The article presents an attempt to trace the literary genealogy of the cat character in Ilya Boyashov’s story “The Way of Muri” (2007). The starting point for reflection was the name of a cat wandering around Europe in Boyashov’s work, which unwittingly causes many readers to associate it with one of the canonical works of German literature: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novel “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr” (1819–1821). In addition to the resemblance of names, both texts reveal a number of textual coincidences. For those who are familiar with Slovenian literature, the name of the cat will inevitably also remind of the character in the work of Kajetan Kovič, which belongs to the classics of children’s literature in Slovenian – the cat Muri from the book “Muri the Cat” (“Maček Muri”, 1975). Ilya Boyashov’s comments to his work, quoted in the article, contained in a letter addressed to the authors of the article, show the fallacy of the initial hypotheses of intertextual analysis, and expose its problematics in general. The writer denies the influence of Hoffmann and Kovič on his text and reports that he endowed his character with the name of the beloved cat of the philosopher N.A. Berdyaev. The second part of the article contains a comparative analysis of three cat characters in literature (Hoffmann’s Murr, cat Muri of Boyashov, and Muri of Ković). Their function for the representation of “Own” / “Other” / “Strange” is considered. If Kovič depicts feline characters as predominantly anthropomorphic creatures, then in Hoffmanns and Boyashovs stories they appear “other” or “strange”, in many ways signifying a human’s isolation from nature, his solipsism, the inability to go beyond his experience, to see, hear, perceive the world through the eyes of another living being. The tragic awareness of such limitations largely determines the culture of modernism.
The article considers the semantics of food and drinks in German-language prose, created by immigrants from the USSR and having signs of transcultural literature, implying the hybridization of cultural (including linguistic and literary) experience. The subject of the analysis are three autobiographical texts written in the 21st century: “My White Nights” (2004) by Lena Gorelik, “The Totalitarian Kitchen. The Cookbook of Socialism” (2006) by Olga Kaminer and Wladimir Kaminer, and “Maybe Esther” (2014) by Katja Petrowskaja. In all three texts, a significant place is given to the names of dishes, foods and drinks, descriptions of the preparation, serving and use of food and drink. They also contain recipes (Gorelik’s text and especially the Kaminers’ book) or mention them (Petrowskaya’s text). Memories of food and drink are integral to childhood memories and are part of the autobiographical discourse. The task of the study is to analyze the functions of the culinary code of these texts. The methodology of intercultural research and interdisciplinary food studies, and various aspects of nutrition researches, were used. Food is presented by all authors as the primary bodily experience that is significant for socialization in a particular culture and plays an important role in acculturation. The function of the culinary codes of the studied texts is shown in structuring the key categories of culture: “one’s own”, “other” and “foreign”, as well as in the process of cultural hybridization. Particular attention is paid to the untranslatability of gastronomic realities: vocabulary denoting dishes and traditions of their use. The mechanisms of metaphorization and metonymization in the field of food and drinks, and the role of these processes in the generation of ethnic and national stereotypes, as well as in their destruction are considered.
The film “Berlin Alexanderplatz” by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is considered to be one of the most famous literary fi lm adaptations in the fi lm history. Extensive research literature has been devoted to its study. Much less researched is the infl uence of Döblin’s novel on other works of the fi lmmaker. Th e article deals with taking over the elements of the novel “Berlin Alexanderplatz” into Fassbinder’s early fi lms. Fassbinder has borrowed constellations, plots, topoi especially those dealing with gender issues from the novel by Döblin for his fi lms “Love Is Colder Th an Death” (1969), “Gods of the Plague” (1970) and “Rio das Mortes” (1971). In the aforementioned fi lms, as in Döblin’s novel, triangular relationships are represented, the women exchange is practiced, the misogynistic protagonists exert violence against the female characters, and the woman appears as a festive link, as a copula between the men. In these fi lms, ‘Mannerbund’ in the form of criminal organizations plays an important role. Quotations and borrowings from Döblin’s novel in Fassbinder’s fi lms create a special kind of intermediality relations that diff er from fi lm adaptation in the narrow sense of the word. Following Achim von Haag the term “partial adaptation” is used here as an intensive reception of narrative structures of the literary text on the one hand and their strong modifi cation on the other.
The paper focuses on the phenomenon of “women’s writing”, a discussion about which began in the 1970s. Based on Elaine Showalter’s concept of “doubled-voiced discourse” as well as on Franco Moretti’s theory of literary forms development from the center to the periphery, which generates unstable compromises in the structure, its “cracks” and gaps, the article offers an interpretation of “women’s writing” as an area of increased conflict. The case study of three literary works of the late XIX – early XX century written in German language – Elsa Asenijeff’ essay “Women’s Riot and the Third Sex” (1898), Lou Andreas-Salomé’s novella “Fenitchka” (1898) and Minna Wettstein-Adelt’s novel “Are These Women? A Novel about the Third Sex” (1901) – demonstrates conflicts of discourses, genres and narrative strategies unfolding in these texts. The paper suggests the idea that such structural “cracks” and contradictions mark the departure from the boundaries and limits of contemporary patriarchal discourses and the dominant literary system.
The article deals with the phenomenon of border in the travelogue Berlin – Moscow. Journey on foot (2003) by the German author Wolfgang Büscher. The main idea is that border crossing not only constitutes a plot-forming element of Büscher’s text describing the narrator crossing the state borders, but also determines other text levels. The travelogue relativizes the border between «one’s own» and «foreign», between different cultures, different types of travel, and also between reality and fantasy.
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