Abstract
Drawing on archival research, this article introduces several Russian poems by the Arabic mahjar poet and writer Mikhail Naimy (Mīkhāʿīl Nu'aymah) (1889-1988) for the first time to ...scholarship. By examining the influence of Russian literature on Naimy's literary output, we shed light on the role of multilingualism in generating literary identities and in shaping literary form. Naimy's Russian poetry, we argue, furthers our understanding of the nahḍah as a multilingual movement that synthesized influences from many different languages. We also show how this multilingual orientation served as a bridge between the nahḍah and mahjar literature, by helping Arab writers craft a poetics of Arabic modernism in the diaspora. Alongside documenting an important archival discovery, this research contributes to our understanding of the temporality of Arabic modernism while illuminating its geographically and linguistically diverse substance.
Émigré writers such as Kahlil Gibran and Mikhail Naimy proved that it is possible to transcend their historical limitations to become leading literary figures. An examination of the historical ...context of these writers is important for a rich understanding of their works. The themes addressed in such literary works are better appreciated within their cultural environment, and not as objects detached from their times, author and readers1. It can be rightfully argued that such works cannot be fully appreciated without delving into the intricacies of the political ideologies and economic crises of previous centuries. This article does not aim to perform such an undertaking, regardless of its literary merit; however, it presents an overview of the historical context surrounding the Émigré literary movement as a product of two cultures bridged by immigration at the turn of the 20th century. This is based on the belief that a profound critical engagement with Émigré works is better achieved with an examination of their historical and literary background. Thus, this article serves as a foundation for profound literary analyses of Émigré works. 1 Payne, 2005 : 3-4, on the importance of a historical context.
The present article analyzes the last work written by Boris Zaitsev before emigrating from Russia: the article Dante and His Poem dedicated to Divine Comedy. At first glance, the article may seem to ...be a collection of sundry thoughts about Dante and his work. At the same time, its deeper meaning comes to the fore when one examines the main points made by the author and incorporates the article into his oeuvre as a whole. In the article, Zaitsev focuses on Dante as a human being (“history of the soul”) and on Divine Comedy as a fruit of his creative genius. Having lost his native country even before emigrating from it, Zaitsev desperately began to search for the “truth” in both life and work. In this quest, the exile and truth-seeker Dante served as Zaitsev’s Virgil in his voyage through unknown and often hostile territories. From this standpoint, Divine Comedy acquired a unique meaning for Zaitsev, who began to treat it as a Gospel of sorts. A comparison of this article with Zaitsev’s next work, the essay Saint Sergius of Radonezh that he wrote in emigration, shows the unified perspective of the writer’s work: the connection between truth and the Truth, between poetic word and the Word- Logos. Dante and Saint Sergius are shown as beacons and waymarks in the “gloomy forest” of life. Their life experience, described in the context of their difficult times, served as a source of strength and solace for Zaitsev and offered models of existential behaviour that helped him to break out from horror and gloom towards light and Truth.
The philosopher Lev Shestov aimed to establish a new
free
way of thinking, which manifested itself as a struggle against the delusion that we have a rational grasp of the necessary truths on matters ...that are of the greatest importance to us, such as the questions of life and death. Philosophy, as the Russian philosopher understood it, is not pure thinking, but ‘some kind of inner doing, inner regeneration, or second birth’ (Shestov in
Lektsii po Istorii Grecheskoi Filosofii
Lectures on the history of Greek philosophy, YMCA-PRESS, Moscow, 2001, p. 53). Having adopted the notion of the ‘regeneration of one’s convictions’ from Dostoevsky’s vocabulary in his earlier works, Shestov developed the idea of ‘awakening’ further in his mature thought, in which the motif of ‘awakening’ comprised one of the main ideas of his philosophy: the fight for the individual’s right to freedom and to creative transformation at a time when she is in despair or on the brink of death. In this article, I analyse Shestov’s idea of ‘awakening’ as one of the key tropes and developmental characteristics of his philosophical vision. In particular, I argue that, having stemmed from Shestov’s earlier interpretations of Dostoevsky, Shakespeare and Plotinus, in his later writings, the notion of ‘awakening’—the possibility of a fundamental, inner transformation of one’s worldview (
probuzhdenie, pererozhdenie
)—marked the beginning of a new salvific mode in his writing.
The article offers an introduction into Fyodor Stepun's culture-making concept of memory. The thinker - one of the most intriguing representatives of the Russian emigration - criticized the emigrant ...milieu for its excessive traditionalism. Stepun presented the force of memory as a counterbalance to reminiscence and nostalgia, claiming that memory can prevent the Russian cultural heritage from being forgotten and ensure that it will creatively form the future of reborn Russia.
Veniamin Korsak is a writer who represents the Russian literature of the first wave of emigration and is known primarily through a series of five autobiographical novels presenting the story of a ...simple man who went into German captivity during World War I and then returned to Russia, which was overwhelmed by civil war. Korsak's works are a testimony of a “little man”, looking at reality through the prism of ordinary everyday affairs, instinctively trying to survive in the historical turmoil. This article is an attempt to show the specificity of this perspective on the basis of his novels.
The focus of this research is the concept of Laughter in Russian émigré literature. The particular aim of this article is to analyse this concept in the memoirs of Nadezhda Teffi, one of the writers ...from the first wave of Russian emigration. The subject of this analysis is the lexis taken from the volumes Memoirs (1933) and My Chronicle (2015). The analysis focuses on distinguishing the semantic structure of the concept of Laughter, and the ways of its linguistic expression in the literary text. During the process of analysis, we refer to the methodology proposed by Josif Sternin which made it possible to distinguish, in the structure of concepts, various mental units of the author’s image of the world as verbalised in literary texts (objective and individual-author meanings and images). Moreover, this study uses a descriptive method and a functional and stylistic analysis. Based on the linguistic analysis carried out, we conclude that the concept of Laughter is widely represented in Teffi’s memoirs. The individual-author’s meanings representing the periphery of the concept analysed have a different connotation. The feelings and emotions expressed through laughter in the depicted world are positive, negative and neutral. The frequency of use of the lexical units, and the variety of their updating, prove that the concept of Laughter has an important place in Teffi’s linguistic worldview.
In the turn of the 1850’s and 1860’s a topic – which generated serious disputes in the reform era – flamed again in Hungary: it was the national clothing. With the slackening political rigour, the ...traditional Hungarian dress as a symbol of national togetherness was on the agenda yet again in Hungarian-language fashion magazines of Pest. The Nővilág Woman’s World edited by János Vajda aimed to work on women’s aesthetical education since the start of the magazine in 1857. The column named Original Fashion Report was written by the leader contributor of the magazine Júlia Jósika, who has been corresponded up to date French and Belgian fashion from Brussels. Popularity of her articles was unbroken until 1860. The Original Fashion Report in this name was published for the last time in the february of 1860; then the column was renamed, and of results of a slow process until the end of the year Júlia Jósika’s fashion reports frayed from the Nővilág. Her place was taken by a young writer with increasing publicity, Lenke Bajza, who made a stand for national fashion. She – likewise Júlia Jósika – worked for the magazine as fictionist and fashion professional. This change can be associated not with aesthetical but political decisions. Because of a delicate international political situation in the year 1859 Hungarian revisionists started to hope again in a new revolution for independence from Austria. With a press being stricktly supervised by the police, traditional Hungarian fashion became part of the language of national solidarity. In my paper I will confer the competition of French fashion and traditional Hungarian clothing through Júlia Jósika’s and Lenke Bajza’s confronting fashion reports and the alteration of Nővilág in the context of the politically charged alternative language of clothing.
This article discusses in detail the content of the collection The Zygmunt Haupt Papers, 1907-1976, held in Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries. In particular, it describes the Voice ...of America broadcasts prepared by the writer, as well as his life and writings, and provides a summary of the research conducted on Haupt. It briefly discusses The Zdzisław Ruszkowski Papers, the supplemental collection linked recently to Haupt's archives.
The article focuses on two Vladimir Nabokov’s archival materials, the partially preserved manuscript of the Rayskaia Ptitsa (1931, the first version of Camera Obscura, 1933), and the excerpt from the ...typescript of Solus Rex (193ж1955).
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