The article investigates the novel by Ivan Sergeevich Shmelev “The Sun of the Dead” (1923), dedicated to the Civil War in Russia as one of the most critical periods in Russian history. The text of ...the work, considered by the authors of the article to be an expression of “a story told”, thematizes, for example, the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the Church, the purposeful destruction of the intelligentsia, the use of hunger as a tool of the population control, the barbaric treatment of the civilian population, the disrespect for the workers on whose behalf the Bolsheviks incited the revolution and the depreciation of human life and material wealth. The novel also accuses Europe of having idly watched the destruction of the remnants of old Russia. The analysis is based mainly on historical and comparative methods, with the help of which the text of the work is associated with historical events, on the one hand, and with the biblical New Testament text, primarily with the “Revelation to St. John”, on the other. The analysis carried out shows that the writer’s creative plan is based on the belief that the Civil War represents the end of one era, which is primarily shown in the signs that can be associated with the images of biblical horsemen who bring destruction. The comparative analysis confirms that in his novel, Shmelev touches on the motifs found in the Bible. In the text of the novel, special attention is paid to the motif of the end and the themes of destruction and annihilation, which are considered universal by the biblical text. Shmelev’s almost documentary text depicts them as phenomena characterizing the dangerous sprouts of a new way of life in post-revolutionary Russia. At the end of the article, the main conclusions are formulated, which are based on the opinion that Shmelev managed to include both the structure and the thematic elements of the biblical text in the novel “The Sun of the Dead”, building the novel as a stylized, updated version of the apocalypse. The text under consideration can be viewed both as “evidence” and as a historical document, which, from the point of view of an eyewitness acting in the person of the narrator, reflects the process of the formation of Soviet power in Crimea in connection with a more widely understood historical context, both Russian and European.
The analysis at hand is tracing a major literary strategy within Ernst Toller?s (1893–1939) œuvre, a strategy operating on the level of motif. Related motifs become part of a process that is best ...described as parallelization. The analysis focuses on the genesis and intricate structure of the complexes of motif „theatrum mundi“, „doppelgänger“, „masses/leader“. Its major goal is to establish new impulses for further research into the literary techniques which are structuring Ernst Toller?s œuvre.
El Coloquio de las damas (traducción de Fernán Juárez de la 3.ª jornada del Ragionamento de Aretino, 1547), el Honesto y agradable entretenimiento de damas y galanes de Giovan Francesco Straparola, ...traducido por Francisco Truchado (1.ª parte 1578, 2.ª 1581), la Primera parte de las cien novelas de Giraldo Cinthio, traducida por Luis Gaytán de Vozmediano (1590) y las Noches de invierno de Antonio Eslava (1609) ofrecen motivos literarios, mínimos detalles, que son pruebas de la lectura de esas obras por Miguel de Cervantes porque él les dio nueva vida en las suyas. Están reunidos en este librillo de memoria imaginario junto a la recreación cervantina.
This paper reveals some points of the influence of E. T. A. Hofmann on the early period of Nabokov's prose, with particular focus on two short stories, "The Potato Elf" and "The Venetian Woman," both ...written in 1924. The first story is analysed in the light of "Little Zaches, great Zinnober," in the other, I identify allusions from The Devil's Elixir. Motifs inspired by the German romantic, well-received by Russian writers of the Silver Age, are intertwined, on the one hand, with the symbolist poetics of Aleksandr Blok, and, on the other, with the art of painting represented as a boundary between reality and a parallel world. Most of the motifs converge in Nabokov's novel King, Queen, Knave, written under his pen name Sirin.
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The Babylonian
opens with the well-known motif of the primeval waters covering the world. Although this motif is very important in
itself and in other cosmogonies of the Ancient Near East, it is not ...attested in identified Mesopotamian creation accounts older than
and it can be found just in the old Babylonian divine name
„Mother, creator of heaven and earth“, a byname of the goddess Namma, the personified ground waters. This paper provides a brief overview of the motifs of personified waters in Mesopotamian texts of the third and second millennia. The sources argue for the existence of a southern Mesopotamian tradition with the personified ground waters and a western tradition with the personified sea. These traditions were combined together in
, where the male god Apsû embodied the ground waters
Abzu/Apsû doesn’t appear to have been personified until the second half of the second millennium. The paper closes with a critique of Lambert’s etymology of the name Namma.
The article considers the semantics and functions of bird images and ornithological motifs in M. Tsvetaeva’s book of poems “Remeslo” (Handicraft). The use of traditional symbols of folk poetry is ...traced, as well as the mechanism of creating the individual author’s tropes on their basis. Associations with various birds are typical of Tsvetaeva’s poetic approach and her self-identification. Therefore, the analysis of ornithological images allows us to clarify the notion concerning the features of the poetic world of the “Remeslo” and Tsvetaeva’s mytho-poetics. It is traced how the bird images in many respects form and connect the metaplot of different lyrical cycles and the book as a whole. The emphasis is put on the analysis of the cycles “Separation”, “Blessed news”, “Praise to Aphrodite”, and various poems thematically related to the parting with love, youth, and homeland. The poetic world of the “Remeslo” is densely populated by different birds: doves, eagles, skylarks, cranes, swallows, nightingales, swans, and falcons. They connect the earth and heaven, being the messengers of gods and mortals. The characters of the book and Tsvetaeva’s lyrical counterpart acquire bird’s virtues, exhibit various metamorphoses, turning into one or another bird. The emphasis is put on the device to contrast different birds in the lyrical plot, for example, a nightingale and a falcon in the poem “Our open spaces for Tatar arrows”, as well as to negative comparisons and rejecting the former bird’s “names”. It is concluded that the ornithological images are built into the oppositions significant for Tsvetaeva: “gods – humans”, “parting – meeting”, “homeland – foreign land”, and “youth – maturity”. The semantics of these images is mobile and changeable; it is revealed in the context of a poem, of a lyrical cycle, and sometimes of the entire creative work. The bird images contribute to the creation of Tsvetaeva’s autobiographical myth.
The article studies the lyrical character of the miniatures «The Summer Lightning» (Khlebozary) and «The Rich Ear of Wheat» (Sil’nyy kolos) by V. P. Astafyev, which are included in the first Notebook ...of his book “The Notches” (Zatesi). The works of several authors (Yu. N. Chumakov, E. V. Kapinos, E. Yu. Kulikova, A. Hansen-Love, etc.) about small forms absorbing the properties of poetic forms, and the theory of lyrical plot served as a methodological foundation of analysis. Analysis of the lyrical plot expressed by a “fluctuation” of personifications allows the author of the article to reflect the Sophian properties of the world depicted in the miniatures. These properties are determined by the writer’s philosophical idea associated, as it was shown by I. I. Plekhanova, with the theme of Eternal Femininity. They reveal themselves in “nonlinear” presentation of Feminine traits of natural-cosmic being both in «The Summer Lightning» and «The Rich Ear of Wheat». The holistic image is created by an alternation and intercoordination of various facets of the feminine. However, the miniature «The Rich Ear of Wheat», written seven years later, has a slightly different narrative and plot structure. Astafyev refuses in it from personification of the lyrical subject and uses indirect forms of its expression: «peasants’ choir» and elements of autobiography. But trying to give the floor directly to grain farmers, the writer simultaneously believes that the “right” to reflection of the natural consciousness and its translation belongs to the lyrical consciousness. At the same time, the feminine function of Mother-Earth as the key idea of the author is realized by a system of thematic motifs. The keynote of natural wisdom is tinged with the semantics of the motifs of quietness, warmth, darkness, and flame. The music motif grants this system rhythmico-semantic harmony.
The purpose of this article is to contribute to our understanding of the difference between the bestseller and the non-bestseller in nonfiction. It is noticed that many bestsellers in nonfiction ...belongs to the sub-genre of creative nonfiction, but also that the topics in this kind of literature is largely ignored by the critics. Thus, the article tests how topics may work in creative nonfiction. Two Danish bestsellers belonging to the genre, Frank’s Mit smukke genom (My Beautiful Genome), about genomics, and Buk-Swienty’s Slagtebænk Dybbøl ( ‘Slaughter-bench Dybbøl’), a history book, are chosen as cases and analysed using a slightly modified motif model by Johansen. The result is that in both books the main topic is treated from a double perspective, but also that six out of seven secondary topics, or motifs, are treated as well. It is concluded that also in a topical sense creative nonfiction may span traits from nonfiction and fiction, and that this may contribute to our understanding between the bestseller and the non-bestseller in nonfiction.
El presente estudio determina la existencia de un motivo literario no detectado hasta ahora: el contratiempo peligroso de la cita secreta nocturna de los amantes. Demuestra que su origen se encuentra ...en la muerte de Calisto en La Celestina. Además, establece la estructura del motivo: la cita erótica secreta y nocturna, la aparición de personajes inoportunos y la lucha consecuente. Asimismo, analiza su aparición en diversos libros de caballerías, así como en el teatro áureo (El caballero de Olmedo de Lope de Vega). Este artículo, por tanto, muestra que la influencia de los libros de caballerías va más allá de lo que normalmente se acepta y alcanza diversos géneros literarios.
This article determines the existence of an as yet undetected literary motif: the dangerous setbacks to the lovers' secret nocturnal meeting. This work shows that the motif can be traced back to the death of Calisto in La Celestina and establishes its structure: the lovers' secret nocturnal rendez-vous, the arrival of characters who disturb the meeting and the subsequent struggle. It also analyses the appearance of this motif in books of chivalry, as well as in Golden Age drama (The knight of Olmedo by Lope de Vega). Consequently, the influence of books of chivalry is shown to go beyond what it is usually believed, making itself felt in many literary genres.
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