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Adam Mickiewicz (1798 – 1855) was the greatest Polish Romantic poet, and one of the great intellectual and literary figures of the first half of the 19th century in Europe. Through his verses, as well as his efforts as a scholar, lecturer, political activist and literary celebrity, he sought to bridge the gap between the Slavic nations and the culture of Western Europe. This selection of 27 poems focuses on the poems within Mickiewicz’s oeuvre which might be described as metaphysical. These original, ingenious verses explore an astonishing range of religious, mystical, philosophical, and existential themes, inviting the reader to include Mickiewicz among the most eminent figures of early European Romanticism, including Coleridge, Wordsworth and Novalis, as well the American transcendentalists. Mickiewicz’s poetry and thought are the creation of a restlessly inventive mind: his vision was unorthodox, unpredictable and ever-developing. The book presents a bilingual edition (Polish-English) with a scholarly introduction and commentary, presenting Mickiewicz as a writer in the context of his times. The co-editors of the volume are Jerzy Fiećko, one of the eminent experts in the field of Mickiewicz studies, and Mateusz Stróżyński, an internationally recognized scholar of the Platonic tradition and Western mysticism.
Volume Editor:
Adam Mickiewicz (1798 – 1855) was the greatest Polish Romantic poet, and one of the great intellectual and literary figures of the first half of the 19th century in Europe. Through his verses, as well as his efforts as a scholar, lecturer, political activist and literary celebrity, he sought to bridge the gap between the Slavic nations and the culture of Western Europe. This selection of 27 poems focuses on the poems within Mickiewicz’s oeuvre which might be described as metaphysical. These original, ingenious verses explore an astonishing range of religious, mystical, philosophical, and existential themes, inviting the reader to include Mickiewicz among the most eminent figures of early European Romanticism, including Coleridge, Wordsworth and Novalis, as well the American transcendentalists. Mickiewicz’s poetry and thought are the creation of a restlessly inventive mind: his vision was unorthodox, unpredictable and ever-developing. The book presents a bilingual edition (Polish-English) with a scholarly introduction and commentary, presenting Mickiewicz as a writer in the context of his times. The co-editors of the volume are Jerzy Fiećko, one of the eminent experts in the field of Mickiewicz studies, and Mateusz Stróżyński, an internationally recognized scholar of the Platonic tradition and Western mysticism.
Abstract
This article explores responses to the sequel sources for Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov – in which Alesha is projected to turn atheist and socialist and attempt to assassinate the Tsar (tsareubiistvo). Highlighting the tls “debate” of 2010 involving James Rice, Diane Thompson, and Joseph Frank, it contends that more attention is due to Alesha’s “idea” in the hysterical “rapture” of his “Cana in Galilee” epiphany, a “rapture” manifested again in his Speech at the Stone. Dostoevsky’s post-Karamazov notes on revolutionary violence and assassin Vera Zasulich would seem to lend credence to the tsareubiistvo ending, while articles in Diary of a Writer (1881) suggest that popular pressure on the “Tsar-Father” for reforms might have figured in the sequel content as revolutionary critique. Focusing on Belinsky in Dostoevsky’s writing, it argues that Alesha would have pursued Dostoevsky’s “Russian” socialism, while Kolia would have been a “European” socialist. It concludes that there is a wealth of untapped material in the novel, making possible more reconstruction of the sequel.
Abstract
The present paper reads The Idiot in the context of Hegel’s philosophy of history and subjectivity and finds that Dostoevsky’s avowed interest in Hegel led to a substantial absorption of Hegel’s thought in his own aesthetics.
Dostoevsky’s educated readers of the 1860s saw the novel as a moral history of the age, represented through an eccentric « new subject » (or the « new people »), embodied in marionette-like characters. The present paper explores this view further and finds that these marionette-like characters function as agents of the unconscious (and pre-empt the aesthetics of the theatre of the Absurd), which is the source of all subjectivity. Expressivity is the defining feature of subjectivity and is represented by means of pathological states – lying and self-destructive tendencies of the characters who display a pathological demeanour. Caprice (will power) is the prime mover of this subjectivity, which, in the context of Hegel’s philosophy of history, is the driver of the historical process and a direct expression of « Geist » or spirit of the people. This spirit comes to expression in different types of Russian national discourses, embodied in the myriad of embedded stories narrated by the characters on stage and off stage, and in stories within stories of episodic characters. These embedded episodic narratives, consisting of verbal pictures (or ekphrases), tell the story of Russia’s historical development from Peter Great’s time to Dostoevsky’s present of the 1860s. This is the story of the demise of the old « estate culture » of traditional Russia, with a « new Russia » emerging into history, which is grounded in an indeterminate subject of history, whose « pochva » (« soil ») is the groundless ground of language and an ethics of individual freedom. Both of these elements of subjectivity, which define the « new people », are negativities shaping a new dialectics, which is both form and content of the new self-conscious “world-historical individual” – Hegelian Man - through which spirit (Geist) manifests itself in the “present moment” of Dostoevsky’s Russia.
Abstract
This article takes Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History as an analytic framework to interpret Dostoevsky’s representation of a turbulent period of social change in 1860s Russia in his novel The Idiot. The paper shows that Dostoevsky engaged with Hegel’s philosophical constructs and understood them well enough to render them powerfully through artistic form of expression. It leads to the insight that Dostoevsky and Hegel were contemporaries in thought: both sought to create a new reader with a new sensibility about individual and social freedom, emerging in the post-Enlightenment period. Whilst Hegel may not have considered Russia to have entered World History, it is argued that this view was short-sighted and that Dostoevsky’s efforts highlight the complexity and nuance of this period of rapid social and political change in Russia of the 1860s.
Bringing the Language Back, or Bringing It Forward?
This book deals with the tension between a strategy of language maintenance (protecting and reinforcing the language where it is still spoken by community members) and a strategy of language revitalization (opening up access to the language to all interested people and encouraging new domains of its use). The case study presented concerns a grammar school in Upper Lusatia, which hosts the coexistence of a community of Upper Sorbian-speakers and a group of German native speakers who are learning Upper Sorbian at school. The tensions between these two groups studying at the same school are presented in this book against the background of various language strategies, practices and ideologies. The conflict of interests between the “traditional” community which perceives itself as the “guardians” of the minority language and its potential new speakers is played off on different levels by policy-makers and may be read through different levels of language policy and planning.
Bringing the Language Back, or Bringing It Forward?
This book deals with the tension between a strategy of language maintenance (protecting and reinforcing the language where it is still spoken by community members) and a strategy of language revitalization (opening up access to the language to all interested people and encouraging new domains of its use). The case study presented concerns a grammar school in Upper Lusatia, which hosts the coexistence of a community of Upper Sorbian-speakers and a group of German native speakers who are learning Upper Sorbian at school. The tensions between these two groups studying at the same school are presented in this book against the background of various language strategies, practices and ideologies. The conflict of interests between the “traditional” community which perceives itself as the “guardians” of the minority language and its potential new speakers is played off on different levels by policy-makers and may be read through different levels of language policy and planning.