mark Fisher’s essay collection (1968–2017) “The Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures”, translated by Maria Ermakova, 2021. The theoretical and biographical premises that make up the critical toolkit of Mark Fisher are introduced. It helps to distinguish his essays from a number of similar ones. The author analyzes the formation of the phenomenon of Fisher’s popularity as a culture critic in an intellectual environment as well as structural and symbolic features that form an integral unity of heterogeneous texts in the essay collection.

THE GENEALOGY OF GESTURE: FROM KIRA MURATOVA TO RENATA LITVINOVA

The long-term creative collaboration between Kira Muratova and Renata Litvinova began with the film “Uvlechen’ya” (“Pastimes”, 1994), in which Litvinova took part both as an actress and a screenwriter. Since then, Litvinova has become one of the most striking personifications of Muratova’s ornamental film style, which brings about a specific regime of visibility by foregrounding the eccentric corporeality of non-professional actors, or gesturality as a category of bodily and speech performance. This article focuses on the primary scene of gestural genealogy linking the two directors: thus, the pathologist’s gesture from nurse Lilya’s monologue, written and recited by Litvinova in her inner eccentric manner in Muratova’s film, unfolds in a full-length film narration of “Rita’s Last Fairy Tale” (2012), with a phantasmagorical plot and spectacular visuals characteristic of Litvinova’s directorial style. The article addresses, on the one hand, this gesture, expressing concisely the manifold and bidirectional relation between Muratova’s and Litvinova’s films, and, on the other, discusses possible ways of theoretical conceptions of gesture in text and cinema. Gesture is conceived of as a borderline figure of speech and/or of body, aimed at an absent object, whereby the grasping function of the hand makes gestures to a figure of metalepsis which, translated into the language of cinema, emphasises the haptic character of the image. The missing object around which gesticulation arises leads to a discussion of the problematic status of gesture as a sign as well as to the disturbed process of signification during its interpretation. Since gesture only indicates and signals but does not signify, one can speak of the semiotic function of monstration. A gesture appears as a monster in the literal sense of the word, that is, the one who shows itself and, in so doing, warns. Thus, using gestures, to some extent requires adopting the position of a monster – to designate by putting oneself on the show, by making oneself the object of spectacle. Both films and the figure of Litvinova therein are viewed through the prism of monstrosity of gesture and language – it is through the disjunction between showing and speaking that gesture becomes exposed as a pure medium.

THE CHARACTER CONFRONTING THE AUTOR: TOWARD THE ISSUE OF AN UNDESCRIBDED METALITERARY PLOT

The article examines a specific metaliterary motif of the confrontation between ‘the author’ and the character. In this motif, both ‘the author’ and the character are portrayed as characters of the plot of the fictional world. The article analyses the emergence of the motif in modernist literature which subverts the realist poetics of the author’s omniscience. The author of the article employs the term ruman to refer to the novel genre where the author and the character enjoy equal rights. The term was first introduced by Miguel de Unamuno whose Mist (1914) was the first example of this version of metareflexive narrative. The article traces the development of the motif in modernist, postmodernist, and recently published contemporary novels. The differences in depicting of the relationship between the author and the character are explicated by reconstruction of the aesthetic and philosophical context of the time and the polemics with the dominating concepts of the Subject. Additionally, the article examines variations of the motif both in highbrow and mass literature focusing on such rumanistic pieces as novels by K. Vaginov, J. Fowles, V. Pelevin, L. Binet.

WOMEN’S WRITING AND WOMEN’S FREEDOM: ABOUT TOLSTOY’S NOVEL “FAMILY HAPPINESS”

The article is devoted to aspects of women’s writing and women’s freedom in Leo Tolstoy’s novel “Family Happiness” (1859), which is studied by researchers widely, including the context of the “women’s freedom”, despite the fact that it is not solved in it “progressively”. Tolstoy does not justify the feminist expectations of the reader, whose attention is attracted not so much by the question of the social status of women in a patriarchal society or in the big world (although this topic is also being significantly rethought), as by the path of self-knowledge that runs through experience and understanding the essence of love, flirt, and happiness. Each of the spouses must go this way by oneself; only then will the broken bonds of marriage be sealed again, and the spouses will find unity in real “family happiness” – children. Such a result contradicts what the gender approach, sometimes attributed to the works of the classics. The main subject of the narrative – the question of happiness – is considered ambiguously, in the conflict of male and female writing: both ideologically (in reasoning) and metaphorically (in so-called “lyrical digressions”). The narrative, ideological layers, and the layer of imagery of Tolstoy’s novella cannot be distinguished: the plot twists turn out to be in relation to the images of nature and demonstrate the evolution of the heroine’s understanding of happiness.

POETRY BY DZIGA VERTOV AND ANATOLY MARIENHOF: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

The article focuses on a comparative analysis of poems written by Dziga Vertov and Anatoly Marienhof. Despite the fact that the two poets were not acquainted and there is no documentary evidence of their mutual influence, they share a number of similarities in the development of their lives and artistic endeavours, in which the cultural and historical context of their era was reflected. The authors’ early writings share a common cutting technique. Montage became the main technique for describing both the rapidly changing reality of the post-revolutionary era and the fragmentation of the world and consciousness. That explains the duality of the protagonist and the appearance of the image of a buffoon. The similarity between Marienhof’s early poems and Vertov’s ones is also revealed in the predominant tragicomic tone, which is conditioned by the perception of the Revolution as a traumatic experience. Similarity can also be traced in the composition of images: it is cutting again that they use while organizing their metaphors (separate images are combined by thematic or associative links). In later works Marienhof and Vertov reevaluate their personal histories, using the antithesis of “now” and “then”, which shows a tragic turn in the lives of both artists. Apart from that, they turn from avant-garde poetic forms to more traditional ones. Thus, the article explores important stylistic, ideological, and biographical correlations in the work of two Russian avant-gardists.

OEDIPUS PLOT: PARADOXES OF IDENTIFICATION

This article deals with the plot structure of the Oedipus myth. From the set of known sources we select a series of elements that form a plot representing an object of our analysis. The author takes into account the following elements: 1) piercing of Oedipus’s ankles and the subsequent displacement of Oedipus to the mountain Cithaeron, 2) the deadly clash between Oedipus and Laius, 3) the riddle of the Sphinx and the Oedipus’s answer, 4) the suicide of the Sphinx, 5) the accession of Oedipus to the throne in Thebes, 6) Oedipus’s discovery of his own origins, 7) the suicide of Jocasta, 8) the self-blinding of Oedipus. In the plot there is a series of correspondences related to the number 3. In the riddle of the Sphinx that Oedipus solves, 3 stages of human life are indicated: infancy, maturity, old age. In the Sphinx, 3 components are integrated in one whole: “man + lion + bird”. Oedipus commits murder in the point where 3 roads meet. It is shown that incest and clash with the unrecognized father are expressed in the myth in the framework of such a ternary structure. The relevant elements that normally are separated from each other, merge in one point that is nothing else than a singular transformation. The other cases consist in mapping a common human history (that is continual by its very meaning) to a discrete sequence of three phases in an individual story of Oedipus. We also discuss some aspects of the Sphinx riddle that were not given a proper attention before. The feature with respect to which different stages of human life are classified, is related to legs. In turn, this motif is correlated with the presence or absence of footing. Deprivation of it is acts as a source of danger. In turn, this motif is correlated with the presence or absence of footing. Deprivation of it is acts as a source of danger. Both the contents of the riddle and the process of asking and guessing can be correlated with further investigation carried out by Oedipus.