Aesthetic Doctrine Research Articles

Stylistic and narrative innovations in Norman McLaren’s works

This article is an attempt to theoretically comprehend the legacy of the famous canadian animator Norman McLaren, who worked in the field of abstract animation for many years, from his student days in the 1930s to the late 1970s. Apart from a brief creative sketch, this article includes two main sections devoted to the genesis of image and plot in McLaren's works – both animation and «photographic» ones. McLaren wanted to create entirely new film canon, based equally on abstract and realistic basics. Summarized, McLaren works are pivotal in the context of the evolution of avant-garde animation, both in the construction of imagery and in the rehabilitation of narrative, previously almost entirely excluded from the realm of absolute film. McLaren's many years of creative activity are evaluated as a unified ethical and aesthetic doctrine. Along the whole article various critical approaches to his work being observed and analyzed.

The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any

Reviewed by: The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin by Carol Any Polly Jones Any, Carol. The Soviet Writers' Union and Its Leaders: Identity and Authority under Stalin. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL, 2020. xiv + 318 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $120.00; $39.95. The Soviet Writers' Union was the main institution of Soviet literature from the early 1930s to the regime's collapse. Membership granted considerable privileges and imposed heavy obligations; it was one of the main determinants of Soviet-era writers' economic and political status. Despite its central role in twentieth-century literary history, however, the union has received scant scholarly attention in its own right. It is well-known that Writers' Union decision-making had decisive impacts on many authors' lives, and there now exist substantial collections of union archive documents, but analyses of the union's institutional history remain thin on the ground. John and Carol Garrard's classic study, which could draw on only limited Russian sources and focused more on writers' experiences than the union's organizational history, has until recently been the standard work in English. A handful of studies have [End Page 753] also appeared more recently in Russian, including excellent research on the litfond and union-run writers' accommodation. Carol Any's thorough history of the union, based on a huge amount of Soviet archive material, therefore represents a major step forward in our understanding of the institutional and political history of Soviet literature. Firstly, it offers by far the most detailed and nuanced account of the emergence of Stalinist literary culture to date (its final chapter offers a briefer overview of post-Stalinist developments). Much of the first half of the book is devoted to a detailed reconstruction of the union's emergence from the gruppovshchina of the 1920s and its institutionalization and organization in the 1930s. Any proves more conclusively than previous studies that the union was initially and widely preferred to proletarian literary organizations, because writers and leaders considered it more tolerant and less politicized. However, hopes for an inclusive, diverse Soviet literature were soon scuppered by the clear (though not always clearly articulated) desire of the party elite to control writers: aesthetically, politically, and in almost every other aspect of their lives. Particularly interesting is the rich account of Maksim Gor´kii's disillusionment with this direction of travel in the early 1930s, even as he still appeared to wield substantial influence over Soviet literature, Socialist Realism and the union itself. Despite their collaboration on creating the union and the state aesthetic doctrine, Gor´kii and Stalin were at odds almost from the start, and it was Stalin's (and the Politburo's) vision of literary controls that won out early on. This desire for control would continue to shape all key decisions on union personnel and policy, which are shown here as even more top-down than previously thought. Alongside this persuasive recasting of Gor´kii's role, the book also devotes unprecedented attention to other leading figures in the organization who have been strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) overlooked: Ivan Gronskii, Aleksandr Shcherbakov, Vladimir Ermilov and Vladimir Stavskii. Comparing them with the better-known union leader Aleksandr Fadeev, and drawing on a wide range of little-known personal and institutional sources, Any explores their intrigues and in-fighting as they led the union through Stalinist Terror, war and recurrent ideological campaigns. While these stories of union politics are richly fascinating, the conclusions drawn from them seem more familiar. Stalinist literary politics appears as a 'force-field' of top-down political pressures where even (or especially) union heads had 'limited agency'. At the same time, these bosses had to manoeuvre constantly to stay in the good graces of the party leadership and within the 'honour group' of the Soviet literary world. The overwhelming need to profess political loyalty entailed repeated betrayals of previously (and often sincerely) held positions on writers and their works, and literary policy. While these contradictory stances were illogical, the [End Page 754] literary system possessed and reproduced a distinct behavioural logic. As Any contends, such behaviour proved morally and...

A Whole Carnal Stereophony: The Wooster Group Stages Brecht

A Whole Carnal Stereophony: The Wooster Group Stages Brecht

The controversy around the French classicism of the XVII century. Historiography of the issue.

Issues of style in art are fundamental issues of modern aesthetics, since style is put forward in a number of main categories of art, acting as a principle of the organization of aesthetic form. It is no coincidence that over the past century, the attention of numerous researchers has been drawn to the XVII century - the beginning of the history of aesthetics of modern times, in which, perhaps, the root of modern problems lies. In this respect, the XVII century seems to be the most grateful material for a discussion about style, since in the XVII century great styles arise that will develop and transform in the following centuries and will determine the development of art for many decades - classicism and Baroque. Since the 30s of the XX century, in studies devoted to the study of literature and art of the XVII century, a departure from the theory of classicism of the XIX century is planned. The first stage of this turn is the study of the creativity of the "pillars of classicism", which demonstrated that it has nothing to do with hierarchized academicism and reverence for norms. The desire to please the public, which was initially perceived as the main paradox in the theory of classicism, is further formulated by researchers as the presence of a different aesthetic. The next stage - the term "classicism" itself is criticized as late, evaluative, giving this era the meaning of the absolute. As a result, many researchers come to the conclusion that in France of the XVII century there was no literary and aesthetic doctrine as a single and "classical" one. Finally, the third stage of the study - the appeal to a single anthropo-socio-cultural concept of history, the use of sociological methods to highlight the gallant ethos allows us to conclude that classicism is a phenomenon in the field of art, gallantry is not only an artistic phenomenon, but also a social one.

The Aesthetic Doctrine of Law (Aesthetics of Law) in the Context of the Development of Nbics Technologies

The development of NBICS technologies is one of the factors of transformation of the mechanism of social regulation, including law, which acts as a means and as an object of socio-economic modernization. The scientific search creates new contexts in the study of law, serves as a prerequisite for rethinking its es­sence and role in the life of modern society, determines the formulation of a number of questions, inclu­ding the consequences of technological progress for the legal existence of a person. In line with this kind of research, new areas of research have been identified – “legal cognitology”, “functional identify­ca­tion of law”. One of the promising ideas is an appeal to aesthetics, more precisely, to the regularities of the deve­lopment of law, which can be learned through the methodology of this field of knowledge. The sub­ject of the article is the methodology of knowledge of the law. The purpose is to establish the possibility of ex­pan­ding the methodology of knowledge of law through the methods of aesthetics and NBICS techno­lo­gies. The result is a reasonable hypothesis that the development and implementation of NBICS technolo­gies allow us to apply aesthetic methods to the establishment of the regularities of the genesis of law.

“Pretty as a Picture”

Recently, there has been an upsurge of interest in travel writing, postcolonialism, and landscape politics. However, studies of travel writing addressing the notion of the picturesque have not yet explored the idea of aesthetic sensibility in British travel narratives in the Regency of Tunis. This article examines the aesthetics of the picturesque in three British travel accounts: Grenville Temple’s Excursions in the Mediterranean: Algiers and Tunis (1835); Robert Lambert Playfair’s Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis (1877); and Henry Spencer Ashbee and Alexander Graham’s Travels in Tunisia (1887). These travelers used the picturesque in different but interlinked ways; they oscillated between finding the uncanny landscape an object of delight where it conformed to British aesthetic doctrine and an object of derision where they noted aesthetic deficiencies. By the turn of the nineteenth century, this picturesque way of seeing shifted into an Orientalist desire for “Otherness.”

ROMANTİK PARÇAYI ŞEKİLLENDİREN ŞİİRSEL İMGELEM: KUBLA KHAN VAKASI

Since the early nineteenth century, various works of literature, literary theory, criticism, philosophy, and other forms of art have faced a sudden change which has raised contradictions and suspense. This upheaval is represented also by fragmentary writing. The list of fragmentary artists is long, starting from Romantic thinkers and writers, such as Schlegel, Keats, and Coleridge, to the Modern and Postmodern ones, such as Adorno, Beckett, Blanchot, and others. The present study focuses on Coleridge’s aesthetic doctrine as influenced by German philosophy and as containing ideas on the essence and kind of poetry, the concept of “organicity” of the poetic work, as well as on the source, function and purpose of poetry, and specifically on Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, Or, a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment as the expression of his concern with the fragility of poetic imagination which in fact shapes the fragmentary character of his poem.

Russian Poets and the October Revolution: Alexander Blok, Sergey Yesenin, Mikhail Kuzmin and Others

The article considers the question of the ideological and creative evolution of famous Russian poets at a turning point in the history of the twentieth century - during the years of the active formation of a totalitarian state system and its aesthetic socialist-realist doctrine. Revolutionary maximalism, the idea of a complete renewal of all being, came not only from Marxism and the Bolsheviks, but was also prepared by literature, long before the revolution, it had already “artistically matured” in the poetry of Alexander Blok, Sergey Yesenin, Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky and many others. There is every reason to assert that the sources of Soviet literature as a cultural phenomenon were not only party leaders, not only so called proletarian culture and commissaries, but also honest artists who were ready to see in the cruelty of the revolution the right path to the cardinal renewal of life that their soul, which was full of angry denial of the world. The authors of the article argue that, having survived “belated insight”, Russian poetry in the person of Alexander Blok, Sergey Yesenin, Andrey Bely, Mickhail Kuzmin and others began a dramatic struggle for humanistic ideals and creative freedom.

Totalitarism, realism och historisk ängslighet

Totalitarianism, Realism and the Anxiety of History
 This essay examines the problem of totalitarian art and totalitarianism by studying the relationship between art, society and history in realism, both as a historical literary practice and as an aesthetic doctrine that is till dominant today. Because the understanding of the development of society and art in Nazi Germany tends to dominate the understanding of totalitarianism, scholarly and popular discussions of ideology in totalitarian art has been dominated by a problematization of myth and utopia. However, this paper takes its starting point in Socialist Realism in order to trace the tendency towards a totalizing explanation of the world in terms of social and historical reality in realism. It also discusses the implications of the impact of realism on art in late modernity to further our understanding of the possible return of totalitarianism and fascism today.

ПРО ЛІТЕРАТУРНЕ ЄРЕТИЦТВО ТА ЄРЕТИКІВ-ПРОРОКІВ. (І. ЕРЕНБУРГ І ЙОГО РОМАН «НАДЗВИЧАЙНІ ПРИГОДИ ХУЛІО ХУРЕНІТО ТА ЙОГО УЧНІВ»)

У статті аналізується ідейна концепція роману відомого російського письменника І.Г. Еренбурга «Надзвичайні пригоди Хуліо Хуреніто та його учнів» (1921) у вирішенні актуального питання про роль мистецтва і творчої особистості на зламному етапі історії ХХ століття – в роки активного формування тоталітарного державного устрою та його антигуманної за своєю суттю культурно-естетичної доктрини «соцреалізму». Автор статті доводить, що сатиричний роман-памфлет І. Еренбурга є одним із найбільш ранніх творів, у якому «нова» російська література розпочала наполегливу й драматичну боротьбу з радянським державним режимом за традиційні для російської класичної літератури цінності – ідеали гуманізму і свободи творчості. Разом з тим ідейно-пророчий діапазон роману є значно ширшим. З висо-ти майже ста років, що минули після виходу книги в світ, стало очевидним, що її творець повинен бути зарахований до числа найбільш прозорливих і успішних віщунів майбутнього в ХХ столітті. Наділивши свого головного героя деякими надособистісними якостями, автор вкладає в його уста слова, яким судилося стати пророчими як для всієї світової історії ХХ століття («Тепер людство йде аж ніяк не до раю, а до найсуворішого, чорного, потогінного чистилища. Настають начебто повні сутінки свободи»), так і для історії радянського комуністичного режиму («Ви нікого не скинете, але, падаючи, багатьох потягнете за собою»). Перекладений багатьма мовами світу, роман «Надзвичайні пригоди Хуліо Хуреніто та його учнів» став однією з найяскравіших сатиричних книг XX століття, такою, що цілком заслуговує на визначення «роман-пророцтво».

Romantic Medievalism from a New Comparative Perspective

From certain point of view a desperate defense of an aesthetic doctrine of classicism, undertaken by Jan Śniadecki, a Polish mathematician and astronomer of the eighteenth century, resembles the E. R. Curtius’ thesis on “Latinism” as a universal factor integrating European culture; it may be stated that post-Stanislavian classical writers in Poland were driven by the same “concern for the preservation of Western culture” which motivated Ernst Robert Curtius in the times of the Third Reich and after its collapse. But the noble-minded intentions were in both cases grounded on similarly distorted perspective, which ensued from a mistificatory attitude towards a non-Latin heritage of the European culture. The range of that mystification or delusion has been fully revealed by findings made by modern so-called new comparative mythology/philology. Another aspect of the problem is an uniform model of the Middle Ages, partially correlated with the Enlightenment-based stereotype of “the dark Middle Ages”, which despite of its anachronism existed in literary studies for a surprisingly long period of time. Although the Romantic Movement of 18th – 19th centuries has been quite correctly acknowledged as an anti-Latinistic upheaval, its real connections with certain traditions of Middle Ages still remain not properly understood. Some concepts concerning Macpherson’s The Works of ossian, put forward by modern ethnology, may yield clues to the research on the question. As suggested by Joseph Falaky Nagy, Macpherson’s literary undertaking may by looked into as a parallel to Acallam na Senórach compiled in Ireland between 11th and 13th centuries: in both cases to respond to threats to the Gaelic culture there arose a literary monument and compendium of the commendable past with the core based on the Fenian heroic tradition that was the common legacy for the Irish and Highlanders. Taking into consideration some other evidence, it can be ascertained that Celtic and Germanic revival initiated in the second half of 18th century was not only one of the most important impulses for the Romantic Movement, but it was also, in a sense, an actual continuation of the efforts of mediaeval writers and compilers (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Snorri Sturluson, Saxo Grammaticus, anonymous compilers of Lebor gabála Érenn and Acallam, Wincenty Kadłubek), who would successfully combine Latin, i.e. classical, and ecclesiastical erudition with a desire to preserve and adapt in a creative way their own “pagan” and “barbarian” legacy. A special case of this (pre)Romantic revival concerns Slavic cultures, in particular the Polish one. Lack of source data on the oldest historical and cultural tradition of Slavic languages, especially in the Western region, and no record about Slavic tradition in highbrow literary culture induced two solutions: the first one was a production of philological forgeries (like Rukopis královédvorský and Rukopis zelenohorský), the second one was an attempt to someway reconstruct that lost heritage. Works of three Romantic historians, W. Surowiecki, W. A. Maciejowski, F. H. Lewestam, shows the method. Seemingly contradicting theories they put forward share common ground in aspects which are related to the characteristics of the first Slavic societies: a sense of being native inhabitants, pacifism, rich natural resources based on highly-effective agriculture, dynamic demography, a flattened social hierarchy and physical prowess. The fact of even greater importance is that the image of that kind has the mythological core, the circumstance which remains hitherto unnoticed. Polish historians not only tended to identify historical ancient Slavs with mythical Scandinavian Vanir (regarding it obvious), but also managed to recall the great Indo-European theme of ”founding conflict” (in Dumézilian terms), despite whole that mythological model being far beyond the horizon of knowledge at that time. Despite all anachronisms, lack of knowledge and instrumental involvement in aesthetic, political or religious ideology, Romanticism really started the restitution of the cultural legacy of the Middle Ages, also in domain of linguistic and philological research. The consequences of that fact should be taken into account in literary history studies.

John Heartfield’s Communism

Abstract Sabine T. Kriebel’s Revolutionary Beauty is the most thorough study to date of the Communist photomontage artist John Heartfield’s work for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (aiz) in the late 1920s and 1930s. Kriebel analyses Heartfield’s production through the frame of ‘suture’, a concept she derives from film theory. She argues that Heartfield’s work at once stimulated collective solidarity at the same time as it cultivated habits of visual suspicion and active political thinking in ways that may not have always coincided with official Communist aesthetic doctrine. Although Kriebel’s approach yields many valuable insights, there is nonetheless a danger that her theory of subject-formation may preclude a more critical understanding of representative politics as a form of mediation.

Non-Traditional Trademarks and the Dilemma of Aesthetic Functionality

As basic principles of American trademark law have allowed for the law’s application to non-traditional designators, the “functionality” doctrine has arguably become the most important bulwark against improper expansion of trademark rights in the U.S. Traditional functionality – sometimes called “utilitarian” or “mechanical” functionality – has a stable analytic framework, but the same cannot be said of “aesthetic functionality,” i.e. the notion that some product features are so aesthetically pleasing or trigger such specific mental responses among consumers that those features should not be monopolized by one competitor. This chapter [in a forthcoming book on non-traditional trademarks] explores the aesthetic functionality doctrine in American trademark law, proposing that (a) the most convincing cases for aesthetic functionality aren’t really about aesthetics, but concern cognitive and psychological responses in consumers, and (b) that aesthetic functionality should bar trademark protection only for product features related to specific cognitive, perceptual, or aesthetic biases that were widespread among consumers before the trademark owner began its own marketing efforts.

Romantic medievalism from a new comparative perspective

From certain point of view a desperate defense of an aesthetic doctrine of classicism, undertaken by Jan Śniadecki, a Polish mathematician and astronomer of the eighteenth century, resembles the E. R. Curtius’ thesis on “Latinism” as a universal factor integrating European culture; it may be stated that post-Stanislavian classical writers in Poland were driven by the same “concern for the preservation of Western culture” which motivated Ernst Robert Curtius in the times of the Third Reich and after its collapse. But the noble-minded intentions were in both cases grounded on similarly distorted perspective, which ensued from a mistificatory attitude towards a non-Latin heritage of the European culture. The range of that mystification or delusion has been fully revealed by findings made by modern so-called new comparative mythology/philology. Another aspect of the problem is an uniform model of the Middle Ages, partially correlated with the Enlightenment-based stereotype of “the dark Middle Ages”, which despite of its anachronism existed in literary studies for a surprisingly long period of time. Although the Romantic Movement of 18th – 19th centuries has been quite correctly acknowledged as an anti-Latinistic upheaval, its real connections with certain traditions of Middle Ages still remain not properly understood. Some concepts concerning Macpherson’s The Works of ossian, put forward by modern ethnology, may yield clues to the research on the question. As suggested by Joseph Falaky Nagy, Macpherson’s literary undertaking may by looked into as a parallel to Acallam na Senórach compiled in Ireland between 11th and 13th centuries: in both cases to respond to threats to the Gaelic culture there arose a literary monument and compendium of the commendable past with the core based on the Fenian heroic tradition that was the common legacy for the Irish and Highlanders. Taking into consideration some other evidence, it can be ascertained that Celtic and Germanic revival initiated in the second half of 18th century was not only one of the most important impulses for the Romantic Movement, but it was also, in a sense, an actual continuation of the efforts of mediaeval writers and compilers (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Snorri Sturluson, Saxo Grammaticus, anonymous compilers of Lebor gabála Érenn and Acallam, Wincenty Kadłubek), who would successfully combine Latin, i.e. classical, and ecclesiastical erudition with a desire to preserve and adapt in a creative way their own “pagan” and “barbarian” legacy. A special case of this (pre)Romantic revival concerns Slavic cultures, in particular the Polish one. Lack of source data on the oldest historical and cultural tradition of Slavic languages, especially in the Western region, and no record about Slavic tradition in highbrow literary culture induced two solutions: the first one was a production of philological forgeries (like Rukopis královédvorský and Rukopis zelenohorský), the second one was an attempt to someway reconstruct that lost heritage. Works of three Romantic historians, W. Surowiecki, W. A. Maciejowski, F. H. Lewestam, shows the method. Seemingly contradicting theories they put forward share common ground in aspects which are related to the characteristics of the first Slavic societies: a sense of being native inhabitants, pacifism, rich natural resources based on highly-effective agriculture, dynamic demography, a flattened social hierarchy and physical prowess. The fact of even greater importance is that the image of that kind has the mythological core, the circumstance which remains hitherto unnoticed. Polish historians not only tended to identify historical ancient Slavs with mythical Scandinavian Vanir (regarding it obvious), but also managed to recall the great Indo-European theme of ”founding conflict” (in Dumézilian terms), despite whole that mythological model being far beyond the horizon of knowledge at that time. Despite all anachronisms, lack of knowledge and instrumental involvement in aesthetic, political or religious ideology, Romanticism really started the restitution of the cultural legacy of the Middle Ages, also in domain of linguistic and philological research. The consequences of that fact should be taken into account in literary history studies.

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Contemporary Iconoclasm in South Africa. Transgressive Images of the Madonna and Christ in Response to Social Politics

David Morgan describes aesthetic experience as “an ethics of encounter that seems unabashedly mystical. Aesthetic contemplation is a form of transcendence and revelation, a communion with a higher being.” Art therefore, in subsequent aesthetic and philosophical discourses culminating in European modernism, is imbued with a reputation for spirituality, underpinned by notions of both the beautiful and the sublime. This aesthetic doctrine appears to be at the heart of some of the criticism of recent works that parody art historical originals. A work that was produced by “genius” and that is aesthetically beautiful and portrays the idealism of classical perfection, such as the Pieta by Michelangelo, would carry this aura of spiritual communion, particularly as its purpose was for religious contemplation. The parody of such idealised images of the Madonna and Christ by certain contemporary South African artists could be seen, therefore, as an attack not only on the image of these iconic figures and on religion...

Ontology of Movement

Merleau-Ponty's last ontology is an ontology of movement, namely theory of Being movement. In addressing the fundamental issues of such an ontology, for which Being is an expressive movement, my starting point will be Merleau-Ponty's reflections on painting, sculpture and, mainly, cinema. Two reasons can justify such choice. The first one is that Merleau-Ponty's reflections on films artistic objects are starting to become better known, while an exclusive privilege has been too long given to his texts about painting, sculpture and literature. An enrichment of our reading of his aesthetics and ontology is thus made possible. The second reason is that, although it is true that Merleau-Ponty's general aesthetic doctrine introduces to the question of movement, of its meaning and its ontological status, it is even true, I think, that, in the framework of this general aesthetic doctrine, his analyses of the mode of expression of cinematographic images become especially significant.In the first part of my paper, I will put forward the nature and causes of the ambiguity that characterizes Merleau-Ponty's stance regarding cinema during the forties and the fifties. As we know, it is during these years that he gave his famous lecture about cinema: the one that was delivered at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques of Paris (IDHEC) in 1945. However we will see that this lecture is far from being Merleau-Ponty's last word about cinema and, furthermore that it even displays too narrow of conception regarding the possibilities offered by the movements of images.Secondly I will point out the slight modification of Merleau-Ponty's doctrine which is brought about by his first course at the College de France in 1953. The working notes linked with this course, entitled Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression (The Sensible World and the World of Expression), were published in 2011. They are of the highest importance, for they demonstrate the turn of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy toward an ontology of movement that has been largely renewed in comparison with the ideas which stemmed from the former influence of Gestalt theory on his thought. And such renewal is precisely due to the results of his analyses of painting and cinema.I will address this ontology of movement in the last part of my paper, in order to clarify the meaning of ultimate ontological notions such the ones of flesh, pregnancy (pregnance) and wild Wesen.I.Let consider first Merleau-Ponty's ambiguity with regard to cinema. This is his most apparent stance, even if it is not the most instructive. In the last chapter of Eye and Mind, one can read:Cinema portrays movement, but how? Is it, we are inclined to by copying the changes of place? We may presume not, since slowmotion shows body floating among objects like an alga, but not moving itself.2This is the only allusion to cinema in Eye and Mind. Obviously it is very little, to such an extent that cinema is not even mentioned for itself but only in comparison with painting. Indeed, when Merleau-Ponty wonders whether it is true that, as we are inclined to believe, cinema copies more closely the change of location, he continues the analysis that he has just developed about Etienne-Jules Marey's photographs and Marcel Duchamp's paintings-photographs and paintings that, in spite of the artists' intention to render the unfolding of movement, only present a rigid body if it were piece of armor going through its motions.3 This mechanical aspect of the representation of movement in painting and photography is precisely what makes us think that cinema is less static and presents images that are faithful to movement. But, from phenomenological point of view, such an assertion is only an opinion of which Husserl might have said that it pertains to the natural attitude of consciousness and that it does not enable to understand the logic of the cinematographic phenomenon. …

The Cambridge companion to Sufism

Sufism, the mystical or aesthetic doctrine in Islam, has occupied a very specific place in the Islamic tradition, with its own history, literature and devotional practices. Its development began in the seventh century, almost immediately after the early conquests, and spread throughout the Islamic world. The Cambridge Companion to Sufism traces its evolution from the formative period to the present, addressing specific themes along the way within the context of the times. In section discussing the early period, the devotional practices of the earliest Sufis are considered. The section on the medieval period, when Sufism was at its height, examines Sufi doctrines, different forms of mysticism and the antinomian expressions of Sufism. The section on the modern period explains the controversies that surrounded Sufism, the changes that took place in the colonial period and how Sufism transformed into a transnational movement in the twentieth century. This inimitable volume sheds light on a multifaceted and alternative aspect of Islamic history and religion.

Роберт Грејвз – ничеански модерни песник

The aim of our analysis is to explore the influence of Nietzsche’s aesthetic doctrine on Robert Graves (1895–1985), the famous English poet and novelist. The paradox we lay our emphasis on in the very beginning lies in the fact that Robert Graves used to speak about Nietzsche and his works in a rather deprecatory manner. However, it is too obvious that the views of both authors and their approach to certain key categories of modernism are strikingly similar. The aim of our comparative survey is to juxtapose Nietzsche’s and Graves’s views on history, poetry, the nature of poetic inspiration, and modernist myth- making and to prove that Graves as many other modernist writers, did not escape being influenced, directly or indirectly, by the ideas of the great German philosopher.

Tchapaev à La Havane : le cinéma révolutionnaire cubain et la question du réalisme socialiste

This paper seeks to assess the influence of realist socialist aesthetics on Cuban revolutionary cinema. After briefly retracing the emergence and flowering of socialist realism in the Soviet Union, as well as the trajectory of Cuban Communist Party before and after the Revolution, this study focuses on the position of ICAIC’s (official film institute) filmmakers and managers with regards to this exogenous aesthetic doctrine, and seeks to determine whether socialist realism ever gained the status of official standard in Cuba. This reflection is developed connecting cinema and revolutionary cultural politics, with its invariants and evolutions, and keeping in mind the broader context of changing political guidelines of the Castro regime as well as the role of Communists in the revolutionary process.