Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press
Vol. IX/2000 No. 2
Marián Gálik
This study is devoted to elucidating the problem of world literature between J. W. Goethe's first attempt at its definition in 1827, D. Ďurišin's book Čo je svetová literatúra? from the year 1992, and his first steps in the study of literary centrisms. It points out that Ďurišin was neglecting Western well-known theoreticians of world literature, but his attention to Czech and Russian scholarship, together with his own theoretical genius, was enough to construct a viable theory of this probably most difficult problem within the literary comparatistics. It is a pity that he never tried to elaborate more consistently, and systematically, the specific features of world literature as a literary and historical concept, the most important among different apprehensions of world literature within the flux of interliterary process, and the highest hypostasis of interliterariness. This remains the task of the contemporary and future scholarship.
KeyWords: J. W. Goethe. D. Ďurišin. World Literature. Comparative Literature. Globalisation.
Address
PhDr. Marián Gálik, DrSc.
Kabinet orientalistiky SAV
Klemensova 19
813 64 Bratislava
Franca Sinopoli
This study explores one of six concepts of world literature presented in Bratislava in 1988, namely the one claiming that European literature is universal, a synecdoche of the world literature. Texts, on which this myth of European literature was founded, different poetics, from 17th to 20th century were analyzed, focusing on three main features of this myth - holiness, originality, and exemplarity. Analysis yields that the myth of European literature reached its peak in the middle of 20th century in the works of Curtius. In this climax, however, future decline, a change from myth into a concept, into a didactic subject called "European literature", can be observed. The narrowing of this conception of world literature from a myth into a didactic problem is especially prominent nowadays, mainly as a result of non-European demythisation of Eurocentrism.
In reviewing the myth of European literature critical tools and concepts, especially those of Eurocentrism, decolonisation and interliterary community were employed. Conclusion of the study is devoted to the possibilities of teaching European literature not as a myth but only as a "concept". In this area didactical conceptions developed by J. Dugast and A. Gnisci were followed.
KeyWords: World Literature. Interliterary Process. Interliterary Communities. Interliterary Centrisms. Interliterariness.
Address
Dr. Franca Sinopoli
Universita di Roma "La Sapienza"
Cattedra di Letteratura Comparate
Piazzale A. Moro, 5
00185 Roma
Italia
Armando Gnisci
The article starts with a critical overview of different conceptions of world literature. From the vision of Goethe and Romanticist poets, through Marx and Engels, Josip Brodskij and Salman Rushdie, Gnisci summarizes and briefly evaluates various conceptions confronting them with historical and political realities of colonialism and postcolonialism. Opposed to the schematic Eurocentrism prevalent in many traditional conceptions of World literature is Gnisci's vision of Literature of Worlds, which characterized as an alternative, as a utopia resisting the globalising force of mass culture and Euro-American market. Developing the theoretical concepts of D. Ďurišin, inspired by international scientific project focused on the research of Mediterranean interliterary centrism and by a study of E. A. Ryauzova, the author presents his idea of literary research, which combines political and literary history, theoretical impulse of Ďurišin with author's poetics of European decolonisation. Following the key historical and literary events of the European colonial enterprise, including an "ideological" chronology, the author provides a brief outline of different kind of literary historiography which could serve as a basis for decolonisation as well as a framework for the new Literature of Worlds. Such a Literature, different from Romanticist Weltliteratur, or current "world literature" based on the system of profit and power, is a polyphonic, world wide web of unpredictable, incontrollable communication leading to emancipation of all cultures.
KeyWords: Concepts of World Literature. Colonialism. Postcolonialism. Eurocentrism. Globalisation. Interliterariness. Emancipation of Cultures.
Address
Professor Armando Gnisci
Universita di Roma "La Sapienza"
Cattedra di Letteratura Comparate
Piazzale A. Moro, 5
00185 Roma
Italia
Pavol Koprda
The study develops Ďurišin's idea that world literature is to be seen as a final category of interliterary process. Therefore its exploration should not be based on the canon of artistic representations, but focus on the development of interliterary process and its categories, which conform to the world literature.
Motive and story confirm to historical development. Through them literary-historical periods can be characterized, preferences and trends in specific periods and geographic-cultural units discerned. It is for this reason that Veselovsky chose the development of the condensed plot in the cycles of "Three sons of King Serendip" for the subject of his research. For the same reason this subject was studied by an international team headed by U. Eco in the 80's (as a part of efforts to explicate the concept of abduction). The reason to study the history this cycle and its reproduction again was to demonstrate that literature is characterized by textual form of reproduction of reality representations. When the tools of reproduction - and one of the major ones is condensed plot, - develop to include expected reader response, literature changes from privileged means of communication through textual images into common conceptual communication. This oscillation between textuality and conceptuality has been explored from intercultural aspect.
KeyWords: Literature. Interliterary Process. Historical Development. A. V. Veselovski. U. Eco. Abduction Reality. Representations.
Address
PhDr. Pavol Koprda, CSc.
Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV
Konventná 13
813 64 Bratislava
Michaela Chorváthová
Midnight's Children (1980) chronicles both "grand" history of independent India as well as the "petite" family history of the main character, its scope reaching about 31 years before and after the central event in narration, which is the birth of the main character and narrator Saleem Sinai, occurring simultaneously with the birth of independent Indian state exactly on midnight of August 15th 1947. Saleem's destinies are "indissolubly chained to those of his country" and in the course of narration the principle character undergoes a number of changes reflecting the tumultuous run of Indian history.
This both metaphorical and literal coupling of fates creates the framework in which the interrogation of the notion of identity takes place. The sense of identity is continually wrestled between the national and the individual. None of these represent unproblematic terms denoting unified, easily graspable objects. In fact the very opposite is true and to describe them the author often resorts to myths, both ancient and modern ones.
Myth as a legitimizing narration, or myth as an authoritative account of times and events of the distant past is in Midnight's Children employed to construct identity and, simultaneously, to highlight its the elusiveness. That is the case of the modern myth of present day India (a country which Rushdie famously describes as a dream, myth, "a collective fiction") as well as of the main protagonist with his multi-layered identity, mirroring the plurality of his home country, symbolized by the complex cultural/mythical implications of his name and events connected with his birth. The text is characterized by constant construction and deconstruction of authority claims, exploration of ambiguities, as well as of binary oppositions, using and/or subverting established mythological stories, or historical facts.
Exploring the plurality of human existence from the privileged "hybrid" position, from the liminal spaces between borders (whether separating cultural traditions or narrative techniques) which are perceived not as areas of separation, but of intense contact and creation, from a position in which the "cracks" in human identity are almost visible (as Saleem claims they are) Midnight's Children present what Homi Bhabha suggested could be a "terrain for the world literature". In Midnight's Children "border and frontier conditions" seem to be a fruitful place for exploration of "ways in which cultures recognize themselves through their projection of 'otherness'."
KeyWords: Literature. Salman Rushdie. Homi Bhabha. Identity. Myth. Narration. "Hybridity".
Address
Mgr. Michaela Chorváthová
Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV
Konventná 13
813 64 Bratislava
Ján Jankovič
Traditionally good Slovaco-Croatian relationships in the period of WWII were developed in co-operation of two states formally independent, yet depending on European fascism. Identical political orientation fostered institutionalisation of relationships as well as efforts to bring both cultures closer together. In Croatia, the journal "Tatre and Velebit" had been published by Association of Croato-Slovak Friendship (two issues in 1942, one in 1943). The journal is a model of Slovaco-Croatian relationships of the given period and a certain quest for independence of literature and artistic translation in the conditions of a "new order" and co-operation of totalitarian regimes can be observed there. Significant ratio of artistic translation in the overall volume of the journal reflects the situation in contemporary Croatian periodicals. Privileging occasional poetry of influential Croatian and Slovak poets is to be understood as a toll the era demanded, as well as a bridge between politic imperative and the needs of literature. Yet, nationally oriented poetry with motives of Slovaco-Croatian friendship is not to be understood solely on the background of the period promoting nationalist attitudes. In prose translations (from Slovak into Croatian and vice versa) the pressure of contemporary ideology remains undetected in spite of the fact that important and frequently published authors (M. Budak, V. Nazor, J. Cíger-Hronský, M. Urban, V. Beniak) were significant figures of politic and social life. The model of relationships reflects all positive sides as well as contradictions of the period, yet the effort to develop traditionally good relationships between two friendly nations with similar historical fates remains dominant.
KeyWords: Literature. Literary Scholarship. Slavonic Studies. Comparative Literature. Slovaco-Croatian Cultural and Literary Relationships.
Address
PhDr. Ján Jankovič, CSc.
Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV
Konventná 13
813 64 Bratislava
Eva Maliti
Dealing with the Slovak translations of essentially Christan philosophical lyrical poetry of the Russian poet A. S. Khomiakov (1804-1860), the study presents a host of his poems that were given abundant reception in Slovakia since the 1840s until the first decades of the 20th century. Particular attention is given to poems based on the psalm genre that were translated in early 1860s in the period following the fall of Bach's despotic rule (absolutism) when new and more liberal political environment allowed the seeking of cultural unification and universalism connected with Christian revivalism. This concerns the poems Kak chasto vo mne probuzhdalas (Jak často vo mne prebúdzala's, translated by M. Petrovský, 1862), My narod izbrannyi... (S kým je Hospodin?, translated by J. Botto, 1863), David (Dávid, translation J. Botto, 1863), in addition to another poem Večernaja pesnj (Večerná pieseň, translated by A. Truchlý-Sytniansky, 1887) which although translated later is relevant for our topic. The specific character of these lyrical poems by Khomiakov - a leading ideologist of Russian Slavophile movement (slavianofilstvo), profound religious thinker and knowledgeable expert on the history of Christian church and the literature of the Church fathers - was attempted to be transposed into the Slovak environment by the translators, to a varying extent and to the extent of their creative capabilities and, generally, to the extent of their abilities of reception.
Analysis of the poems shows two basisc tendencies:
1. the early 1860s translations, especially those by J. Botto, are dominated by an effort to uncover the inherent poetological principles of the poems while practising original stylistic and compositional devices (creative competence based on the principles of transcendence) and being faithful to the poems" \ original semantic contents;
2. since the 1870s and 1880s the translations of A. Truchlý-Sytniansky contribute to the then battle over the usage of more complex sylabotonic verse forms for which Khomiakov's verse, itself considerably innovative around the mid-19th century, provided some important stimuli.
Yet another issue addressed here is Khomiakov's reception in Slovakia. The relevant historical scholarship of literature so far strongly concludes that Khomiakov's oevre had a predominantly regressive impact on Slovak translation and original Slovak literature, in reference to the predominance of Khomiakov's Slovak translations against those of Pushkin in a particular period (1851-1870). Although studies on relationships between Russian and Slovak literature (E. Panovová) claim typological proximity between Khomiakov's poetry of this kind and Slovak poets like A. Sládkovič, J. Botto and, partly A. Truchlý-Sytniansky, (these authors had also translated Khomiakov's poetry, though they focused on occasional artistically less demanding works), they disregard basic features of this proximity (Truchlý-Sytniansky as a poet can" t be compared to Khomiakov).
However, the present study concludes that such a reception was influenced also by certain stereotypes and myths (which have their origin in Russian literary criticism and later Soviet literary history, beginning with contradictory statements of Belinsky) as well as ideological prohibitions during the era of totalitarism, when such poetry could not have been viewed with respect to its fundamentally idealist principles. Providing a new, "uninhibited" reading of this poetry and its relationship to the Slovak cultural environment the study concludes that the translations of Khomiakov's contemplative poetry based on Christian foundations helped to make way for the search of creative space, that "noble remoteness from the real" typical for modernist literature and thus contributed also to the rise of Slovak modernist literature.
KeyWords: Literature. Russian Literature. Translation Studies. A. S. Khomiakov.
Address
Mgr. Eva Maliti, CSc.
Ústav svetovej literatúry SAV
Konventná 13
813 64 Bratislava
Reinhard Lauer
In his contribution, the author outlines mutual literary relations between Germany and Russia in the 19[th] century. From the point of view of the "literary life", he explains the popularity of the Russian realistic school (Turgenev, Dostoevski, Tolstoi) in the 1860's, 1870's and 1880's in Germany and shows how personal interventions influenced the reception of Russian literature in the West. On the other hand, the author suggests that the disproportion in the appropriation of contemporary German literature in Russia of the 19th century was determined by the differences of the literary evolution in both countries. Many examples and cases illustrate the principal misunderstanding of the artistic and social message of the literary production on both sides. This misunderstanding often corresponds with the image of Germany in Russia and that of Russia in Germany. Nevertheless, the immense influence of the Russian realistic school can be traced in the German fiction also in the 20th century, especially in the work of Thomas Mann.
KeyWords: Russian and German Literature. Realism. 19th Century. Literary Life. Literary Evolution.
Address
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Lauer
Seminar für Slavische Philologie
Georg-August-Universität
Humboldtallee 19
37037 Göttingen
Deutschland
Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press