Studia Rossica Posnaniensia

The literary portrayals of Ivan Mazepa in Byron’s Mazeppa and Pushkin’s Poltava. A comparative analysis

2023-07-06T09:38:45+02:00

This article provides a comparative analysis of Ivan Mazepa – the protagonist in the poems Mazeppa (1819) by George Gordon Byron and Poltava (1829) by Alexander Pushkin. It gives a brief outline of who Mazepa was to identify the reasons for this historical figure to have attracted the considerable attention of the Great Romantics. Deploying the theoretical method on recognition and the juxtaposition of differences of literary works within Reception theory developed by Mary N. Layoun, the article examines aspects of dissimilarity in the literary portrayals of the image of Mazepa in Byron’s and Pushkin’s poems. The juxtaposition of Mazeppa and Poltava explains ways in which details from Mazepa’s biography and exploits that inspired Byron’s creative imagination and kindled his desire to recount the story of Mazepa can be contrasted with Pushkin’s presentation of the same protagonist as generated by his own viewpoints on the political aspects surrounding the events of the Great Northern War, specifically the Battle of Poltava. The article applies Hans Robert Jauss’s concept of the horizon of expectations to examine the case of Pushkin’s reception of Byron. It argues that what underlies the nature of Pushkin’s disagreement with Byron is his emotional involvement with the subject matter.

Музыка в романе Евгения Водолазкина Брисбен

2023-07-06T09:38:40+02:00

The author of the article examines the role of music in Evgeny Vodolazkin’s novel Brisbane, analyzing individual manifestations of the widely understood intermediacy. The musical code of the text is expressed in audibility of the sounds the world of the novel is filled with, and in musical ecphrasis (the profession of the protagonist, professional vocabulary and slang, references to musical compositions; descriptions of the world of music through the prism of the characters’ perception). These techniques perform plot and semantic functions, combine two equal plot plans, and constitute the image of the protagonist and other important characters. Fragments with musical ecphrasis have a vivid narrative, emotionally saturated (“moments of explosion”). The main emotional codes (or affects) find expression in the selection of musical compositions that assert the dramatic direction of the narrative. Music in the novel expresses the hero’s inner state, his relationship to the world, and symbolizes the metaphysical breakthrough experienced by the hero: from love and sound, to silence and eternity.

The semantics of the void in two novels: Gone with the dreams by Jurga Ivanauskaitė and Chapaev and Void by Victor Pelevin: from the perspective of contemporary Lithuanian literature

2023-07-06T09:38:37+02:00

The purpose of this article is to understand the reason for the popularity of books by the writer Victor Pelevin (b. 1962) in Lithuania. Pelevin’s internationally popular novel, Chapaev and Void (aka The clay machine-gun; Buddha’s little finger) (Russian, 1996; Lithuanian 1998, 2007; English, 2000) focusing on Buddhist issues, was published in Lithuanian twice; both editions were sold out. In this article, it will be compared with the novel Gone with the dreams (2000, 2007) by one of the most popular authors of contemporary Lithuanian literature, Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961–2007). Both Pelevin and Ivanauskaitė are authors of the same generation who have experienced a similar atmosphere of the late Soviet period and reflected on the sensibilities of their generation in the contemporary world after the collapse of the Soviet Union; they both studied Tibetan Buddhism. The two novels chosen for comparative analysis are marked by the similarly emphasised Buddhist philosophical idea of void. The article reviews the development of the Oriental discourse in contemporary Lithuanian culture and literature before Jurga Ivanauskaitė started writing. The goal of this short analysis of novels by Ivanauskaitė and Pelevin is, first, to underscore the shared and relevant contents of this discourse. Secondly, it is to support the hypothesis that the Lithuanian orientalist discourse, next to other advantages of Pelevin’s work that are beyond the scope of this article, has become particularly relevant to Lithuanian readers precisely because of the most important Buddhist idea formulated especially attractively in the novel.

Политический вербатим в современной русской драматургии

2023-07-06T09:38:34+02:00

The aim of this paper it to discuss the techniques employed in modern political Russian verbatim drama, as well as in their performances. Modern verbatim drama seeks to stay relevant and up-to-date by referring to taboos, radical social controversies, and political incidents. So, it becomes an important event of not only cultural but also social life, and it exerts a strong impact on modern Russian society. The aesthetics of the modern verbatim drama is aimed at representing the reality which is absent from official discourse. Such texts as One hour eighteen minutes by Elena Gremina, Three quarters of sadness (Bolotnaya square case) by Polina Borodina, The last party by Anna Dobrovolskaya, and New Antigone by Elena Kostyuchenko openly explore the issues which do not function as part of the public discourse. Thus, they capture the traumatic experiences in order to overcome traumas. These texts take the traumatic events of current political and public life out of the marginal area, and they acquire the status of social statements which give hope for political and social changes, and give rise to unofficial discourse allowing the readers as well as the viewers to define their own opinion related to the traumatizing events.

Nuda codzienności w sztuce Marzec Iriny Waśkowskiej

2023-07-06T09:38:32+02:00

The article attempts to describe how everyday life and the ennui it entails influence the lives of the protagonists of Irina Vaskovskaya’s play March. The banality of everyday life is one of the main themes in this young author’s works – Vaskovskaya draws portraits of women that are bored and disillusioned with their shallow, bland life, who are waiting for a miracle to free them from the abyss of monotony. The protagonist of the play March stands out against the background of these characters. For her, the trivial everyday life becomes an incentive to abandon her current existence and look for happiness elsewhere (although the actions she takes are often destructive). In the case of the other characters, the lacklustre reality does not spark creativity, but only deepens their passivity and inertia. Vaskovskaya’s play is quite a sombre image of provincial Russia, whose inhabitants live in a state of numbness. While maintaining a semblance of normalcy, they flit between boredom and despair in relation to the meaninglessness of their existence.

Świat (nie)kontrolowanych emocji. O literaturoterapii Victorii Reicher

2023-07-06T09:38:29+02:00

The article deals with the therapeutic aspects of literature. The research material is the prose of Victoria Reicher, a writer who represents the younger generation of Russian-Israeli olim. The author analyses selected works from Yoshka’s house and Telling tales to the left collections. In the texts analyzed, the author sees specific patterns of behavior, typical not only of Russian-speaking repatriates in Israel but also describing the contemporary human, immersed in the chaos of this world. One of the characteristics of Reicher’s prose is carnivalization. The humor and chaos reveal a frank and true picture of everyday life. According to the author, Reicher’s literature has a purifying purpose and contains psychodrama elements. It provokes reflection, stimulates mental and emotional activity, and soothes negative emotions. The author proves that Reicher, a writer, and trained psychologist, can help readers solve their problems – through her texts, blog, and constant presence on the Internet. Reicher’s literature has the characteristics of therapeutic literature. Moreover, it is an affective bibliotherapy, and guided reading.

Эволюция концепта скуки в творчестве Елены Шварц

2023-07-06T09:38:26+02:00

This paper focuses on the concept of boredom in the creative work of one of the significant figures of Soviet underground culture – Elena Shvarts. All the creative heritage – both poetic and prosaic – is treated like a semiotic unity, so that it is possible to see the evolution in understanding such a notion during more than five decades of the poet’s life. While analyzing the five-volume collection by Shvarts, statistical calculation has revealed only 28 cases of using the concept. Even though for Shvarts’s lyrical subjects, who are usually passionate and ecstatically active, boredom is not specific at all, the author sometimes puts this concept in the meaningful center of her creative universe. It could be done both explicably and implacably through the description of “boring” landscapes and events. After close reading of the texts from the five-volume collection, it is claimed that boredom in Shvarts’s oeuvre is strictly associated to the physical (and\or physiological) world, with its routines, wishes and activities. To the contrast, the transcendental world and everything connected to the sacrum, according to Elena Shvarts, cannot be boring.

Motyw nadziei w najnowszej poezji Dmitrija Strocewa

2023-07-06T09:38:24+02:00

This article is devoted to the analysis of the motif of hope in the latest poetry of the Belarusian independent poet Dmitry Strotsev. The peaceful Belarusian revolution of 2020 became a source of inspiration for Strotsev and influenced the form and content of his latest works. The methodological basis of the research is focused on the observations on hope made by the French philosopher Gabriel Honoré Marcel in the essay Outline of the phenomenology and metaphysics of hope (1942), and by the priest Józef Tischner in the essay Binding of Hope (1973). In Strotsev’s latest poetry, the theme of hope is combined with the heroic peaceful struggle for freedom undertaken by Belarusian society and is inscribed in an intertextual dialogue with the Bible. The poet presents a collective portrait of people filled with hope, which is an impulse for them to act. It shows society at the time of a test of enslavement. The answer to enslavement is opposition born of hope. The experience of heroism also flows from hope. Strotsev’s works not only immortalize the people who fought for freedom, but also multiply the hope inherent in all those who take up a heroic fight against evil. Hope allows them to visualize the “fragility” and “impermanence” of evil. It is also a comfort to those who are suffering from loss. It also helps not to succumb to despair.

Obraz pandemii w polskich i rosyjskich połączeniach wyrazowych

2023-07-06T09:38:21+02:00

Since the beginning of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed not only many aspects of everyday life, but also the lexical systems of languages. Polish and Russian have been enriched with numerous derivatives, loan words, as well as new collocations pretending to become neophrasemes. The linguistic image of the pandemic consists of miscellaneous metaphorical expressions picturing the reality in terms of war, sports’ competitions or natural disasters. New Polish and Russian collocations present different problems of the pandemic crisis and the diverse attitude of individuals and social groups to its threat to public health and the measures taken by governments and international institutions. Furthermore, the analyzed pandemic discourse contains many examples of intertextuality sensu lato. These are allusions to literary texts, music, film, and history. The image of the pandemic in Polish and Russian has been complemented by means of idiomatic transformations, humorous expressions and jokes, which are natural and spontaneous answers to long-lasting fear, anxiety and frustration.

Театральный и балетный жаргон в современной лексикографии и в текстах культуры

2023-07-06T09:38:19+02:00

The aim of the article is to examine whether the jargon units connected with ballet should be included in the network of terms found in modern dictionaries. The starting point of the analysis was the theoretical discourse concerning the range of meanings that the term “jargon” possesses. The article also gives an overview of the names and works of the authors who analysed the theatrical and ballet jargon. Then, using specific examples, the author confirms that the jargon units occur in the texts of culture, which implies that lay men can also come across such vocabulary. Texts of culture, for example, the analysed film Bolshoy, can be translated. The translation of jargon vocabulary requires the translator to have special competences and profound knowledge of the given field. The occurrence of jargon units in freely accessible texts of culture and functioning of these texts in their translated form constitute an argument that jargon words and expressions should be recorded in dictionaries. Recording them in specialist bilingual dictionaries, which usually contain such terms, would be desirable. The addition of jargon lexis which would be provided with appropriate qualifiers to their wordlist would increase the functionality of the dictionaries. This would improve the bilingual communication in the given field and streamline the work of translators.

Стереотипные представления о ленивом человеке: лингвокогнитивный анализ культурных моделей русского и китайского языков

2023-07-06T09:38:16+02:00

The purpose of the research is to analyze the content of Russian and Chinese proverbs, identify stereotypical ideas about a lazy person and compare the data of the two languages. Based on the analysis, the perceptual and inferior meanings of proverbs were identified. Perceptual meanings involve native speakers’ stereotypical representations obtained through observations: “a lazy person stays in bed a lot, sleeps for a long time”; “a lazy person tends to sit around most of the time and move just a little and slowly”; “a lazy person is fond of eating, but hates working”; “a lazy person does nothing with his hands”. It was concluded that the perceptual meanings of Russian and Chinese proverbs generally coincide. The following is referred to as the inferior meanings: “the conclusion about the causal relationship between laziness and a lack of necessary food and a warm shelter”; “generalization – a lazy person neither benefits from it themselves nor brings any benefit to the society”; “conclusion about the causal relationship between work/laziness and human life expectancy”. It was concluded that the inferior meanings differ: Russian proverbs represent the idea
that hard work leads to illness and shortens a person’s life, while Chinese proverbs reflect the stereotype “work prolongs a person’s life, whereas laziness makes people grow old”. Unlike the Chinese language, in which laziness is always categorically disapproved of directly, the Russian language reflects a condescending attitude towards lazy people.

Kontekst w interpretacji metajęzykowych jednostek ironicznych: struktury, typy, granice (na podstawie języka polskiego, rosyjskiego i angielskiego)

2023-07-06T09:38:13+02:00

The paper deals with the role of context and its features in the interpretation of ironically used metalinguistic (reflexive) expressions in the Russian, Polish, and English languages. Although contextual cues have always been a major topic of interest to irony scholars, more research seems to be needed on how context interacts with a metalinguistic expression and how it indicates that such an expression is to be interpreted ironically. It is clear that the most natural context in the situation in question is speech (in a broad sense) that is referred to in particular metalinguistic expressions. Therefore, the main goal of the paper is to establish the crucial features of linguistic units that could be named and described by metalinguistic expressions and to specify relations between the former and the latter. The main criteria used to classify the examples that are analyzed in the paper are 1) the type of the linguistic unit in the context, 2) the type of contradiction between the metalinguistic expression and the context, and 3) the limits of the context that is required for ironical interpretation of the metalinguistic expression.