In the recent history, the world seems to have taken notice of Afghanistan once the Soviet army overthrew Hafizollah Amin, who had pronounced himself as the leader of the Communist party “khalq” (people) and as the president of Afghanistan after eliminating his predecessor Noor Mohammad Tarakee, who had come to power through a Soviet-backed coup more than a year earlier in 1977. Amin's horrifying reign in the last months of 1978 was short-lived. It took the Soviets only five (...) months to replace him with the exiled Babrak Karmal, who was the leader of the other Communist party “parcham” (the flag).…. (shrink)

Osip Mandel'štam belongs among the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century. During the thirties, when he led a tragic existence and felt a premonition of his inevitable violent death, Mandel'štam saw in Dante not only the greatest poet, but also his own superior teacher, and his poems of that period contain a tormented meditation on the masterpiece of Dante's genius -- the "Divine Comedy". Epic poetry of Dante, Homer, Virgil and others was possible because the inner world of (...) each poet was essentially at one with the ethos of the society in which he lived. Mandel'štam's inner world was Judaeo-Christian, European, and rooted in classical and neo-Platonic philosophy, but his outer world, consisting of a new Marxist or pseudo-Marxist system, was totally at odds with it. Thus Mandel'štam could not embody the epic impulse of the society he opposed. He was left with the tormented lyric impulse. The fundamental conflict between Mandel'štam as a lyric poet and the society in which he had to live and work accounts for the fact that his vision of Stalinist society in a number of respects remarkably corresponds to Dante's vision of a perverted divine order in the Inferno. (shrink)

In Mandel'štam's writing, artistic creativity is described as based on the indispensable yet contradictory modes of compliance and deviation. The artist, by his artistic nature, must be an "obedient disciple" to the tradition that inspires him, and, at the same time, a "violator" who renders what inspires him in an individual form. Thus, art implies iterability through novelty. In the totalitarian state, this double nature of art acquires a sinister context and brings the artist to an unavoidable conflict with the (...) state. He has a choice between a servile compliance with the state's command and artistic independence. If the artist complies, he loses his ingenuity; if, on the other hand, he has the courage to break away from the established order, his fate is martyrdom. The criteria of truth and falsehood, the issue of loyalty, of compromise and collaboration or resistance become most relevant. Such words as "outcast" or "non-contemporary" acquire the meaning of "non-collaborationist" or "enemy of the people". In the totalitarian state a genuine artist is viewed as a "law-breaker", and his art leads him to "crime". The notions of compliance and deviation cease being merely aesthetic terms and assume in Mandel'štam's poetry complex, subtle and tragic overtones. (shrink)

Sots-art, the mock use of the Soviet ideological clichés of mass culture, originated in Soviet nonconformist art of the early 1970s. An original and provocative guide, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style examines the conceptual aspect of sots-art, sots-art poetry, and sots-art prose, and discusses where these still-vital intellectual currents may lead.

Philosophy and literature – each in its own way - reflect and grasp reality. Along with scholarly work, literary compositions such as novels, dramas, and good poetry, which often used as an alterna...

The life and career of the Soviet scholar of myth and religion Izrail′ Grigor′evič Frank-Kamenetskij is discussed, tracing his development from a scholar working exclusively on semitology to a theorist of myth and literature. The scholar’s relationship to German philosophy and Biblical scholarship is outlined, along with his relationship to Soviet scholarship of the 1920s and 1930s. The development of the scholar’s work is related to his encounter with N. Ja. Marr in the early 1920s, and the way (...) in which Marr’s doctrine underwent considerable revisions when subjected to German philosophy and applied to narrative material is detailed. Finally the way in which attention increasingly turned to the genesis of literary plots and poetic metaphor is discussed, along with both the influence such work exerted and the enduring value of such work today. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the new poetry that entered the Russian musical culture with the Khrushchev "thaw". A special perspective of the study is the "female" chamber vocal cycle of the 1960s and 1970s. The wave of interest of Russian composers in chamber and vocal music that arose during this period is associated with a hitherto unprecedented wealth of poetic themes and images, the emergence of modern literature. Spiritual horizons expanded rapidly, original texts entailed fresh genre and technological (...) solutions. The new poetic "information", as well as scientific information, liberated the creative forces of musicians, demanded a new language, style, form. Poetry turned out to be one of the most important incentives for the renewal of compositional concepts. The main conclusion of the study is the idea that the development of vocal music, the figurative and thematic expansion of "female" chamber vocal cycles is primarily associated with the modern poetic tradition, with the expansion of the spiritual horizons of Soviet cultural life in the second half of the last century. Russian chamber and vocal music is being studied for the first time in such a perspective and this direction must be recognized as fruitful, more fully revealing the most important vectors of the development of the musical and poetic tradition. It is quite obvious that the modern literary preferences of composers became the basis for a radical renewal of the chamber-vocal genre in the 1960s and 1970s. (shrink)

The life and career of the Soviet scholar of myth and religion Izrail' Grigor'evic Frank -Kamenetskij is discussed, tracing his development from a scholar working exclusively on semitology to a theorist of myth and literature. The scholar's relationship to German philosophy and Biblical scholarship is outlined, along with his relationship to Soviet scholarship of the 1920s and 1930s. The development of the scholar's work is related to his encounter with N. Ja. Marr in the early 1920s, and the (...) way in which Marr's doctrine underwent considerable revisions when subjected to German philosophy and applied to narrative material is detailed. Finally the way in which attention increasingly turned to the genesis of literary plots and poetic metaphor is discussed, along with both the influence such work exerted and the enduring value of such work today. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S18-S21, March‐April 2022.

Fabi and Goldberg raised important considerations regarding both research and funding priorities in the field of bioethics and, in particular, the field’s misalignment with social justice. W...

In 2009 the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil established a conflict resolution mechanism to help rural communities address their grievances against palm oil companies that are RSPO members. This article presents the broadest ever comprehensive assessment of the use and effectiveness of the RSPO conflict resolution mechanism, providing both overviews and in-depth analysis. Our central question is: to what extent does the RSPO conflict resolution mechanism offer an accessible, fair and effective tool for communities in Indonesia to resolve conflicts with (...) companies? Our aim is not only to provide a ‘reality check’ of this mechanism but also to contribute to the wider debate on how communities can seek access to justice when engaged in intractable conflicts with palm oil companies. For data collection, we took three steps. First, we used our own database of 150 conflicts between communities and companies in Indonesia. We identified 64 conflicts that involved RSPO member companies, of which 17 prompted communities to convey their grievances to the RSPO’s conflict resolution mechanism. Second, we used the database of the RSPO, which handled 85 complaints against companies in Indonesia in the period 2009–2020. Third, we conducted fieldwork, in total, about 6 months of fieldwork and extensive interviews on three conflicts involving RSPO companies to identify mechanisms leading to both failed and successful instances of conflict resolution. For our assessment, we used three criteria to assess the conflict resolution mechanism of the RSPO: accessibility, procedural justice, and the outcomes of the process. We conclude that—on all counts—the conflict resolution mechanism is biased in favor of companies. The result of these biases is that the actual capacity of the RSPO’s mechanism to provide a meaningful remedy for rural communities’ grievances remains very limited. This unequal access to justice sustains conflicts between companies and communities over land. (shrink)

Andrzej Walicki, the last Polish world-renowned humanist of the 20th century, passed away in August this year. The article offers a concise description of his personality and work, which partly undermines some aspects of his autobiography published in 2010. Walicki, who, like Leszek Kołakowski, was a member of the 56’ generation, also known as the “thaw” generation, became famous, first and foremost, as an expert in Russian thought. His publications, devoted to, among other things, retrospective utopianism and liberalism in the (...) 19th and 20th century Russian philosophy and social thought, were novel on a world scale. Equally novel were his works on the history of Marxism, where he challenged Kołakowski’s standpoint. Moreover, Walicki signifi cantly contributed to research on the history of Polish romantic philosophy, which had previously been overshadowed by great poetry. Walicki is considered to be one of the personalities who, in the 1960s and 70s, the time when Poland was part of the Soviet empire, made Polish humanities flourish. However, no matter how highly one estimates Walicki’s achievements, the impression that humanities were thriving in the communist Poland aft er de-Stalinization is an illusion. The illusion is an eff ect of the crisis in which humanities in Poland found themselves aft er the change of the regime, under neoliberal and populist governments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William Joseph Gavin, 1943–2021James Campbellit is my task briefly to memorialize the life of William Joseph Gavin. This is a sad task, as are all memorials, but it is also an important one. Bill was a beloved and respected colleague, and it is the duty of the Society to note his passing.The basic facts of Bill’s life are easy to recount. Born in New York City on 16 December (...) 1943, he was educated at Fordham from ninth grade on. He earned his BA in 1965, with a major in Russian language and Soviet-area studies. He completed his doctorate in 1970 with a dissertation entitled “An Aesthetic Approach to the Philosophy of William James.” Bill taught at the University of Southern Maine—with occasional periods in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Japan and China—from 1968 until his retirement in 2014. He was the author, co-author, or editor of seven books, and wrote well over a hundred articles and reviews. Bill was an active member of SAAP forever. Long before we had T-shirts or posters, before there were prizes or even banquets, he was participating in our meetings and speaking on such figures as James and Dewey. A not irrelevant aspect in Bill’s life was that he was married to the same woman, Catherine Kerley Gavin, for over fifty years, and together they shared a life of travel, sailing, and dancing. Bill died in Maine on 25 April 2021.In addition to his work in American philosophy with which we are most familiar, Bill’s overall interests encompassed the sub-fields of ethics and aesthetics, medical ethics, Russian philosophy, and Existentialism. In his writings, these diverse aspects of his thought were seamlessly integrated and presented with a teacher’s eye on the larger mission of philosophy: to try to answer such questions as these: “Why do we do what we do?” “What should we value?” “What should we believe?” “How should we live?” [End Page 106]Running like a dark thread through Bill’s writings are the themes of finitude and death. He emphasized that our beliefs in the secure and the permanent—our delusional expectations of control, our excessive demands for clarity, our hopeless quest for certainty—are all misguided. In his wonderfully clear volume, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, Bill writes: “[M]ost philosophers, and indeed most people... have pursued certainty, objectivity, and some form of universal truth” and “have assumed that such truth can be captured in language, that is, that a complete linguistic description of reality is at least possible and certainly desirable” (Gavin, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague, Temple UP, 1992, p. 1). By means of his work, Bill shows us that all of this is delusional. He helps us to grasp what it is to live our lives without an adequate understanding of what we are doing, and to face the tragedy of having to endure when our choices prove mistaken. His view of life, and his approach to philosophy, are thus existential in the deepest sense.Philosophy for him was not some gussied-up academic pastime by means of which we polish and update the thoughts of others. Rather, philosophy lives only in a broader cultural context that also includes hunger and illness, yet has room for both poetry and dance. In the vital niche that Bill’s work occupies between Pragmatism and Existentialism, he returned again and again to the diversity of our problematic contexts, and to the vague and tentative understandings that we cobble together to address our situation. [End Page 107]James CampbellUniversity of ToledoCopyright © 2023 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois... (shrink)

ABSTRACT The present paper is devoted to an outstanding Kazakh poet, musician and writer Zhumeken Nazhimedenov who lived during the Soviet Union. Zhumeken Nazhimedenov is one of the authors of the Anthem of the Republic of Kazakhstan, adopted in 2006. The object of the research was the collection of poems and prose by Zh. Nazhimedenov, published in different years, and literary criticism written about him by well-known critics and writers of that time. The purpose of the paper is to (...) analyse and distinguish thematic and ideological features the genre-literary issues and stylistic analysis of Nazhimedenov’s poetry and prose. In the study, the methods of thematic and stylistic analysis were used. The poet’s literary works are distinguished by the diversity of contemporary scenes and traces of the search for the discovery of the human world, the possibility of depicting nature. In conclusion, each work of Zh. Nazhimedenov summarizes the realities of life in its time, touches the hearts and conveys the truth. The ideology of literary works is based on the traces of goodness, which began with the homeland, consisting of a passion for life, compassion and appreciation of mankind. (shrink)

The answer to this question is simple, but it requires elaborate argumentation. Epicureanism in The First Circle stands for the ethics of Stalinist society and furnished Solzhenitsyn with the vehicle for a destructive critique of Stalinist moral theory. But Stalinism has tended to be viewed in the West chiefly as a vicious form of political opportunism, its implicit ethical structure has escaped due recognition. But Stalinism was more than one man's strategy for the seizure and consolidation of power, more even (...) than the collective aims, policies, and methods of the Soviet bureaucracy. The ideological component of Stalinism must not be neglected. Howsoever the integrity of its doctrines was subordinated to political exigencies of the moment, Stalinist ideology could lay claim to a coherent and distinguished intellectual ancestry: it was heir to the materialist philosophy of the so-called Left Hegelians , a philosophy militantly reinterpreted by the architects of the Russian Revolution. Stalinist ideology expected a profound influence on the popular notions of obligation and moral value during the period of its ascendancy, smoothing the way of acquiescence and cooperation for the reluctant, the dubious, and the conscience-stricken. One need not therefore subscribe to an idealist interpretation of history in order to agree with Solzhenitsyn that Stalin's creation of an univers concentrationnaire would have been impossible without an accessory code of official ethics. David M. Halperin, an assistant professor of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of articles on Solzhenitsyn, Conrad, Augustine, Virgil, and ancient bucolic poetry. (shrink)

At the age of twenty-five, Primo Levi was sent to Hell. Levi, an Italian chemist from Turin, was one of many swept up in the Holocaust of World War II and sent to die in the German concentration camp in Auschwitz. Of the 650 people transported to the camp in his group, only 15 men and 9 women survived. After Soviet liberation of the camp in 1945, Levi wrote books, essays, short stories, poetry, and a novel, in which (...) he painstakingly described the horrors of his experience at Auschwitz. He also spent the rest of his life struggling with the fact that he was not among those who were killed. In _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival,_ Frederic D. Homer looks at Primo Levi's life but, more important, shows him to be a significant political philosopher. In the course of his writings, Levi asked and answered his most haunting question: can someone be brutalized by a terrifying experience and, upon return to "ordinary life," recover from the physical and moral destruction he has suffered? Levi used this question to develop a philosophy positing that although man is no match for life, he can become better prepared to contend with the tragedies in life. According to Levi, the horrors of the world occur because of the strength of human tendencies, which make relationships between human beings exceedingly fragile. He believed that we are ill-constituted beings who have tendencies toward violence and domination, dividing ourselves into Us and Them, with very shallow loyalties. He also maintained that our only refuge is in education and responsibility, which may counter these tendencies. Homer calls Levi's philosophy "optimistic pessimism." As Homer demonstrates, Levi took his past experiences into account to determine that goodwill and democratic institutions do not come easily to people. Liberal society is to be earned through discipline and responsibility toward our weaknesses. Levi's answer is "civilized liberalism." To achieve this we must counter some of our most stubborn tendencies. Homer also explores the impact of Levi's death, an apparent suicide, on the way in which his work and theories have been perceived. While several critics discount Levi's work because of the nature of his death, Homer argues that his death is consistent with his philosophy. A book rich in brutally honest philosophy, _Primo Levi and the Politics of Survival_ compels one to look at serious questions about life, tragedy, optimism, solidarity, violence, and human nature. (shrink)

Viacheslav Ivanov, the central intellectual force in Russian modernism, achieved through his work an original synthesis of Christianity, Platonism, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. His powerful intellect exerted an immeasurable influence in modernist Russia and the early Soviet Union, and after emigrating to Italy in 1924 he played an important role in intellectual debates in Western Europe between the wars. In recent years, Ivanov's manifold contributions have been recognized in all major aspects of Russian culture, including poetry, (...) literary theory, philosophy, and theology. In _The Russian Prospero_, Robert Bird uncovers the foundations of Ivanov's poetic and theoretical universe, traces its evolution, and explores its connections to cultural and intellectual currents in international modernism. Blending a close reading of Ivanov's work with a thoughtful analysis of his place within twentieth-century thought, Bird finds that Ivanov's ecstatic creative psychology leads directly to a consideration of history as a continuum of human interpretive activity, and to a conception of art as a historical force. He emphasizes and dramatizes Ivanov's quest to harness the power of art and apply it to concrete life-situations. It is the dilemma of Prospero, who must liberate his attendant spirit Ariel in order to restore full sovereignty over his own creative self and to regain ethical agency. The productive tension that resulted from Ivanov's struggle was a remarkable force in Russian modernism and remains a powerful spur for our own reflections on modernity. Outstanding Academic Title, _Choice_ Magazine “[Bird’s] clear explanations of Ivanov’s ideas and his informed, insightful, astute readings of the poetic works make this book required reading for anyone interested in modern poetry, intellectual history, cultural studies, and philosophy of early 20th century Russian and European thought.... Essential.”—_Choice_ “[Bird] makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of Russian modernism in its broader European context.... In this undertaking he has not only succeeded admirably, but will undoubtedly inspire others to follow him.”—Pamela Davidson, _The Russian Review_ “The most comprehensive overall treatment of Ivanov’s work to date.”—David N. Wells, _The Slavic and East European Journal_. (shrink)

Applying an ecocritical lens to Holocaust literature, this paper explores the connection between the natural world and the seemingly unnatural machinations of the Holocaust by placing two writers in conversation: Abraham Sutzkever and Vasily Grossman. For Sutzkever, the famed Yiddish poet of Vilna, poetry was linked to survival and to the environment, sometimes emerging from a bog, wilderness, or mutilated landscape but shining all the more brightly for its mired origins. Grossman, another important documenter of the Holocaust, was a (...) Soviet-Jewish writer known for his reportage, fiction, and compilations of Jewish documents from the Second World War. Like Sutzkever, Grossman was occupied in his work with the earth and its animate and inanimate inhabitants, from the crying stones and soil of Treblinka to the red sunset of a humanity ravaged by genocide. When faced with the almost unnarratable desolation and loss encountered during the Holocaust, both authors turned to their environment as a literary tool, a means of conveying that which could not be conveyed through traditional or accepted language. Nature and the nonhuman world became vehicles for an exploration of trauma and violence that in many ways extended beyond human comprehension, and therefore required a mode of imagining that similarly extended beyond human experience alone. At the same time, both Sutzkever and Grossman can be seen attempting to allow nonhuman nature to speak in its own voice, however inflected by human perspectives the hearing and translation of that voice may be. This paper therefore reveals and highlights the importance of addressing the interactions between human and nonhuman nature in Holocaust literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:After the Future. The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian CultureDmitry KhaninAfter the Future. The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture, by Mikhail Epstein; translated with an introduction by Anessa Miller-Pogacar; xvi & 394 pp. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995, $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.Mikhail Epstein, a renowned Soviet critic—his books in Russian include Paradoxes of the New (1988) and Faith and Image: The Religious Subconscious (...) in [End Page 508] Twentieth Century Russian Culture (1994)—emigrated to the U.S. in 1988. After the Future is the first collection of his major essays (written from 1986 to 1991) in English translation. It begins with the article “New Currents in Russian Poetry: Conceptualism, Metarealism, and Presentism,” which first introduced to the Soviet reader a group of postmodernist poets, just coming out (with the advent of glasnost) from the literary underground. Other articles (“Avant-Garde Art and Religion,” “After the Future: On the New Consciousness in Literature”), though first published in Russian literary journals, were shipped to Russia from “the other shore” (to use Alexander Herzen’s description of emigre writers’ whereabouts vis-à-vis their homeland). The latest studies (“Relativistic Patterns in Totalitarian Thinking: The Linguistic Games of Soviet Ideology,” “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism”) were not only sent from the other shore but apparently produced for the other shore. Instead of analyzing the recent Russian literary crop and emerging aesthetic sensibilities, Epstein focuses on Russian historic experience in its entirety, which he somewhat didactically clarifies for the foreign reader.Despite its shifting perspectives, After the Future features a distinctive approach toward Russian postmodernism, its bona fide subject matter. Following Jean Baudrillard, Epstein defines postmodernism as simulation (“the production of reality as a series of plausible copies”) that engenders some new hyperreality and in so doing supplants “reality itself, which then becomes irrecoverable” (p. 189). The originality of Epstein’s position lies, however, in his claim that Russia as a historic and cultural entity is a postmodernist phenomenon in its own right that simulates and masterminds reality. Epstein’s claim that postmodernism is ingrained in Russian tradition is pitted specifically against those who doubt that Russia is ready to enjoy its own postmodernist bash since (contrary to the West) it never went through prior modernist phases. To prove that Russia foreshadowed postmodernism, Epstein draws on a number of historic illustrations. He cites the forceful adoption of Christianity under Prince Vladimir in 988, Peter the Great’s building of Petersburg in the “Finnish swamp” and Prince Potemkin’s infamous make-up villages as examples of the Russian tendency to forfeit the status quo for the sake of trumped-up, ersatz realities.However, Epstein’s arguments to the effect that Russia, and not the West, is the birthplace of postmodernism are not very convincing since (in accordance with his own premise) other countries can claim such a dubious distinction as well. (“Russia is the motherland of elephants”—the Russians joke about claims by zealous patriots that all great discoveries were known in their country before they appeared elsewhere.) Elsewhere, the building of the Chinese wall and the ensuing Chinese policies of isolationism, draconian enclosures of peasant land in England that led to a speedy transition to capitalism, drastic economic and social reforms after the French Revolution, and the racist policies of the Third Reich were just as arbitrary, and yet transformative of prior realities, as any of [End Page 509] Russia’s most foolhardy experiments. Ironically, Epstein’s claim that Russia is the motherland of postmodernism harks back to the turn-of-the-century controversy as to whether it is pertinent to apply Marxist theory to rustic Russia. Lenin argued that Russia can claim Marxism as its own because all of its long-suffering history was an anticipation of Marxism and leading toward it. Epstein analogously contends that there is a special, indigenous Russian route to postmodernism, a statement that evokes similar pronouncements ingrained in Russian philosophical tradition: Epstein’s thesis that Russia is “irreal” reminds one of Peter Chaadaev’s contention that Russia does not have a history; his idea that Russia is on the threshold of a cultural synthesis with the... (shrink)

Like Plato, Protagoras held that young children learn virtue from fine examples in poetry. Unlike Plato, Protagoras taught adults by correcting the diction of poets. In this paper I ask what his standard of correctness might be, and what benefit he intended his students to take from exercises in correction. If his standard of correctness is truth, then he may intend his students to learn by questioning the content of poems; that would be suggestive of Plato’s program in Republic (...) III. But his standard is more likely to be the accurate use of language; in that case he would intend his students to learn to express their thoughts clearly enough that their audience would understand what they were saying. That standard would be independent of the truth of what they are saying; and that would be a precursor to modern techniques by which we try to teach speaking and writing. Truth is not so easy to escape, however, and we shall see that Protagoras’ exercise must assume that the poet is trying to tell the truth. (shrink)

Originally published in 1961. Russian Marxist philosophy of science originated among men and women who gave their whole lives to rebellion against established authority. The original tension within Marxist philosophy between positivism and metaphysics was repressed but not resolved in this first phase of Soviet Marxism. In this volume the author correlates the development of ideas with trends in the Cultural Revolution and against this background it is possible to understand why debates over general philosophy gave way to conflicts (...) over specific sciences in the aftermath of the first Five Year Plan and why there was a genuine crisis in Soviet biology. (shrink)

The collapse of the Soviet Union, all hope that Eastern European communism might somehow be transformed into a more attractive, less environmentally destructive social order than the liberal democratic societies of the West has been destroyed. The description of the modern predicament by Alvin W. Gouldner has become even more poignant: "The political uniqueness of our own era then is this; we have lived and still live through a desperate political and social malaise, while at the same time we (...) have outlived the desperate revolutionary remedies that had once been thought to solve them." If this is the case, there is reason to examine the failure of the Soviet Union more closely. Was it possible that things might have worked out differently; and if so, does this provide any orientation for the present? In this paper I will show how an alternative path for Soviet society had been charted, and partly implemented, in the 1920's by the radical wing of Bolshevism, a path which made environmental conservation a central issue. And I will suggest that this is the path which holds most hope for the future. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 207 Seiten: 279-301.

The central questions addressed in this article are: 1) Can writing poetry be both a process, and a product of research? and 2) How can writing poetry be therapeutic to the writer and reader? The author has developed his own theories of poetry as research and poetry as therapy by action research into his writing. He argues that in thinking about the process of writing verse, he has come to see that some poetry is a (...) form of research, and way of knowing. He has observed and recorded ways in which writing has been therapeutic for both the writer and for the reader or listener. The article develops and supports the notion of poetry as research by referring to a growing literature on poetic enquiry. The author then analyses and illustrates how poetry can be therapeutic to the writer and to readers. In a similar way, the article draws on a different literature on poetry as therapy to support his argument. (shrink)

Why have poets played such an important role for contemporary philosophers? How can poetry link philosophy and political theory? How do formal considerations intersect with philosophical approaches? These essays seek to establish a dialogue between poetry and philosophy. Each essay contributes to our understanding of the relationships between theory and lived experience while providing new insight into important poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Victor Hugo, and others. The broad range of metaphysical, phenomenological, aesthetic, and ethical approaches (...) announce important new paths for a reinvigorated study of lyric poetry in the decades to come. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The study critically examines the meaning of the statement 'Marxism-Leninism is Soviet ideology' with a view to clarifying our understanding of Marxism-Leninism. This involves an interpretative investigation of both the words 'Marxism-Leninism' and 'ideology' from the Soviet and Soviet studies perspectives, and from broader philosophical and linguistic perspectives. The resulting analysis is unique in Soviet studies insofar as it engages in a meta-critique of terms (...) which are conventionally taken for granted by Sovietologists, and insofar as it introduces a new methodological approach to the study of Marxism-Leninism. ;Its central arguments and principal conclusions are as follows: First, it is argued that ideology is a term with multiple referents but an inescapably epistemological connotation which render it incapable of conceptualization. Consequently any attempt to employ the term in the analysis of alien discourse inevitably produces both epistemological imperialism and epistemological and referential confusion which reduces that discourse itself to silence. It is therefore concluded that the term must be abandoned for the purposes of analysis. ;Secondly, it is argued that Marxism-Leninism is an empty signifier which is subject to definition on a contemporary basis by the CPSU itself. A discursive analysis of CPSU discourse demonstrates that Marxism-Leninism is in fact the central element in a mechanism of control which bears all the features of a classic double bind. It is therefore concluded that while Marxism-Leninism is referentially open to re-definition it is connotatively attached to the practices of the CPSU. It is both fixed and not fixed in meaning. This phenomenon explains many of the paradoxes in CPSU discourse that Sovietologists have been unable to explain. ;The study concludes by suggesting that this type of interpretative discursive approach is much more fruitful than the epistemology critique which has been conventionally employed. (shrink)

In the history of Lithuania during the period between the two world wars, the criminal law sources were received from Russia (Criminal Statute of 1903) and adapted for the requirements of those States, where the conditions of life were notably different from those in Lithuania. The Criminal Statute of 1903 was the main criminal law source in Lithuania until 1940. Prior to the second occupation—the return of the Soviets—tens of thousands of Lithuanian citizens fled to the West, including a very (...) large segment of the intelligentsia, university lecturers, professors and many lawyers. The lawyers in emigration were very socially active and founded a paper of law research—“Teisininkų žinios.” The article deals with the works and research of the emigration lawyers B. Nemickas, V. Vaitkevičius, P. Raulinaitis,V. Rastenis, D. Krivickas and others, in which they deal with the problem of Soviet criminal law. The lawyers analyse the sources of Soviet criminal law, which was the criminal law source in occupied Lithuania. (shrink)

Philosophical analysis of the Soviet Union as a phenomenon is relevant in light of the approaching centennial of its formation. The significance of this event derives from the Soviet Union’s enormous scale and historically, qualitatively unique formation that included many dozens of nations and nationalities. This formation replaced the equally enormous Russian Empire but arose not due to natural development but on its ruins, by the means of a European Marxism adapted to domestic conditions. Nowhere in the world (...) have societies and states like the Soviet Union arisen spontaneously, while the Eastern European “people’s democracy” countries created after the Second World War repeatedly attempted to free themselves from the kinship and dominance of the Soviet Union and would disappear immediate with its collapse.In this article, the question of what the Soviet Union was in its project and reality is discussed in the following contexts: Marxist solutions to Russia’s agrarian question and their subsequent internationalization to create a “world union of workers and peasants” (V.I. Lenin); analysis of the principle of forced labor as the primary means of creating the “socialist working man”; the formation of the Soviet Union as a “quasi-federal” community of peoples “national in form, socialist in content”; and the forced inclusion of Eastern European peoples in the emerging “world Soviet Union” as “payment” for their liberation from fascism. This article justifies the claim that without analysis of the essential role of these ideas and phenomena, one could hardly expect to gain a holistic understanding of the nature of the Soviet Union. (shrink)

The author attempts to encompass the self, or a self, that, while at some times appears to be his own, at other times not, thus encompassing and continually morphing. It is a mixture of poetry and prose.

This is the first modern, annotated and scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ _Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting_, one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics in any language.

Why is there a long-standing debate about paraphrase in poetry? Everyone agrees that paraphrase can be useful; everyone agrees that paraphrase is no substitute for the poem itself. What is there to disagree about? Perhaps this: whether paraphrase can specify everything that counts as a contribution to the meaning of a poem. There are, we say, two ways to take the question; on one way of taking it, the answer is that paraphrase cannot. Does this entail that there is (...) meaning mysteriously locked in a poem, meaning that cannot be represented in any way other than via the poem itself? If that were so it would have profound implications for poetry’s capacity to convey insight. We suggest reasons for thinking that the entailment does not hold. Throughout, we connect the traditional debate over paraphrase, which has largely been conducted within the fields of philosophy and literary theory, with recent empirically oriented thinking about the communicability of meaning, represented by work in pragmatics. We end with a suggestion about what is to count as belonging to meaning, and what as merely among the things that determine meaning. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u nd. The article critically examines the concept of peace in the context of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance. This study delves into the historical, diplomatic, and philosophical dimensions of the Treaty between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China in the mid-twentieth century. M e t h o d s. The study is based on a systematic analysis of the original documents of the Sino- (...) class='Hi'>Soviet Treaty and other primary sources that record the context and content of the agreement. The article uses a comprehensive analysis of primary sources, diplomatic correspondence, political discourse, and philosophical narrative to illuminate various interpretations and implementations of the treaty's peace provisions. Analyzing the philosophical basis of the agreement, it is taken into account how the ideas and concepts of friendship, union and mutual assistance were interpreted in the philosophical context of both countries. The article uses methods of comparative analysis to establish common and distinctive features between the ideology of the Sino-Soviet Treaty. Re s u l t s. The study provides valuable information about the geopolitical dynamics of the 20th century, shedding light on how the two major communist powers managed their diplomatic relations. By examining the ideological underpinnings and practical implications of the Treaty's peace-oriented provisions, the article contributes to understanding the broader landscape of international relations in this dynamic period. C o n c l u s i o n s. The study provides important information about the geopolitical dynamics of the 20th century, revealing how the two leading communist states managed their diplomatic relations. The article also considers the prospects for the development of dynamics between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, examining the difficulties and problems that arose in maintaining peaceful relations between powerful states with common political ideologies based on the principles of Marxism. Analyzing the ideological foundation and practical consequences of the peacekeeping principles in the treaty, the article contributes to a better understanding of the broad context of international relations and philosophical narrative. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, the poet Herman Gorter is mostly known as the author of the neo-romantic poem May and the “sensitivistic” Poems, but internationally he became famous as a propagandist of radical Marxism: the author of influential brochures and of an “open letter” to comrade W.I. Lenin in 1920. During the 1890s, Gorter became increasingly dissatisfied with his poetry, considering it as ego-centric, disinterested and “bourgeois”, unconnected with what was happening in the real world. He wanted to put his (...) poetry on a scientific footing, notably by endorsing a dialectical materialist worldview. In the communist society he envisioned, science would become poetry and poetry would become science. In his opus magnum Pan, two terms are rather prominent, namely heelal and kristal. These signifiers not only reflect important themes, but also two friendships which began around 1900, namely with prominent astronomer and marxist Anton Pannekoek and with Ada Prins, the first woman in the Netherlands who acquired a PhD in chemistry, specialised in liquid crystal research. Whereas Ada Prins is mostly remembered as one of Gorter’s secret lovers, she was first and foremost his educated guide into the complex and enigmatic world of twentieth-century chemistry research. Liquid crystal chemistry became an important source of inspiration for Gorter’s work and the main objective of this paper is to demonstrate her influence on Gorter’s Pan as a scientific poem After presenting the two heroes of this paper, and their work in poetry and chemistry respectively, I will analyse the role of liquid crystals in Herman Gorter’s Pan, highlighting important connections with Ada Prins’ research into liquid crystal chemistry. (shrink)

In the Netherlands, the poet Herman Gorter is mostly known as the author of the neo-romantic poem May and the “sensitivistic” Poems, but internationally he became famous as a propagandist of radical Marxism: the author of influential brochures and of an “open letter” to comrade W.I. Lenin in 1920. During the 1890s, Gorter became increasingly dissatisfied with his poetry, considering it as ego-centric, disinterested and “bourgeois”, unconnected with what was happening in the real world. He wanted to put his (...) poetry on a scientific footing, notably by endorsing a dialectical materialist worldview. In the communist society he envisioned, science would become poetry and poetry would become science. In his opus magnum Pan, two terms are rather prominent, namely heelal and kristal. These signifiers not only reflect important themes, but also two friendships which began around 1900, namely with prominent astronomer and marxist Anton Pannekoek and with Ada Prins, the first woman in the Netherlands who acquired a PhD in chemistry, specialised in liquid crystal research. Whereas Ada Prins is mostly remembered as one of Gorter’s secret lovers, she was first and foremost his educated guide into the complex and enigmatic world of twentieth-century chemistry research. Liquid crystal chemistry became an important source of inspiration for Gorter’s work and the main objective of this paper is to demonstrate her influence on Gorter’s Pan as a scientific poem After presenting the two heroes of this paper, and their work in poetry and chemistry respectively, I will analyse the role of liquid crystals in Herman Gorter’s Pan, highlighting important connections with Ada Prins’ research into liquid crystal chemistry. (shrink)

Poetry is a literary art, and is often examined alongside the novel, stories, and theater. But poetry, much of it, has more in common with music, in important respects, than with other forms of literature. The emphasis on sound and rhythm in both poetry and music is obvious, but I will explore a very different similarity between them. All or almost all works of literary fiction have narrators—so it is said anyway—characters who, in the world of the (...) fiction, utter or write the words of the text thereby reporting the events of the story. But there is a very different way of understanding literary works, one applicable especially to poetry. Much music can be understood in a similar manner, and doing so nicely explains several important characteristics of listen-ers’ experiences. (shrink)