ISSUE 1, 2021

Книгата, която любознателните читатели държат в ръцете си, е първият брой от поредицата на Института за литература при БАН „Studia Litteraria Serdicensia“, която беше замислена като продължение на излизалия през 50-те и 60-те години на ХХ век годишник „Известия на института за българска литература при БАН“. В този смисъл темата на нейния първи том изглежда напълно закономерна.

The article tries to answer the question of what are the reasons for the emergence of repetition as a sustainable cultural practice. The need for it is derived first of all from the fact that culture is a phenomenon that is not inherited biologically, and therefore in the process of its transmission from generation to generation its norms must be constantly recalled and updated. Hence the need for each new idea to be legitimized as inherited from tradition. However, in the epoch of modern literature and culture, which raises the individual-creative 37principle as its main principle, this need for repetition is a paradox. And especially a manifestation of repetition, known as a remake. Moreover, the definition of this phenomenon is based not simply on the development of sustainable motifs and plots, but on their processing in previous works of art, building a specific fund of culture, which the German researcher Elizabeth Frenzel defined with the term Stoff. To find an answer to this paradox, the article analyzes two typical cases: The two film adaptations of Indro Montanelli’s novel “Il Generale della Rovere” made by Roberto Rossellini in 1959 and Carlo Carlei in 2011, on the one hand, and on the other – the famous novel quatrain of Thomas Mann “Joseph and his brothers”, written on a famous biblical story. As a result of the analysis of these typical cases, the article comes to the answer to the question what is the function of repetition in culture. On the one hand, it aims to bring the existing order of problematization and revaluation in line with the needs of the changing social environment. On the other hand, pointing to the ancient roots of the developed motif, repetition provides identity and continuity of the world. And the phenomenon of remake, as a child of the postmodern era, introduces a very effective rule: Let us not be deceived that our way of seeing and appreciating the world is the only right one. It is much better to compare different ways, which provides a much more reliable basis for free moral judgment, while preserving the stability and identity of the world.

Repetition and imitation are an integral part of the development of knowledge and civilization. The paper “The Remake – Between Imitation and Creativity“ researches the genealogy and history of the practices of repetition and renovation in art history, as well as their application in a broader context in other fields. The paper discuses practices of remake in different arts – Its motives, techniques and functions. The questions about the essence of a remake are conceptualized through the prism of the antinomies original-copy, original-forgery, imitation, borrowing, and creativity. Issues of authenticity and authorship are discussed as well.

In the first part of this paper, I juxtapose film practices such as remakes and adaptations in their dual quality of processes and products. I trace the origin and meanings of the first concept, its appearance and de- velopment as a cinemstic activity and its theoretical elaboration through studies of G. Sadoul, T. Gunning, T. Leitch, C. Verevis, J. Forrest, A. Williams et al. I highlight conceptually and with examples the difference between the two phenomena and defend the need to distinguish them, regardless of their similarities. In the second part, I discuss the network of related formats for reworking film products and their role in popular culture. Keyword

The text focuses on the concept of lifestyle and the contemporary techniques for its construction. It traces the transition from Anthony Giddens’ concept of lifestyle (based on the reflective project of the Self) to the new forms of constructing the project for oneself with the help of the Internet and new technologies. The digital individuality is experienced as a fiction – everyone wants to be different, precisely because everyone is the same. At the same time, however, the search for uniqueness is achieved only through familiar, infinitely repeated forms. Today’s lifestyle is inevitably a combination of real and virtual elements, in which novelty is achieved through constant repetition and “improvement“ of what already exists.

This text reviews today’s commonplace creative strategy of remixing and one of its products – Remix. To clarify its nature, it is jux- taposed with the concepts of ‘remake’, ‘cover’ and ‘remix’ (lower case). The historic development of remix is traced and its becoming a driver of culture’s re-creation in the 21st century.

Western modernity owes its global influence as a cultural and political model to the rigid distinctions it makes between nature and cul- ture, as well as between their subdivisions. The creative reworkings of mythological and folkloric motifs that we frequently find in late modern literature and popular culture allow us to identify ways of overcoming these distinctions. Such reworkings show different possibilities for the uniting of the pagan and Christian heritage, of traditional narratives and ideas with the modern scientific worldview, of the exact sciences with other areas of culture, of “art for art’s sake“ with political engagement. The rigid separation of these spheres is a modern construct which has been immensely useful for technological and political progress, but which in the globalized era also reveals itself as psychologically and ecologically harmful.

Each literary work carries in itself the historical context of the era in which it was created, but the context of the time in which it is read and becomes popular is also superimposed onto it . Franz Kafka is one of the most analyzed authors because of his undeniable importance for modern literature, but also because of the extraordinary metaphorical nature and ambiguity of his texts. Kafka is an interesting phenomenon because his texts not only do not become obsolete, but they keep be- ing tirelessly translated all over the world. His most famous short story, „Die Verwandlung” (“The Metamorphosis”), has thirty-one translations in Spanish, twenty-five in English, and three in Bulgarian. The current study focuses on the questions why we need a new translation and what makes a new translation actually new.

This research presents some ideas concerning the new aspects of the national spirit, the relation between person and people and also the potentialities at the figurative language within Pencho Slaveikov’s poem “Song of Blood”. The rewrite of the familiar, in literature and history as figures and events, goes beyond the usual insert to common discourse 142or ordinary remake. Pencho Slaveikov himself is a founder of discourse – with new problems and decisions, in the center of which stays a different idea of the Human. The sources of the renovation within “Song of Blood” lead to Plato’s metaphysical foundation of the world and Aris- totle’s concept of potential and they are included in the new spirit of the Individualism.

Обект на изследването са фолклорните и митологични сюжети, които биват претворени по различни начини в българската белетристика от Освобождението до Първата световна война, както и идеологическите призми, през които тези сюжети са пречупени.

The article examines the potential of spiritual energy invested in one of the works of the great Bulgarian poet – the socalled “Revival prayer“, the role of the individual and his responsibility to God. Central to “My Prayer“ are images, themes, and motifs from the Bible, along with contemporary issues of institutional religion, which have been moved away in many aspects from genuine human care. Attention is paid to the structure of the prayer and all of its components – from the motto to the final metaphor, but also to the reversal and play with the genre, which gave rise to many contradictory interpretations of the text. A question has been touched on some religious motifs, repeated in other works of Botev, incl. the ideological suggestions of the poet’s new testament.

The current paper aims to put one of William Gibson’s latest novels – “The Peripheral“ – in the position of comparison, the boundaries of which are set by Stanislaw Lem’s phantomology. Its main goal is to determine how much of Gibson’s work fits into the traditional notion of phantomatics. The parallel is built on the motif of remaking which is considered crucial for the analysis of the chosen works.

The article offers a comparative reading of two short novels – “Scott Reynolds and the Unattainable” by Emilian Stanev (1973) and “Death in Venice” by Thomas Mann (1913) – ‘comparative’ primarily on a large cultural-civilizational scale, in which Stanev’s novel raises and further develops the main themes and motifs of Thomas-Man’s one. Namely, the global problem of the end of Western humanistic culture 202under the pressure of modern Technique/Machenschaft (Heidegger), collapsing towards the natural-monstrous. The similar structure and the common symbolic topoi of the two works are considered: ‘old man― child’, ‘North/West―South/East’...

In literary, film, and computer realities, a woman is projected in different ways. One of these transformations of the feminine is the witch. The knowledgeable woman is subjected to a number of taboos and (re)makings since ancient times. Creators embody diverse variants of the witch in their works to turn the image into a sustainable model. Wheth- er nurtured by the mythological, the gothic, or the popular, the witch embodies femininity that arouses fear because it cannot be completely rationalized. Female writers use the witch as a special type of femi- ninity – sometimes punished for her nature (Madeleine Miller’s Circe), sometimes able to overcome taboos and prohibitions (Angela Carter). How these “old” and at the same time “new” essences manage to coexist in modern prose, what implications and interpretive models are set for the image of the woman and the witch: these are some of the questions that this paper aims to raise and unfold in the context of the remake as a cultural practice.

Une des premières œuvres religieuses de Stoyan Mihaylovski est un cycle de poèmes, publié pour la première fois en 1884. À l’époque, il faisait partie du recueil de psaumes et de paraboles « Le Pope Bogomile ». En 1889, sa variante fort remaniée a été publiée deux fois – dans le recueil de poèmes « Novissima verba » sous le titre de « Sursum corda ! « et puis, toute seule, sous la dénomination « Dieu (poèmes bibliques) ». L’objectif de la présente étude est de comprendre les raisons pour lesquelles Mihay- lovski a procédé à ce remaniement de son œuvre. Une analyse attentive des corrections faites par l’auteur révèle qu’elles sont le résultat du désir de l’auteur de perfectionner l’œuvre mais aussi celui du tournant décisif dans les positions religieuses de l’auteur notamment pendant les années entre les deux éditions. L’œuvre change d’orientation – de la croyance des bogomiles vers le culte chrétien. La christianisation est réalisée au niveau lexical mais aussi par l’incrustation de symboles et de formes médiévaux typiques dans la composition du cycle et du rythme du vers (du symbo- lisme chrétien des chiffres, des allusions à l’hymnographie). Cette tech- nique fait de la création religieuse de Stoyan Mihaylovski une étape clé entre l’ancienne et la nouvelle littérature bulgare.

Travelling and friendship are the foundation narrative motives of N. Kazantzakis’ famous novel “Alexis Zorbas”. But they give strong impetus to H. Miller’s pen in his world-famous travelogue “The Colossus of Marоussi”, which became a symbol of philhellenism. The two classical literary works analyze the problems of (Greek, but not only) identity from both individual and socio-cultural point of view. In this article the 237concept of the remake is understood as a (re)making or a (re)creation of the Greek identity mostly in the context of universal moral categories, which unexpectedly gave the books “Alexis Zorbas” and “The Colossus of Maroussi” a long lasting popularity.

The German series “Babylon Berlin” is probably the most re- nowned television production in the second decade of 21st century after “Game of Thrones”. It is a typical example of modern “complex” television storytelling and at the same time offers perfect material for studying the “remake” in a broad cultural context. The first stage of the “remake” is the adaptation of Volker Kutscher’s novels about a Berlin police in- spector. The author himself admits that he was inspired not so much by literature as by television and cinema. The main aspect in the practice of “remake”, introduced by the series, is not just the transformation of the literary plot and characters into a new medium, a completely new reproduction of the world from which they are generated and in which they are functioning. This is the twilight of the Weimar Republic, marked by social unrest, political and economic cata- clysms. At that time, Berlin is the most Americanized European metropo- lis, where heroin is sold in pharmacies, prostitution is a mass profession, 259and the underworld serves high politics.

Released in 2016, Paolo Genovese’s well-received film “Perfect Strangers” has been remade 18 times by July 2019 and was included in the “Guiness Book of Records”. This comparative case study analyses the Italian film, its Spanish version, as well as the French remake and the Russian variation. The paper explores the intermedial content of the orig- inal film representing the smartphone as a dispositive generating framed narratives in the main plot. The forms of remaking as “transcultural ad- aptation”28 are related to different degrees of repetition, transformation and renewal. The premises for the film’s high “adaptative faculty”29 are therefore to be associated with the innovative intermedial structure and the potential of the plot devices to be reinvented and adapted to local reception areas.

The paper undertakes an inquiry in the genre studies of the Western. Interpreting the heterogeneous reiterations of its generic components, it aims at deconstructing the imaginary geography underlying the genre’s name.

The practice of the remake in cinema precedes the notion. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, a plot often migrated from one film studio to another, and with that it was subjected to different produc- tion practices, style, and ideological bias. The defining criteria, according to which a story was chosen to be remade, was its relevance to current social issues. The romantic encounter / clash between representatives of different classes provides the drive of the plot in the screwball comedy. The discourse is organised so as to reach social reconciliation. I will focus on two films, belonging to the genre – “Vivacious Lady” (1938), directed by George Stevens and “Ball of Fire” (1941) authored by Howard Hawks. The current text will study the ideological differences in the way the two films balance their internal contradictions on the route to social consensus. By means of close analysis, I will outline the key differences, which define the ideological paths that they take, and how these transform the discourse of the Hollywood film within the screwball genre.

The article examines video games, the ways in which they influence their audience and attract new fans, as well as the rapid pace at which they develop, thanks to social isolation, a consequence of the epidemic global crisis. Video games are placed in the context of the digital world we live in, as part of the new social organism and its online forms of communication. A review of the Tomb Raider video game series and the film adaptations inspired by the game has been made, paying attention to the specifics of the image of the main character from the series Lara Croft.