Literary Metamorphosis: Between Life and Text

Събраните в настоящия брой текстове са резултат от малък научен форум, проведен през юни 2022 година под наслов „Литературни метаморфози – между живота и текста“. Обединихме се около идеята, че литературата има отношение към това, което обичайно се нарича реалност, т. е. че тя (въз) действа извън собствено литературното поле и флуидните граници на художествената условност. Към първоначалното ядро от текстове се присъединиха по-късно други, които си позволяваме да привлечем под тази обща рамка, тъй като намираме, че те също споделят схващането за активната, перформативна роля на литературата в света. Без да пренебрегваме идеята за автономия на литературната творба, изследваме напрегнатите граници на литературното; местата, където литературата и науката за нея се разтварят към други области, полета, сфери на човешка (а може би и нечовешка) активност. Интерференциите на литературата с нейния друг или множество други, са червената нишка, която свързва иначе толкова разнообразните и различни изследователски подходи. Понякога по-директно, друг път по-завоалирано, те разкриват симптомите, точките на напрежение, конфликтите, но и седиментациите в отношението творба – реалност. Ако бъдат четени заедно, тези, на пръв поглед безкрайно различни, текстове сгъстяват, фор- мират и позволяват да кристализират логически мостове, алтернативни преходи в мисловните конструкти, които наричаме „съвременност“, „форми на живот“, „култура“, „памет“, „любов“, „безкрайност“, „въображение“.

The present article defends he argument that there were tendencies in both mythological and pre-Socratic thought that paved the way for an explicit philosophy of disembodiment inherited by the Hellenistic mind, which flowered in the shapes of gendered ambivalence. By focusing on personification of boundlessness and the notion of apeiron, I discuss the genesis of the problem of disembodiment, and investigate its tendencies in mythical (pre-philosophical) thought and in single-element theories, abetted by arguments from feminist poststructuralist theories and from feminist philosophy, to pre- and post-Socratic/post-Platonic attitudes that spliced embodiment and femininity. The article aims to demonstrate that the problem of disembodiment is characterized by a pre-Platonic ambivalence concerning physis emanating in the relations between femininity, elementality, and death. I reveal that the problem of disembodiment is intimately tied to gendered ambivalence in both mythology (female mythic figures) and pre-Socratics (i.e., “elements” and “principles”) that transformed female boundlessness into male heroism. Hence, in the postmythological world the relation between women and death became problematic, which in turn led to a male anxiety over reproduction: an anxiety that was reliant on constellating women, death, boundlessness, and formlessness, and a process that eventually decries a lost preternatural male physis.

This text attempts to explore the correspondence between Immanuel Kant’s notion of genius and the representation of the figure of the genius in “The Chants of Maldoror” by Isidor Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont. The aim is to show how and to what extent Kant’s well-known definition is supported and overturned in the medium of the fictional text. As the genius of Kant is a miraculous complex of imagination, reason, taste and spirit, Maldoror is his dark double, an inverted reflection, a daimon, who weaves the ontolog- ical texture of the world, a celestial force who sets the world in the flames of the revolution. By means of a recuperation of the classical heritage of the notion of daimon and its intersection with Kant’s aesthetic of the sublime, a new perspective reveals itself. Maldoror posits himself as a genius through the interaction with the sublime. The first front of the sublime unfolds in the traditional images of the ocean and the mathematics, representing the Kantian notions of the dynamic and the mathematical sublime. However, Lautréamont discloses new fronts of the sublime in the territories of sublimitas, of the apoc- alyptic, chaotic figures, matter and forces, the origin of which can be traced back to Antiquity. The genius is not anymore a figure of the light of reason, but an enigmatic darkness whose energy bursts on the surface of existence as destruction, violence, chaos and death. Negativity here presents a radical experience, which transforms all into absolute freedom, into a life without limits. Lautréamont breaks through the aesthetic limitation of the act of geni- us, drawn by Kant, and turns the fictional text into a laboratory in genetic en- gineering, projecting from the heart of aesthetics a new imperative: the use of the medium of literature as an experimental space for transfor

The study asks whether, after the dominance of individualism as the main life principle in postmodern times, there is a rethinking of the importance of intersubjective relationships and their renewal. The focus of the study is the representation of the heterosexual love relationship in the novel „Allegro Pastel“ by the contemporary German-language writer Laif Rand. It is examined against the background of theories about the postmodern community and the place of love in it by iconic sociologists and philosophers such as Ulrich Beck, Jürgen Habermas, Sygmut Bauman, Erich Fromm, and in comparison with even more recent studies on love such as those of Eva Iluz, Angelica Krebs, Aron Ben’Zeev. The text attempts to defend the thesis that Rand‘s novel presents a new, unprejudiced notion of love, which, through irony as the main tool, is opposed to the established (and problematic) notion of romantic love.

With the collection of verses Ossi di seppia, first published in 1925, the poet Eugenio Montale, the 1975 Nobel Prize in Literature, made his debut on the 20th century Italian poetic scene. The collection contains texts written between 1918 and 1924 and is all set in the poet’s homeland, Liguria. The present study, written on the occasion of the Colloque International L’idée de nature dans les Littératures Romanes, held in Sofia University in 2006, investigates the pecu- liar bond that unites Montale’s youthful verses and the natural and geographical context in which they are set. In the bony verses (from the title: Cuttlefish bones) of the Ligurian, as Montale is occasionally called in an academic context, na- ture and landscape appear to be endowed with specific referential autonomy and their concrete depiction as well as function in the verses is justified and realized 110by virtue of the dialectical relationship between I and non-I depicted therein. The study is an in-depth, non-exhaustive approximation to the topic and takes its cue from the theoretical considerations on the essence and potentiality of depiction of the landscape phenomenon within literature, advanced by the scholar Michael Jakob in his 2005 volume Landscape and Literature. With regard to Montale’s sub- ject matter, specifically, the paper relies on interpretive achievements of leading Italian critics of the 20th century, penetrating, lucid readers of Montale’s early poetry. 

Keywords: Montale, nature, landscape, I and non-I, search for identity, correla- tive subjective

Lexemes, carrying a specific cultural charge in their native environ- ment, prove to be one of the most difficult stumbling blocks for translators of lit- erary texts. In this study, we aim to get to the heart of the culturally marked con- cepts found at the very beginning of “Don Quixote”, and to analyse whether and how it is possible to render them in a foreign language by observing the work of translators from different language groups and historical periods. Through a few code names and concepts, in a few sentences, the image of the knight is construct- ed almost materially in the original text – with the place he comes from, with his title, his spear and shield, his eating habits, his clothing (giving him social and religious belonging) and last but not least with the name he bears. A substantial part of this ‚materiality‘, however, appears to have been lost or misrepresented in the translations under consideration. Five of the Bulgarian, as well as one each of the French, English and Russian translations of the novel are presented. 127The choice of the foreign-language versions is related to the fact that Bulgarian translators, until the mid-twentieth century, translated the novel through the intermediary of French and Russian, while the English version is juxtaposed with the French due to the temporal proximity of their creation and the geographical proximity of the two host cultures. An attempt has been made to delineate the relations among the different translations and the influences they have had on each other, and to analyse the different strategies in recreating a nationally coloured vocabulary through the prism of the definitions and classifications of realia proposed by S. Vlahov and S. Florin, as well as the theoretical postulates of lan- guage as a cultural phenomenon and of translation as an intercultural transfer.

The article examines specific aspects of the emergence and development of avant-garde literature, in particular Italian Futurism, focusing on its links with Bulgarian Modernism. Through the analysis of “Zang Tumb Tuuum. Adrianopoli Ottobre 1912. Parole in Libertà” by Filippo Tomazo Marinetti the relation of the author and the work to specific moments of Bulgarian history is presented. It also traces the development of the sonorous exclamation “Zang tumb tumb”, which became a byword for European Futurism. Attention is also paid to the changes in perceptions of these literary-historical connections and processes.

The article examines the satirical poetry of Petar Dimitrov Protich, which fits into the ideas of the Bulgarian Revival, affirming the Bulgarian identity and opposing “the own” to “the other”. The main themes in his poetry are knowledge, education and the role of the scholar and intellectual in social development. Through his work P. Protich criticizes the Hellenophilia among the Bulgarians and other Balkan peoples in the 19th century, ridicules the uncritical attitude towards Greek influences, and also the object of his satirical pen are folk superstitions and ignorance. Some of his most emblematic foreign- language works, which have not yet been translated into Bulgarian (except “Η Γραικομανία”, translated by Afr. Alexieva), are “La voix de la Bulgaria”, “Ο Εξελληνισμός”, “Le turcoman”, “Le passage du Danube”, “To the right hon. W. E. Gladstone, M. P.”, “Le repatrié”. The social and ideological line, the vivid portrayal of the Balkan syndrome in the poems of the Greek graduate to some extent at the expense of their literary merits. The notion of the “other” in the satirical poems of Petar Protich comes close to the massively embodied negative image in the artistic, historical and journalistic texts of the Bulgarian 19th century.

The paper examines the mediating role of Bulgarian Revival literature conserning the relationship between man and God and the function of its religious imagery, themes and motifs. Attention is paid to the broad biblical basis of genres, texts, paratexts; of morally instructive elements in works different in content and style. The active use of biblical models and motifs, visible throughout the whole period, is traced, as well as their restructuring that had began. Significant names that set the parameters of the National Revival and their spiritual mission to revive Bulgarian literature and culture and integrate them into the European one are also mentioned.

The study, in the first place, outlines the literary-historical context at the beginning of the 20th century in Bulgaria; provokes the first serious creative impulses in the field of Bulgarian children‘s and adolescent science fiction. Тhe study marks scientific and technical achievements and ideas which are important for bringing out the prognostic elements of science fiction and its educational role – to reveal not only the wonders of science, but to emphasize the attention and the responsibility that human being assumes (or not) for each new discovery. In the second and third part of the study, it examines the works of Emil Koralov and Elin Pelin. These texts are not just fundamental for the emergence and development of Bulgarian children‘s and adolescent science fiction, but also for tracing the progress/evolution of the fantastic image from the fairy tales to the science fiction, their convergence, through the texts of the authors.