Pub Date : 2022-12-27DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.4
Юлия Снежко
The article explores the specifics of the literary rhetoric of the “colonization” of the swamps of Western Siberia and oil. It shows how the attitude to the swamp space is constructed (through its abstraction, mapping and poetics of the straight line), how the differences between the substances of the swamp and oil are established (stickiness, viscosity, alluring, femininity), and the ways of constructing the collective Soviet subject (ideas of modernization, sublimation, hybridization of the language of the indigenous population and oil workers) are also investigated basing on Soviet prose of the 1960s–1980s. The article concludes about the dominant, mostly negative attitude towards the swamp (as opposed to oil), because of the instrumental approach to this landscape and predominant soviet discourse of progress.
{"title":"Dirt of the Swamp and Gold of the Oil: Strategies of the Soviet Literary “Colonization” of the Swamps of Siberia","authors":"Юлия Снежко","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.4","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores the specifics of the literary rhetoric of the “colonization” of the swamps of Western Siberia and oil. It shows how the attitude to the swamp space is constructed (through its abstraction, mapping and poetics of the straight line), how the differences between the substances of the swamp and oil are established (stickiness, viscosity, alluring, femininity), and the ways of constructing the collective Soviet subject (ideas of modernization, sublimation, hybridization of the language of the indigenous population and oil workers) are also investigated basing on Soviet prose of the 1960s–1980s. The article concludes about the dominant, mostly negative attitude towards the swamp (as opposed to oil), because of the instrumental approach to this landscape and predominant soviet discourse of progress.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124960174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-27DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.6
Галина Михайлова
[Тюнде Сабо. Статьи по поэтике Л. Улицкой. Москва: ФЛИНТА, 2022. 264 с.]
{"title":"Поэтика прозы Людмилы Улицкой","authors":"Галина Михайлова","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.6","url":null,"abstract":"[Тюнде Сабо. Статьи по поэтике Л. Улицкой. Москва: ФЛИНТА, 2022. 264 с.]","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124242154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.1
Андрюс Марцинкявичюс
The article explores biography and various aspects of public activity of the Russian refugee from Lithuania, lawyer, professor of Russian language and literature at the University of South Florida Anatole Sokolsky (1993–2006). Memoirs and articles published by him in the USA were used as the basic empirical material and the documents from the Lithuanian Central State Archive and private collection of the Sokolsky family served as auxiliary sources for the research. There is a lack of studies that analyze the history of representatives of Russian intelligentsia who were forced to escape Lithuania in the period of World War II (from 1939 to 1945) because of the danger of the Soviet regime. Publications by Sokolsky do not represent an example of professional literature, but it allows us to find out more not only about personal destiny and worldview of the author, the results of his social activities in favor of the Russian diaspora, but also about the life of Russian intelligentsia in the periods of interwar, World War II and emigration to the West.
{"title":"Professor A. A. Sokolsky – A Russian Emigrant from Lithuania Who Rewrote the History of Saint-Petersburg in Florida","authors":"Андрюс Марцинкявичюс","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.2.1","url":null,"abstract":"The article explores biography and various aspects of public activity of the Russian refugee from Lithuania, lawyer, professor of Russian language and literature at the University of South Florida Anatole Sokolsky (1993–2006). Memoirs and articles published by him in the USA were used as the basic empirical material and the documents from the Lithuanian Central State Archive and private collection of the Sokolsky family served as auxiliary sources for the research. There is a lack of studies that analyze the history of representatives of Russian intelligentsia who were forced to escape Lithuania in the period of World War II (from 1939 to 1945) because of the danger of the Soviet regime. Publications by Sokolsky do not represent an example of professional literature, but it allows us to find out more not only about personal destiny and worldview of the author, the results of his social activities in favor of the Russian diaspora, but also about the life of Russian intelligentsia in the periods of interwar, World War II and emigration to the West.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115769081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.3.1
Benediktas Vachninas
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes depicts integration of newborn Hermes to Olympus and is devoted to his worship. However the glorifying character of the hymn conflicts with shameful acts of Hermes – the theft of Apollo’s cattles and the deception of Apollo and Zeus. That implies complexity of hymn’s glorified object. The article suggests to analyse the figure of Hermes in Hymn to Hermes by asking how it unrolls and what relation establishes with Apollo. This angle will not only locate connection between Hymn to Hermes and Hesiod’s Theogony, but also it will let unfold interaction amid Apollo and Hermes as relation of politics and theology in the order of Zeus.
{"title":"Politics and Theology in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes","authors":"Benediktas Vachninas","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.3.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.3.1","url":null,"abstract":"The Homeric Hymn to Hermes depicts integration of newborn Hermes to Olympus and is devoted to his worship. However the glorifying character of the hymn conflicts with shameful acts of Hermes – the theft of Apollo’s cattles and the deception of Apollo and Zeus. That implies complexity of hymn’s glorified object. The article suggests to analyse the figure of Hermes in Hymn to Hermes by asking how it unrolls and what relation establishes with Apollo. This angle will not only locate connection between Hymn to Hermes and Hesiod’s Theogony, but also it will let unfold interaction amid Apollo and Hermes as relation of politics and theology in the order of Zeus.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"76 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133005260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-14DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.1.1
Mindaugas Kvietkauskas
The article analyses the origins of the concept of the žemininkai generation (the so-called Earth generation of Lithuanian literary modernism), in order to assess the validity and suitability of this traditional concept for the research of Lithuanian literature and culture. The notion that the group that published the literary anthology Žemė (Earth, 1951) represents a much wider literary and cultural generation born in the 1920s has been established in Lithuanian literary studies since the 1950s, but it has not been sufficiently critically examined. From a socio-cultural point of view, the question arises as to whether this actually corresponds to an authentic collective phenomenon of generational consciousness of these authors. For this purpose, the development of the concept of the žemininkai generation in the post-war Lithuanian diaspora and post-soviet Lithuania is investigated, the concept of generation formulated in the cultural sociology works of Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias is discussed, and cases of generational identification in the early texts of the žemininkai, written during the Second World War, and in their later ego-documentary texts are analysed. Aspects of critical period experience, generational solidarity, socio-cultural location, intergenerational relations, and literary impact are considered. It is concluded that the expression of a complex generational self-consciousness indeed appears in the texts of the žemininkai group.
{"title":"Concept and Self-Consciousness of the žemininkai Generation","authors":"Mindaugas Kvietkauskas","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses the origins of the concept of the žemininkai generation (the so-called Earth generation of Lithuanian literary modernism), in order to assess the validity and suitability of this traditional concept for the research of Lithuanian literature and culture. The notion that the group that published the literary anthology Žemė (Earth, 1951) represents a much wider literary and cultural generation born in the 1920s has been established in Lithuanian literary studies since the 1950s, but it has not been sufficiently critically examined. From a socio-cultural point of view, the question arises as to whether this actually corresponds to an authentic collective phenomenon of generational consciousness of these authors. For this purpose, the development of the concept of the žemininkai generation in the post-war Lithuanian diaspora and post-soviet Lithuania is investigated, the concept of generation formulated in the cultural sociology works of Karl Mannheim and Norbert Elias is discussed, and cases of generational identification in the early texts of the žemininkai, written during the Second World War, and in their later ego-documentary texts are analysed. Aspects of critical period experience, generational solidarity, socio-cultural location, intergenerational relations, and literary impact are considered. It is concluded that the expression of a complex generational self-consciousness indeed appears in the texts of the žemininkai group.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121704579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-29DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.3
Jean-François Hangouët
This communication reviews some of the aesthetical and circumstantial characteristics of André Malraux’s only film, Sierra de Teruel (1939), also known as Espoir (Hope, 1945), and of Romain Gary’s first film, Les oiseaux vont mourir au Pérou (Birds in Peru, 1968). As regards Espoir, our observations are based on the 1939 and 1945 versions of the film, now of easy access, and on the abundant and reliable academic literature published about it. Birds in Peru, conversely, is a far lesser-known and lesser-documented work. Screenings of Gary’s film are all too rare indeed nowadays and, but for a few highly specialized references, its appraisal still consists in a short set of irrelevant legends, continually retold by biographers and academics alike despite their blatant discrepancies with historical evidence, with the film itself, and with Gary’s literary works in general. Ours are first-hand observations: in our possession is a release print, which we had digitized and can thus view at will. In addition, we have explored a variety of source materials in cinematographic archives and historical newspapers.Valued either as one of Malraux’s works or as an example of antifascist propaganda, it is lucky that Sierra de Teruel can still be viewed today, despite the political censorship that prevented its release in September 1939 and despite the destruction of all prints but two by the German occupant in France during WWII. Equally fortunate are the facts that moralistic considerations failed to stop the release of Birds in 1968 and that prints of it aren’t all lost. Gary scholars will find food for thought in it, as well as semioticians, Gary’s film being just as allegorical as his contemporary novel The Dance of Genghis Cohn. More generally still, both works, no naïve executions, bring evidence that talented writers can change media effectively. Far from being literal adaptations, their two films narrate free and inspired versions of stories already told in the written form. Their filming style is creative, their technique masterly. Their ease with the cinematographic medium allows them to reemploy and expand devices known to make their personal literary signature. Such as the striking juxtaposition of action and scenery used by Malraux to convey his metaphysics of disjunction between man and nature. Such as the subtle art of immigrating lexical components from other tongues and languages, idiosyncratic to Gary’s novel writing. Even elements of their respective forms of humanism show through their films.
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Pub Date : 2022-10-29DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.8
Lou Mourlan
When we question the humanism of Gary or Malraux, we see the question of art arise on all sides. Aesthetics and ethics indeed seem intrinsically linked, firstly because, for them, art is a way of denying the inhuman, whether it be the absurdity of our condition or the crushing weight of History. At a time when the Second World War brought human barbarism to the forefront, what the artist gave us in his works was a finally acceptable image of humankind. Art, according to them, is, at the same time, a consolation and a shelter for humanist ideals, and an ethical gesture in itself. We will try here to confront in Gary’s and Malraux’s books the connections between art and humanism, and to question the existence in these two authors - while preserving the specificities of each - of what one could call an aesthetic humanism.
{"title":"When Art Becomes a Rectification of Humankind: Gary and Malraux, A Same Aesthetic Humanism?","authors":"Lou Mourlan","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.8","url":null,"abstract":"When we question the humanism of Gary or Malraux, we see the question of art arise on all sides. Aesthetics and ethics indeed seem intrinsically linked, firstly because, for them, art is a way of denying the inhuman, whether it be the absurdity of our condition or the crushing weight of History. At a time when the Second World War brought human barbarism to the forefront, what the artist gave us in his works was a finally acceptable image of humankind. Art, according to them, is, at the same time, a consolation and a shelter for humanist ideals, and an ethical gesture in itself. We will try here to confront in Gary’s and Malraux’s books the connections between art and humanism, and to question the existence in these two authors - while preserving the specificities of each - of what one could call an aesthetic humanism.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134090844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-29DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.4
Julien Roumette
Romain Gary is not close to André Malraux only by his political and war time commitments. They also share a form of creative fantasy that shakes up literary genres, embodied by the character of Clappique, in La Condition Humaine. He serves as a model for the recurring figure of the Baron in Romain Gary’s novels, through different incarnations from Le Grand Vestaire to Les Couleurs du jour and Clair de femme. Fanciful and comical portraits, these caricatural characters appear as a buffoonish recourse in the face of history. Gary will push this salutary counterpoint very far, gradually releasing the comic force of his fantasy, while Malraux will not resist giving this endearing double a last lap in his Antimémoires. Seeing the writer as Clappique makes it possible to show the fruitfulness and the constancy of this “wacky” (« farfelue ») dimension, which is part of the companionship between the two writers.
{"title":"From Clappique to Sganarelle: Fluttering with Malraux and Gary","authors":"Julien Roumette","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.4","url":null,"abstract":"Romain Gary is not close to André Malraux only by his political and war time commitments. They also share a form of creative fantasy that shakes up literary genres, embodied by the character of Clappique, in La Condition Humaine. He serves as a model for the recurring figure of the Baron in Romain Gary’s novels, through different incarnations from Le Grand Vestaire to Les Couleurs du jour and Clair de femme. Fanciful and comical portraits, these caricatural characters appear as a buffoonish recourse in the face of history. Gary will push this salutary counterpoint very far, gradually releasing the comic force of his fantasy, while Malraux will not resist giving this endearing double a last lap in his Antimémoires. Seeing the writer as Clappique makes it possible to show the fruitfulness and the constancy of this “wacky” (« farfelue ») dimension, which is part of the companionship between the two writers.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"81 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127105000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-29DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.10
Larisa Botnari
Creators of new worlds through their novels, André Malraux and Romain Gary equally reject the real universe – considered as odious, tragic, absurd – as well as any purely mimetic link between this universe and literary creation. But the two novelists translate this opposition into completely different registers. If Malraux’s writing seems to express the desire for a direct confrontation and defiance, Gary’s work is rather characterized by a mocking, disdainful attitude towards reality, which the writer intends to conquer mainly by humor. Our article aims to show that Gary’s literary response, far from being an escape, represents a rebellion that is just as powerful (and, in certain aspects, more relevant for our times) than the commitment and the fight explicitly assumed by Malrucian writing.
{"title":"From Conquerors to Enchanters: Ways of Apprehending Reality Through Novelistic Creation","authors":"Larisa Botnari","doi":"10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.10","url":null,"abstract":"Creators of new worlds through their novels, André Malraux and Romain Gary equally reject the real universe – considered as odious, tragic, absurd – as well as any purely mimetic link between this universe and literary creation. But the two novelists translate this opposition into completely different registers. If Malraux’s writing seems to express the desire for a direct confrontation and defiance, Gary’s work is rather characterized by a mocking, disdainful attitude towards reality, which the writer intends to conquer mainly by humor. Our article aims to show that Gary’s literary response, far from being an escape, represents a rebellion that is just as powerful (and, in certain aspects, more relevant for our times) than the commitment and the fight explicitly assumed by Malrucian writing.","PeriodicalId":432201,"journal":{"name":"Literatūra","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126923568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-29DOI: 10.15388/litera.2022.64.4.2
Jean-François Hangouët
This article purposes to shed a mutual light on André Malraux’s humanism on the one hand, and on Romain Gary’s on the other hand. Our approach consists in juxtaposing their views on some of those faculties which, in the interaction of the living with the world, seem specific to mankind: the collective faculties of fraternity, culture, and science, the metaphysical abilities to ponder death, cosmos, and evolution.Malraux views fraternity as a “virile” instinct that best manifests itself during warfare, and Gary makes it feminine and akin to “universal love”. While Malraux, most classically, opposes culture to nature, Gary, in an original perspective, sees culture as a new “nurturing environment”. Malraux does not believe in science as a metaphysical incentive, but Gary finds its results stimulating. Malraux tends to think (somewhat paradoxically) about “man’s fate” (at an ontological level) through the (sole) metamorphosis of the works of art as produced in the historic period up to his days. In a broader perspective, Gary considers the biological evolution of mankind over geological ages, methodically starting with the late Devonian when lungless creatures crept up from sea to land, and hopefully envisioning the end result of the twenty thousand years to come. Malraux’s cosmos is a rival to mankind, while Gary sees humanity at home in the universe. Malraux is obsessed with individual death to the point of concluding that any meaning assigned to human lives is nothing but aleatory. Gary has faith instead in the “joy of being” during one’s lifetime, and in the continuous progress of humanity as a species.In such mutual lights, it appears that Malraux’s humanism, not unlike the most melancholic currents of romanticism, is tragic indeed, as many critics have already noted: desolate (man is alone) and devastated (devoid of meaning). As to Gary’s humanism, it comes out as relatable to Julian Huxley’s evolutionary humanism, and no longer as desperate as a certain, inexplicably vivacious, academic tradition still claims it to be. By contrast with Malraux’s, it appears to be actually full of consideration for a wide variety of human interests, yearnings and dreams. It is tactfully expressed in a way that stimulates hope. And its fictionalized form is masterly, not only in terms of novel-writing (Gary’s books being so unlike thesis novels) but also in terms of analytical thinking and philosophical foundation.
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