Distant Lands Research Articles

И.А. Бунин на пути в Палестину (1889–1903 гг.)

Journeys to the Middle East occupied a special place in the life and works of Ivan Bunin. His journey to Palestine in the spring of 1907 was of central importance to him. However, this journey had a long pre-history in Bunin's life. This article tracks the development of Bunin’s idea of distant voyages, the significance of the Crimea and Odessa in his life and perception of the world. From there began routes to distant lands, and the first for Bunin was his journey to Constantinople in the spring of 1903. The materials of the research includes biographical and documentary evidences.

„Przed nami przepaść, za nami otchłań krateru niezgłębiona”. Motyw wulkanu w prozie Teodora Tripplina

The article introduces the volcano theme present in the prose of Theodor Tripplin, author of immensely popular adventure and travel books in the 19th century. Geology, of which disciplinary framework began to emerge at the turn of the 19th century, was a subject discussed not only at university debates, but also in private lounges, especially since one of the biggest natural disasters caused by volcanic eruption occurred at that time. Therefore, geological and volcanic themes appeared in Tripplin’s works; the writer used them mainly as an element of landscape descriptions, explaining the processes which formed the landscape or the climate of the region. Volcanoes, on the other hand, appeared in his novel Nowa podróż na około Ziemi [A New Journey Around the Earth], where climbing to their summit or the consequences of their eruption were part of the local colour and allowed the reader to feel the exoticism of the distant lands visited by the protagonist of the book. The end of the article mentions Tripplin’s use of the metaphor often also chosen by other authors of the Romanticism period: volcano as a symbol of vehemence, a demonstration of nature’s power which is impossible for a man to subdue.

«На свете лишь одна Армения»: армянский цикл Марии Петровых

The paper aims to reveal the biographical and creative contexts of Armenia theme in M. S. Petrovykh’s lyrics. The poems “Armenia” (1966), “The Middle Ages” (1967), “The Autumn of 1944…” (1968) are considered the poet’s incomplete Armenian cycle. Due to the insufficient topical study of M. S. Petrovykh’s poetry, the scientific originality of the research is determined by the fact that it considers the poems about Armenia as artistic integrity; gives the complex analysis of all the poems in the Armenian cycle right up to the acoustic level. As a result, it has been revealed that the integrity of the poems is caused by the motives of memory, culture, distant desired land and transparent images. The form of the poetry is traditional. The cycle is characterized by the religious component analogy. The verse calendar and the lyrical plot correspond to the events in the author’s life, therefore the above-mentioned poems have features of a diary.

Northern Cheyenne Exodus and Negroes Lynching: Historical Novels of Howard Fast in the USSR

The article deals with the historical novels reception of Howard Fast (a writer who was extremely popular in the 1950s, though he is almost forgotten now) in the Soviet Union. Once a USA Communist Party member loyal to the USSR, he became a fierce opponent of Soviet communism. The analysis of the American context uncovers the reasons why the author of left-wing beliefs turned to the genre of a historical novel and peculiarities of the literary market he faced. A close study of Soviet reviews demonstrates that the novels The Last Frontier and The Freedom Road were perceived by Soviet literary critics as Fasts protest against racial discrimination and growing right-wing sentiment. These problems were a matter of urgency against the background of the McCarthy campaign, which Fast fell victim to in 1947. His novel The Freedom Road was put on the stage in Moscow theaters. According to Soviet reviewers, the absence of decadent primitivism set Fast apart from other once-friendly Soviet writers such as Richard Wright and Claude McKay. Within this tradition of exoticism criticism, dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, novels about distant lands were highly appreciated only when ethnographic descriptions were used for consistent social criticism. Being a committed supporter of the concept art as a weapon developed in the Soviet Union, Fast perceived exaggerated exoticism, top-heavy descriptions of historical novels as a sign of escapist literature that ignores the method of dialectical materialism.

Editorial

Editorial

Rarities of these Lands. Art, trade, and diplomacy in the Dutch Republic

This scholarly, well-illustrated book presents readers with new perspectives on the nascent Dutch Republic at the dawn of the seventeenth century, focusing on its quest for worldly goods and global commodities – pepper, spices, diamonds and pearls – as well as other luxuries imported from Asia. Claudia Swan’s masterful study explores the Dutch taste for consumption, and the means by which distant lands were reached and foreign goods accessed, first by seizing and plundering Portuguese and Spanish cargoes, then by engaging in war and conquest. Simultaneously, the Dutch aspired to wrest independence from Habsburg Spain and Portugal, which at this date were one kingdom and crown (from 1580 until 1640). Through sea captains, upstart adventurers and savvy merchants, the Dutch ruthlessly acquired hegemony over global markets, shattering the Iberian monopoly on Asian trade. They strategically sought out Habsburg enemies, establishing diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire and other Muslim powers,...

Naufragés japonais et leur rôle dans les relations nippo-occidentales: Défis d’une étude globale

Abstract Between 1633 and 1639, the Tokugawa shogunate had published a series of edicts, expelling all Westerners except the Dutch from the country, curtailing international commerce and missionary activities, as well as forbidding the Japanese from ever leaving their homeland. The Edo government maintained its isolationist course with varying degrees of success for more than two hundred years, finally caving in under foreign pressure in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Although the border control was exceptionally strict, small merchant craft and fisherman boats were still navigating between the islands of Japan. The sailors could rarely find a way back home after a shipwreck. Saved by passing whalers or washed ashore in a distant land, some of them survived their ordeal and ended up in the West where they were often employed as guides, interpreters and language teachers. Several countries sent diplomatic missions to Japan, using repatriation of castaways as a pretext to open negotiations with the shogunate. In this article, we will try to deconstruct the history of the relations between Japan and the Western powers through the eyes of these castaways and identify several methodological challenges that such a research entails.

OBJECTIVES OF PARTICLES IN THE UZBEK AND ENGLISH LANGUAGES

This article is devoted to one of the auxiliary groups of words used in the English and Uzbek languages – particles. The British and Uzbeks live in distant lands, belong to different language families, and speak different language systems; naturally, they differ in their closeness to each other in terms of word grouping. It is known that in the modern Uzbek literary language there are six types of words meaning due to suffixes, some of which are added to the word, and some are separated from the word with a hyphen. Given the above, the heterogeneous nature of the particle becomes clear (from the Greek word meaning "another type", i.e. variety, the presence of different parts in one structure). The article explains that there are additional suffixes in the Uzbek language, and mainly the addition at the end of a word shows its agglutinative character, while English is an inflectional language, so there are no suffixes at the end of the words. As we mentioned above in the Uzbek language the particles are written with a hyphen in accordance with the rules of punctuation, sometimes with a comma, which is almost not typical for the English language. This feature is relatively rare in English. In addition, the article is based on the use of examples, where the possibility of switching between auxiliary words is not excluded, the function of one performing the function of the other is not excluded, as is the case with all auxiliary words.

Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World by Jessica Lightfoot

Reviewed by: Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World by Jessica Lightfoot Maria Gerolemou Wonder and the Marvellous from Homer to the Hellenistic World. By Jessica Lightfoot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021. Pp. x, 260. Lightfoot's objective, described in the prologue, is to "open up the subject of ancient wonder as a more comprehensive and coherent field of inquiry in the modern world for the first time" (2). The author discusses various facets of thauma from Homer to the Hellenistic period to highlight its importance both as an aesthetic response and as a philosophical and literary tool. While this approach to wonder is not completely novel, Lightfoot's study on the role that thauma plays in the relationship between the human and the divine, animate and inanimate, near and far, familiar and unfamiliar provides interesting insights. The book does not offer a chronological reading of thaumata; it rather functions as a Wunderkammer, that is, as a repository for various wondrous objects, events, etc., and reveals connections between the uses of thauma in different periods, authors, and genres. [End Page 370] The second and fourth chapter discuss thauma as a model of aesthetic response. To this well-studied aspect,1 the author adds a spatial and a temporal dimension: aesthetic thauma in Plato, she argues, when describing something which is "hidden" and lies "inside," such as the intellect, can prolong perception and lead to curiosity and cognitive advancement (see Theaetetus); on the other hand, thauma which refers to outer appearance is a temporary feeling of bedazzlement (see Charmides). In ekphrastic descriptions of objects, on the other hand, the split between outside and inside collapses: the exterior of the objects described, which are either god- or man-made (see, e.g., Achilles' shield in the Iliad; gems in Posidippus' epigrams), is admired due to its mimetic power, which can go as far as reproducing internal animative forces (e.g., motion). Now, it seems that both the ekphrastic and the philosophical wonder externalise the technê and skills of an artisan or intellectual. The fourth chapter explores cases of acoustic marvels which manage to blur the boundary between the animate and inanimate, gods and mortals. While both chapters offer some interesting insights, a theoretical discussion on the aesthetics and perception of viewing (thauma idesthai) and hearing (thauma akousai), which could have strengthened their arguments, is missing.2 The third chapter is dedicated to the genre of paradoxography, and discusses both the "textual thaumata" found in the Hellenistic library and the oddities of the natural world. According to the author, paradoxography is not about providing enough evidence around a wondrous observation; what guarantees the wonder's veracity in a paradoxographic discourse is the reference to the initial observer of the thauma. The chapter responds convincingly to previous scholarship on paradoxography that describes the genre as merely "popular" rather than scientifically oriented3 by emphasizing exactly the effort of paradoxographers to create "new bodies of purely textual marvels" (57). The chapter also examines how the Herodotean thôma and Aristotle's concept of wonder influence the paradoxographic wonder. The argument presented here is not entirely new.4 The Herodotean type of wonder, argues the author, fosters curiosity about distant lands, customs, objects, etc., that are unfamiliar to Greeks, and tests the boundaries between belief and disbelief, in the same way later paradoxographers do, but unlike Herodotus, they do not present their own judgement on the credibility of thauma. The Aristotelean wonder, moreover, provides the paradoxographer with the material itself. The paradoxographer selectively presents some of these wonders, without giving any context, i.e., without offering "the complicated reasoning which the philosopher builds up to explain away an apparent inconsistency or anomaly" (74). This increases thauma since it recreates for the reader the moment when the quoted author first observed, for instance, "strange and inexplicable zoological specimens or processes" (78). [End Page 371] Chapter Five, which explores wonder both as "an emotional and cognitive response" to recognition (108), is the most stimulating part of the book. Starting with a discussion of the famous scene of the Lytra and the mutual social recognition between Priam and...

The paradox of developing agricultural mechanization services in China: Supporting or kicking out smallholder farmers?

Developing agricultural mechanization services (AMS) is commonly regarded as an important step in the modernization of smallholder farmers in China. However, given the increase in the opportunity costs of agriculture and the high cost of AMS, further study is needed to determine the relationship between AMS and smallholder farmers' exit from agricultural production. In this paper, data from the China Family Panel Survey collected in 2017 and 2019 are used to investigate this issue. Our findings show that the development of AMS reduces the probability that smallholder farmers exit from agricultural production though land abandonment, but increases the probability through land renting-out. Further analysis shows that with the emergence of large farm operators and the increase in land size rented by large farm operators, the development of AMS induces smallholder farmers' exit from agricultural production through both land abandonment and land renting-out. We also find that AMS can increase the market demand for land transfers and the marketization of land rentals, and as land markets develop, AMS induce smallholder farmers' exit through the abandonment of fragmented and distant land plots.

Номен «щур» як українська назва ссавців роду Arvicola: історичні й етимологічні дослідження

The ancient Ukrainian zoonym “shchur”, which has long been used for various animals, but most often for large burrowing rodents represented in the aboriginal fauna of Ukraine by the genus Arvicola, is considered. At the same time, this name is also used as a synonym for the word “krysa” (= rat), and in this sense is often identified with the genus Rattus (“patsiuk” = rat) to denote various large rodents from distant lands following a principle “ the small = mice, the large = rats”. Therefore, the name “shchur” is often considered ambiguous and thus worth either forgetting or using only for the alien species. Etymological hypotheses are considered, of which the most relevant to zoological specifics is the one that explains the connection with burrows, ground, and night. This set of features determines the general ecomorphological type: large long-tailed underground mouse-like rodents with expressed nocturnal activity, which appearance in human economies is undesirable. The history of use of the name “shchur” in the special literature, mainly in zoological reviews and other zoological studies, in the period from 1874 to 2020 is analysed. The widespread use of the nomen to denote different groups of animals, and especially rodents of the ecomorphological type “large mice”, which are representatives of the genera Arvicola and Rattus, is shown. Analysis of old sources showed that the name “shchur” was originally used as a common “generic” name for all species as well as some intraspecific forms of both genera, with the definition of semantic differences in the species modifier: water, common, ground, nomadic, basement, black, ship, mill, and so on “shchur”. Unambiguous fixation of Ukrai­nian generic names as equivalents to scientific generic names required the typification of all names, which took place in the Ukrainian scientific nomenclature in the late XIX and early XX centuries. As a result, the name “rat” is proposed to be assigned to the genus Arvicola, and for the genus Rattus to be recorded as the Ukrainian equivalent of the nomen “patsiuk” (“rat”). Arguments are presented to recognise the antiquity of the zoonym “shchur” and therefore to recognise its importance for the designation of aboriginal rodent species, and especially of “water shchur” (water vole, Arvicola amphibius) voles of the genus Arvicola in general. The practice of traditional naming of laboratory rats as “shchur”, as well as the use of the name “shchur” with appropriate definitions to refer to other genera, inclu­ding muskrats (“musk shchur” or “musk rat”), nutria (“marsh shchur” or “marsh rat”) and various representatives of distant faunas (bamboo or spiny tree-rats, etc.) in the Ukrainian zoonymics should be abolished.

Traduzir o canto de Christine de Pizan no confinamento

Christine de Pizan left a very varied work regarding literary themes and genres, her first poems being written in verses, ballads, virelais, rondeaux, jeux a vendre and some songs. In this study, we will present two of her lyric compositions in translation into Portuguese, Ballade XI and Virelai I, in which Christine de Pizan regrets her new reality: the loneliness of widowhood and the contradiction of poetic activity in disguising and revealing her feelings. The aim of this work is to show that the translation of these medieval poems can illustrate principles of the translation of poetry that go beyond the meaning and form of the text. For that, we resort to some considerations by authors such as Antoine Berman and Mario Laranjeira, for whom the translation can shelter the other, can reveal the identity of a text and say something about its history. We also emphasize the distance in the timeline that separates the composition of the source texts and the translation exercise proposing our work as a witness to the other, aiming to offer the original a continuity in this century, giving it the shelter that the stranger can receive in distant lands.

‘“The whistle blows, and we are whisked into a tunnel”: Railways and the Environment in Illawarra, 1850s–1915’

Historians are becoming alert to the large role of railways in environmental history. To date, many studies in Australasia focus on a specific industry, such as timber. It is now worth turning to the distinctive local or regional effects of railways beyond a single industry or commodity, so to better understand the links between technology, environment, and place. Illawarra presents a valuable case study. The environmental history of the first decades of rail transport exposes how Wollongong and its region industrialised and the ways in which this process affected everything from primary producers to the sounds of daily life. This article takes in the 1850s through to the start of World War I (WWI), a period when rail transport grew from being the adjunct of a few coal mines into an essential common carrier. It progresses through a series of themes that show the economic, social, and cultural attributes that shaped and were shaped by the railway environment. It begins with the railway as a carrier: the extent to which trains fulfilled their intended role to transport Illawarra’s natural resources to Sydney and other markets. It then moves on to the railway as a consumer, putting the local environment to work for its benefit and requiring materials made from resources of distant lands. Railways did more than carry or consume resources; they created their own environment and provided new perspectives on nature. Trains brought people closer to nature, carried them into new—and dangerous—environments in tunnels, and transformed the sonic landscape. Rail travel differed significantly to horseback or sea voyages in capacity and speed, and by WWI it was enmeshed in Illawarra’s environment.

Desde vistas densamente llenas hasta la ciudad vacía de Piazzas. Imágenes que interpretan los dinamismos oscilantes de la realidad urbana

Cities have been inspirational for the creators of visual art works long since, first as mere secondary, additional motifs to indicate the “urban” environment of the main scene, then as subject-matters in their own right. Those images could depict both imaginary and actual cities of the past and of the future, including mythological and Biblical locations, documenting distant lands and fantasizing on the appearance of utopian cities. In some of these aspects, the history of city representations shares significant similarities with the history of landscape depictions. In the present paper, however, I aim to focus on a curious and particular detail in this pictorial tradition. Following and further investigating a brief reflection by Michel Makarius from his 2004 book on Ruins, I would like to compare the visuality and aesthetic effects of dense and empty cityscapes, of which two classical examples could be the capriccios – imaginary views of cities completely filled with aesthetically pleasing elements, including magnificent remnants of the Antique heritage – and representations of cities in which their emptiness is highlighted to such extent that the observer tends to assume that the real subject-matter of the image is not the city, its buildings, forms and physical components but exactly its being “empty”. These “extremities” on the broad range of cityscapes, i.e., the densely-filled and the extremely depopulated are, however, not merely historical sub-genres of long-gone centuries. These typologies have survived to this day, in various versions and with diverse accents; what’s more, they seem to be more relevant than ever in understanding not only the nature of these artistic representations and their aesthetic references, but also in learning more of our contemporary reality itself. It is enough to think of the numerous ways in which artists approach the convoluted issues and challenges of urban life today, with the classical references and visual vocabulary in mind, either unconsciously creating occasional parallels or using them as explicit forerunners to their own works. The density of the global megapolises are represented in artistically novel ways often with socially critical overtones, while the images of empty cities – not long ago, for example, during the recent pandemics and lockdowns – are again resulting in aesthetically inspiring and insightful works incentivizing us to reflect on the oscillating dynamisms of our present urban realities. Therefore, it is particularly beneficial to observe such renderings of our cities and hence to raise more our awareness of the multiple global issues that are often very strongly manifested in the everyday life in large metropolises. Pieces of art thematising the extreme forms of city life can become very efficient ways of constantly reminding us of our duties of taking care of both our cities and our life.

Comic China: Representing Common Ground, 1890–1945

Comic China: Representing Common Ground, 1890–1945

Rights of Conquest, Discovery and Occupation, and the Freedom of the Seas: a Genealogy of Natural Resource Injustice

Los derechos de conquista, descubrimiento y ocupación, y la libertad de los mares: una genealogía de la injusticia sobre los recursos naturales Este artículo analiza los orígenes coloniales de tres principios del derecho internacional: el derecho de conquista, el derecho de descubrimiento y ocupación, y la libertad de los mares. Argumento que cada uno de estos derechos se estableció como principio jurídico internacional para facilitar la colonización de pueblos lejanos, sus territorios y tierras, y con el fin de acumular sus recursos naturales. El artículo analiza cómo se justificaron estos derechos, qué conjunto de facultades e inmunidades exclusivas conferían, y cómo están vinculados a tres regímenes jurídicos modernos distintos de derechos sobre el espacio natural y sus recursos: la soberanía territorial, los derechos de propiedad privada sobre tierras extranjeras y los bienes marítimos comunes mundiales. En tanto expongo los orígenes moralmente arbitrarios de cada uno de estos principios de derecho internacional, que reflejan las condiciones y los objetivos específicos de determinados proyectos coloniales, también sostengo que los regímenes de derechos sobre los recursos naturales que estos institucionalizaron son convergentes en el sentido de que permitieron una apropiación y una explotación distintivamente injustas de los recursos naturales. El artículo también señala las formas en que la lógica y el funcionamiento de estos regímenes siguen dando forma al uso injusto de los recursos naturales hasta el día de hoy.

Tinkuqchaka: A Suspension Bridge over the Upper Pampas River, Ayacucho, Peru

Andean geography has posed diverse challenges to human activity. High mountains, rugged terrains, deep canyons, and torrential rivers were significant obstacles that effectively would have isolated settlements and entire regions. However, the desire to reach out to adjacent communities and distant lands pushed to the limit the ingenuity and imagination of past Indigenous Andean societies. By the time the Inka Empire flourished, the peoples of the Andes had already mastered the difficult geography, not only by building agricultural terraces over rugged terrain but also by building across the challenging landscape a road system described by the Spaniards as “the longest and grandest in the world.” However, the road system would have been ineffective without its most important component, the suspension bridges built over deep canyons and rapid currents. The suspension bridges, some of them as long as 50 m, made the interaction between distant peoples possible. Although it remains uncertain when suspension bridges were first built in the region, they likely antedated the Inka Empire by several centuries. Suspension bridges, so critical in the past, have largely been abandoned. One exception is Tinkuqchaka, a suspension bridge that continues to be renewed over the upper Pampas River, in the Peruvian central highlands. Tinkuqchaka is built by the inhabitants of Sarhua, one of the few Andean communities to maintain ancient technology. We assert that the survival of this technology initially was due to the marginal location of Sarhua that until just over a decade ago was reachable only by foot.

‘Sons of Bengal’ and the Absent Daughters: Gender, Performativity and Nationalism in Bengali Juvenile Literature

This article looks at the asymmetrical bifurcation of gender roles and performativity that is reflected palpably within Bengali juvenile literature of the twentieth century. These writings strove to venerate a cult of hypermasculinity through the portrayal of brave, assertive Bengali heroes who engaged in various escapades in distant lands or in the solving of mysteries and crimes, either alone or accompanied by male confidantes who remain completely devoted to them. This dominant cultural trope was consciously employed as a challenge to the imperial, racist stereotypes of the effeminate Bengali man who was imagined to be inferior to the virile, robust and intellectually superior Englishman. However, the role of women within such diegetic portrayals is liminal or conspicuously absent; female readers are conditioned to “wallow in the reflected glory of their heroes” (Mukherjee para. 13). This paper also looks into the politics of sexuality and nationalism involved within the celebration of male homosocial bonding over heteronormative relationships, thereby leading to the almost complete effacement of female agency.

Robert Burton on the Society of Jesus and Coimbra

O presente artigo explora a attitude ambígua de Robert Burton face aos Jesuítas, centrando-se na sua leitura dos Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu. Após uma contextualização da sua detecção da Companhia de Jesus nas peças teatrais de Burton, passo em revista as referências do académico à articulação da melancholia nos manuais do curso conimbricense ao longo da Anatomia da Melancolia. Por forma a identificar e compreender as especificidades da sua leitura, pautada por adaptações selectivas e imprecisões, empreenderei uma apresentação da doutrina dos temperamentos dos Conimbricenses. Sustento que, apesar da sua riqueza, da qual os ecos na obra de Burton dão testemunho esmaecido, a abordagem de De Góis permaneceu como um episódio obliterado na história médica e intelectual da melancolia. Este percurso permitirá uma compreensão das perspectivas terapêutica e organizacional subjacentes ao (e complementares do) ensino conimbricense. Trata-se, como se tornará evidente, de valências e aplicações dos Commentarii que Burton ignora. Ironicamente, uma parte significativa do seu conhecimento das terras distantes, as suas viagens por “mapa e carta” e as suas perspectivas socioeconómicas sobre a China, aspectos centrais da transição de uma observação da melancolia para uma observação melancólica, bem patente no recurso à sátira e à utopia como vias terapêuticas, está consideravelmente dependente da articulação entre as capacidade formativa e a organização das missões jesuíticas.

CORE CURRICULUM PRINCIPLES FOR FRAMEWORK OF LEARNING

In the 2040, When today’s young teachers will be ending their teaching, it is reasonable to expect those global issues related to the environment and to cultural diversity to be a major focus in education. Now to help current students prepare to use modern technologies to bring student’s respect closer for apparently distant lands and culture. So it is need of the society for new framework of curriculum should be based on collaboration of universities, socirty and other organizations. There are some reasons of global dimensions in education. • The content for education is becoming global. • Modern technology is being used to increase access to education on a global scale. • Global issues can enhance education through the provision of stimulating rich contexts for critical reflection.