Search

From a thousand meters above. Images of Spain presents us with Marinetti’s contacts with Ramón Gómez de la Serna, translator of his manifestos into Spanish and son of the director of the Madrid magazine “Prometeo”, from which emerge two important texts for understanding the Italian Futurist's view of the Iberian country: the manifesto Proclama futurista a los españoles (1910) and the travelogue Spagna veloce e toro futurista (1931). Here, the author focuses mainly on the latter and seeks to highlight the types of images that the writer uses to characterize the country he visits, while the correspondence between the two intellectuals reveals the influence of the Spaniard on the Italian in the creation of heteroimages of Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyze the portrayal of the neighbour and the neighbourhood in the Macedonian graphic stories of the Nikad robom (Never a Slave) comic book edition. It was not only one of the most influential mass and pop culture phenomena in ex-Yugoslavia, but it also participated in the ideological shaping of images and depictions of the neighbour and the neighbourhood as special types of sociopolitical and identity cogitations. The comic book, as a graphic story and a dominant pop culture phenomenon in the 1950s and 1960s, had strong ideological and political power in the processes of legitimizing the dominant social values. Within said processes, we have located several key representations and images of the neighbour in this edition which not only reveal the influence of the political and ideological factors in the shaping of national identities but also participate in the process of (re)creation and consolidation of Macedonian self-awareness as distinct from that of its neighbours. The building of the Macedonian identity, as an articulated story of itself, is largely based on perceptions and representations of and feelings for the neighbour. Hence, we come to the assumption that the portrayal of the neighbour is a type of self-portrait. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are amongst the main protagonists of the book of Revelation. Their images, functions, and significance in the text of the visionary seer from Patmos are the subject of this synchronic study. The author points to the fact that the horizon of exegetical inquiries used in the book of Revelation, apart from the nouns γuvמ (woman, wife) and vúμφη (bride), is broadened by the use of juxtaposed elements of feminine symbolism and nuptial imagery. John has endowed popular themes from the intersection of Judaism and the Greco-Roman world with new meanings. They contribute to the image of the personified Church, which fights against personified evil and triumphs as the Bride of the Lamb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the one hand, the sphere of art offers the possibility to imagine a different, less oppressive and normative world, where just as in the case of cartoons even the greatest gawks, misfits, and outcasts would build friendships and alliances helping them to reach a happy ending. On the other hand, there is something of an artistic performance, at least of an illusionist show, to an intentional act of failure. To perform failure, one has to improvise, to operate randomly, blunderingly, and ostentatiously, as well as to resist the social norms and rules. The artworks that are presented here pertain to all of these meanings of the "art of failure". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of Václav Renč's lyrical poetry from the period of his imprisonment by the Communist regime in 1951-1962. From Renč's extensive collection of prison poems (including such lyrical-epic compositions as Cinderella of Nazareth, first published in book form in 1969; Prague Legend, 1974; and Loretan Light, 1992; as well as several poems collected in Meeting with the Minotaur, 1969) we take a look at the nineteen poems Renč included in an anthology of his works from 1941-1962 under the title Lark Tower (1970). To the section of lyrical texts from the years 1951-1962 the poet gave the title Without Echoes. In particular, the study focuses on how Renč's lyrical poetry from the period of his imprisonment builds upon his previous critically acclaimed poetry, simultaneously aiming to address the question of what makes this work unique. The unique quality can be found in the formal precision of the texts, which represents the poet's effort to maintain his moral integrity and identity while in prison, while at the same time, by virtue of carefully constructed allusions to the verses of certain poets with whom Renč had worked as a poet and translator before his imprisonment, strengthening his sense of inner freedom. A key starting point for the aesthetic composition of the prison poems is the combination of various expressive and often elementary contradictory motifs, perspectives or attitudes, a process typical of prison poetry in general. In Václav Renč's poetry, this initial moment is re-envisioned on the principle of the so-called lyrical dichotomy, which, on the basis of subtle gradational and compositional techniques and intersections, connects distinctive opposites into subtle poetic images. However, this is not the expression of a selfcentered aesthetic game, but an attempt to articulate -- and cope with -- a new and exacting life situation. In this way, Václav Renč's poetry, which had always been characterized by its compositional and figurative rigor, would later become more austere in its semantics, at the same time gaining in intensity, depth and reach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the considerations of Karlheinz Stierle, who claims that one of the key tasks in thinking about literature is to oppose the technical totality of modernity and its repressive mechanisms with the substantiality of the slow and the already past, this study aims -- in the reading of Franz Kafka, for example, by German thinker, literary theorist and critic Walter Benjamin, and that of Karel Čapek by Czech literary historian and critic Jiří Opelík -- to present a form of thinking about literature and its studies that would belong in some ways to the 'slow reading culture'. At a time when the predominant view of the status of the discipline has grown skeptical, when one has come to doubt the meaning of literature, it is useful to return to the sources and principal questions that comprise our basic attitude towards literature and its study. The question of the current state of thought about literature is reflected here by the prism of slowness and the culture of slow reading, together with a study of literature that opens our way to something we might have otherwise abandoned in the 'rhythm of constantly renewed acceleration'. The first part of the study, dedicated to Benjamin's reading of Kafka, focuses on several motifs, grouped around the idea of study and the idea of the image. He develops his interpretation of Kafka's short stories, The New Advocate, and his reading of the photographic portrait of little Kafka, by reflecting on Benjamin's tendency to introduce the subject in a circular manner, and through a method of interpretation that gradually approaches, interrupts and postpones, the methodological equivalent to slow reading, revolves around the conviction that the center of the thinking about literature is the understanding of literary works, his open movement, which can never reach a culminating understanding. The second part of the study, devoted to Opelík's reading of Karel Čapek, deals with the philological footprint and philological impulse in the literary-historical works of Jiří Opelík: at the epicenter of literary research he inserts the poetic word, which like the history of his stratification is also a model of the historicity of understanding and the experience of time slowing down. Slowness, in the context of Opelík's Čapek, receives numerous synonyms, some immediately implied (continuity and stability), others emerging from his Čapek reading spontaneously (service), and still others seeming to suggest themselves: loyalty. Loyalty to the author, a service rendered not only to him but also to the readers, to ongoing research, to the constancy of the contemporary reader's interest. Opelík's methods remain an element of confidentiality in relation to the studied work, which is both first and last instance of understanding, confidentiality based on the slow experience of reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the real earthquake in Lisboa, 1755, as well as the revolutionary ones in France and the shocks of the Napoleonic wars, the model of a temporally linear development of modernity, with 'Progress' as its universal goal, was shaken; and beyond the impact on Enlightenment rationality and philosophy of reason, it affected all assumed meaning of history, knowledge, and apparent certainties. This 'state of crisis' induced Heinrich von Kleist first to his novella The Earthquake in Chile (Das Erdbeben in Chili, 1806/1807) and then to suicide, whereas F. D. E. Schleiermacher responded with his theory of modern hermeneutics as a synthesis of the individual and the general. Building on Hana Šmahelová's V síti dějin literatury národního obrození (2011), the paper focuses on the model of temporalisation of historical processes and in particular the 'event of national reawakening' as part of the 'project of modernization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. The aim of the article was the analysis of the ways how people use space of the Royal Łazienki Park in Warsaw - which places are their favorite and which tracks do they follow the most enthusiastically of all? The paper concerns the results of the ethnography entitled: "Royal Łazienki Park. Urban space in the users' narratives and practices". Research Method. The field research was conducted from 2012 to 2013 in the area of the Royal Łazienki Park. Author used the methods: anthropological interview, participant observation and research diary. The research questions were: How people spend their time in Park? Why the Łazienki Królewskie Park plays an important role for the inhabitants in Warsaw? Author considers the concept of mental maps by Kevin Lynch (distinguishing: paths, nodes, landmarks, districts and edges), but also the other ideas of space and places (central place, significant place, lieu de momoire, empty spaces). Results. The results of the conducted qualitative research are presented in contrast to the image of Royal Łazienki Park presented in some of the earlier quantitative polls. In effect, the usage of the Park is shown in original contexts presented by the users. Outcome. Users' perspective reflects an involved attitude of people, which are creating quite new meanings of the space they use, basing on their own private experiences. It gives a possibility to create appropriable map of the Park - alternative to the official one, which is being presented by the manager of the cultural institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This piece takes stock of the current activities and influence of Serbia’s far Right, which inherited the extreme nationalism that informed Milošević and the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. That such nationalism was never fully driven from Serbia’s social and political life has led to the tacit support of fascist ideals in sections of the police, the Serbian Orthodox Church and certain government spokespeople. Violent attacks on LGBT and Roma communities and human rights violations are compounded by the state’s lack of response. The author explores the dominant political climate that fails to recognise the threat from the far Right and equates its political extremism with that of groups campaigning to protect human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article concerns the issue exploring myth in the context of the iconic turn. Iconic turn, opposed to formulating images as texts, signs or illustrations, treats both images and imagery as categories of cultural phenomena analysis. Attributing theory-cognitive status to images, the article explores the relation between cognition, imagination, image and myth. Considering the differentia specifi ca of mythical thinking - imagery, we can say that the assumptions of iconic turn are at the very heart of myth knowledge issues, especially the issues of myth and mythopoiesis. They also reach the problems of separating basic mythical images as cultural images, image acts as constituting myths and the relation between the imagery and textuality of myth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]