Emigre Writers Research Articles

EXISTENTIAL VISIONS IN SMALL PROSE OF EMIGRANT WRITERS OF THE 1920's

The article deals with the existential visions of the period of literary emigration in 1919–1939 according to the stories of the Ukrainian writer Oles Babij and the Russian one -Alexei Tolstoy. Within the new paradigm – existentialism – the authors showed the person through images of anxiety, despair, and longing. The negative impact of war (in O. Babij's story «Bandit») and emigration (in O. Tolstoy’work «On the Island of Hulk») on the formation of human consciousness is claimed here. Attention is drawn to the psychological aspects, symbolism, and details which are the markers of discomfort and the alienation of the heroes of both stories. The works trace the modes of the existential aesthetics: the boundary situation, the absurdity of existence, the concept of loneliness, etc. It is emphasized that similar existential motives, found out in small prose of the emigrant writers O. Tolstoy and O. Babij, appeared in the works of European writers A. Camus, J. P. Sartre almost twenty years later. Keywords: emigration, war, existential visions, psychology, despair, boundary situation.

БІБЛІЙНІ ТЕМИ В ІСТОРИЧНІЙ ПРОЗІ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ЕМІҐРАЦІЇ

In the article there are summarized innovative approaches to artistic mastering of Bible topics in creative work of Ukrainian emigration writers of 1920th – 1970th: Natalena Koroleva, Leonid Mosendz and V. Domontovych (Victor Petrov). Ukrainian tradition of mastering Bible topics was interrupted by Russian occupation; it finds its bright artistic embodiment in artistic historical prose of Ukrainian emigration. This artistic experience enriches Ukrainian writing by mastering of Bible topics and motives via Bible stylizations, renaissance or creation of newly created new genre formations, contaminations of religious and historiosophical problems, searches of new narrative strategies of artistic mastering of the Holy Scripture. The article traces the way biblical stylizations become a style-forming means in the Ukrainian prose of the XX century. Historical novels Quid est Veritas?(What is the Truth?) by Natalena Koroleva and The Last Prophet by Leonid Mosendz are the basic works of fiction wherein they, playing forming roles, become an important element in poetic language and style. The way L. Mosendz uses bible stylizations in his novel The Last Prophet results in a special art amplification. The author conditionally expands his text’s sense by dint of bible stylizations and his allusive returning to the semiotic-semantic significance of the “base-text”. As the latter is the Bible (or, rather, the Old Testament), generating the said allusive amplifications, Mosendz’ novel, thus, sounds in several creative aspects. One of them is “filling up” the gaps in evangelical texts about John the Baptist’s life. Such “fillings up” occur both through the author’s fiction and his artistic reconstruction based on historical sources. The transformed and adsorbed through bible stylizations elements of neoclassicism and neo-romanticism create in the stylistic palette of novel Quid est Veritas? that unique stylistic aura, which represents Natalena Koroleva’s experimentalist attempts both in the genre field (her attempt to create a Ukrainian historical epopee representing the epoch historically very remote from the artist) and in the stylistic domain. One more specific feature of Koroleva’s novel – its epic character – is also created by help of bible stylizations. The allocation of the said stylistic macrostructures enables to present the general exhibitions of each of the author’s basic idiostyle elements.

Poetic (Re)Turn in Dany Laferrière's L'Énigme du retour

Dany Laferrière's 2009 novel, L'Énigme du retour, enacts a poetic turn that is also, however, a return (both to the genre of poetry and to a 'temps perdu', which is superimposed on the emigrant writer's 'pays perdu'). As such, this work inflects a personal narrative with collective, political resonance and with added literary and aesthetic value. Formally, structurally and discursively, it mediates a historically resonant, proto-bardic ethos, connecting across time with a universal tradition of poetically addressing politically and culturally significant questions, including those related to human engagement with place and displacement.

THE DISCOURSE OF EUROPE IN THE LYRIC OF MIKHALO SYTNIK

The discourse of Europe in the lyrics of the poetry of the Ukrainian emigrant writer Mykhailo Sytnyk is reviewed in this article. Historical and existential motives in the works of war and postwar periods – the time of the artist’s stay in the Western Europe – are analyzed. It is investigated that the European themes of Sytnykʼs lyric poetry are built, first of all, on the contrast: foreign country – native land, which is the most complete expression of the authorʼs intentions, his existential perception of everything that does not fit into the system of spiritual values ​​associated with his native land and archetypal concept of «Family and Home»

Uporczywa bezsilność sztuki, czyli Haupt i granice literatury

The article discusses the author’s aesthetics of Zygmunt Haupt. Both the metareflexive thread of his prose and its immanent properties have been taken into account. The main focus has been put on the concept of the speaking subject. The author of the article tries to revise Haupt’s autobiographism of prose which the previous studies used to expose excessively. Instead, the researcher recognises the concept of time – the past and the future as the “ecstasy” of the present – to be at the centre of this work. Haupt’s ideas have been confronted with the trend of Polish post-war literature, which was created under the slogan of a great revision. Both the works of Polish and emigrant writers have been taken into consideration. According to the researcher, in his aesthetic thought, exploring the boundaries of literature, Haupt is close to the writers of late modernism.

Pawła Mayewskiego „Tematy”

The quarterly “Tematy”, edited by Paweł Mayewski, was published in the years 1961–1969. In 32 issues the editors published reprints of essayistic texts from elite American magazines, presenting works in the field of sociology, political science and literary criticism. There were also many translations poems of the greatest contemporary American poets. The eminent professors of American universities, as well as many Polish emigre writers, cooperated with Mayewski. Those appeared mainly in the role of translators. Mayewski’s magazine was part of the ideological offensive against communism and the place of presentation of the complex image of American society in the times of the Black people’s struggle for equality, student rebellion against the establishment, counterculture successes and at the same time the triumph of the consumerist model of society. All these issues as well as disputes among American intellectuals about the place of literature in the modern society found expression in the Mayewski’s quaterly. The sixties were a period of exhaustion of the potential of the New Critics’ school and the search for new ways of interpreting literary works. Also in this dimension, the quarterly addressed to the Polish reader has become a place for the presentation of new ideas.

Вигнання як текст у малій прозі Віталія Бендера.

The article deals with the ideological and philosophical vision of emigration being, reflected in the small prose of Vitaly Bender, a Ukrainian writer, journalist, social activist of emigration in the second half of the twentieth century. It is noted that the appeal to the artistic heritage of Vitaliy Bender today is a kind of gesture of the return of this undeservedly unknown in the Homeland's name to the literary and polytheistic circulation. The practice when the artist gets more recognition abroad than in his native country is generally characteristic of the Ukrainian literary process of the twentieth century, during which a whole array of artistic texts of emigrant writers was created, most of which had only an ethnic connection with Ukraine, with different successfully adapting to foreign territories. The work of Vitaly Bender, a prose writer and essayist, practically all of whose creative life she has been in the UK, is still priceless in his homeland. This is confirmed by a very small number of explorations devoted to the literary and journalistic heritage of the artist. It is emphasized that in the analyzed works of Vitaliy Bender the writer shows events that put the whole nation on the verge of survival, but paradoxically, they help to identify the best features of its character, which, in fact, help the nation to survive in a decisive situation. The wave of emigration, to which Vitaliy Bender belonged, was inspired by the events of the Second World War. War and emigration are two main problems to which the writer addressed his small prose. These are the situations in which the price of human existence is especially acute - something that does not pay attention to peaceful times. It is determined that the measure of existentialism, deliberately or unconsciously chosen by the writer, appears as a result of the aesthetic and philosophical searches of the twentieth century, which were perceived by Bender and artistically transformed in the post-war periodist poetry. Existential problems that have to be solved by his heroes are a reflection of those global and individual tragedies and disasters that have had a huge impact on the development of human thought and self-awareness and experiences of their being in the world. Traces the parallels between the poetics of exile forced by Bender and the prose writer's appeals to existential issues in post-war modernist writing. Vitaliy Bender considers the life of the emigrant as a continuous existential initiation in a new space, therefore one can assert the author's organic philosophical affiliation and his work to the general artistic and philosophical discourse of the Ukrainian writer's diaspora of the post-war age.

Traduzir-se. Diários de Gombrowicz

Partindo da perspectiva da elaboracao do diario como um laboratorio de subjetividade, o artigo examina as ambivalencias especificas dessa forma de escrita pessoal. Ao hesitarem entre a afirmacao da intimidade e a procura da interlocucao, os diarios do escritor emigrante Witold Gombrowicz tornam-se um curioso espaco de encenacao de um “eu” como vitima de monstruosas deformacoes. Leitor dos existencialistas e de Joseph Conrad, Gombrowicz encena em sua escrita a procura de si no contexto da dominacao das mais diversas alienacoes. A exploracao critica e a autocritica tornam-se possiveis gracas aos violentos desdobramentos do “eu”. O exilio, a extraterritorialidade e a resistencia ao falso conforto promovido pelos discursos ideologicos aproximam os anseios manifestos nos diarios gombrowiczianos da busca do romantismo da neutralidade articulada nos textos de Conrad. --- DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12957/matraga.2017.29562

Шевченківські мотиви в малій прозі письменників-емігрантів 20–30-х років

The article studies images and motifs of Shevchenko based on the materials of works of another row of Ukrainian emigration writers of the 20-30ies years. Using the theory of archetypes of Jung, we identified an intermediate archetype acting on the verge between a Hero (a Savior) and a Sage, this is what Taras Shevchenko became for the Diaspora writers.Particular attention is being drawn to the genre palette of Shevchenkiana, artistic and stylistic features of the stories of the following writers are being defined: K. Polishchuk, B. Lepky, Dmytro Tyahnyhore, and Lesya Verhovynka. The Shevchenko motifs we discovered in the short fiction of the 20-30ies are usually united around the magnificent figure of Shevchenko, his portrait and his “Kobzar”. The archetypal figure of Shevchenko represents a symbol of a rebellious spirit and a national talisman for Ukrainian writers of the emigration. It is being determined that the portrait of the great son of the Ukraine serves as an icon for his people and is frightening for the others; words of the works of Shevchenko inspire heroes to fight for the liberation of the native land and act like a prayer; “Kobzar” serves as a talisman. Thus, motives of Shevchenko in the works of short fiction emphasize saving function for the characters and for their authors.As a result, it is being concluded that a dominant in all the stories and novels was both a respectful and a panegyric relationship towards the Savior of the Ukraine, Taras Shevchenko, and that his name and works became a philosophical guide that inspired artists to create Diaspora of the short fiction with patriotic content.

РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦІЯ РЕСУРСНОГО ПОТЕНЦІАЛУ ЖИТТЄВИХ СЦЕНАРІЇВ У МЕТАФОРИЧНИХ НАРАТИВАХ СУЧАСНИХ ПИСЬМЕННИКІВ-ЕМІГРАНТІВ

РЕПРЕЗЕНТАЦІЯ РЕСУРСНОГО ПОТЕНЦІАЛУ ЖИТТЄВИХ СЦЕНАРІЇВ У МЕТАФОРИЧНИХ НАРАТИВАХ СУЧАСНИХ ПИСЬМЕННИКІВ-ЕМІГРАНТІВ

The Impact of Writers with Bmental Thinking on Readers’ Positive Interpretation of Other Cultures (Evidence from Russian and Kazakh Literature of the XX Century)

Literature always was a reflection of stereotyped and private visions of the world, including perception of other cultures. With proper reading it is possible to distinguish authors whose oeuvre and world perception equally connects two cultural layers and objectively reveal the image of other nation. The analysis of these poets’ works require the use of the term "bimentality", which has already found application in articles on cultural studies, political science and teaching methods. The purpose of this article is to define the term "bimentality" in literary criticism by employing the material of Kazakh and Russian poets and writers’ oeuvre, including emigre writers’ works, to reveal prerequisites for the development of bimental consciousness and particular artistic styles that affect readers' positive interpretation of other cultures. The investigation identifies appropriate aspects of studying, such as specific artistic features, interethnic communication, visions of Europe and Asia and ways of using this method of reading The use of comparative analysis and context-hermeneutical method provides an opportunity to interpret works in light of literary, cultural, sociological and ethnographic questions that make the research applicable to interdisciplinary studies. Our results show that the development of bimental consciousness is caused by a country's social and political conditions; history of international relations; biographical factors and children's perception formation that influence the degree of ethnic identity, artistic style and vision of spatial and temporal boundaries. Poets and writers with bimental thinking can be intermediators between different mental realms and thus promoting the development of intercultural understanding. Keywords: Bimentality; Bimental thinking; Eurasianism; National identity; Russian literature

Dissent and Cultural Pessimism in Ernst Wiechert'sDer weiße Büffel oder Von der großen Gerechtigkeit: Literary “Inner Emigration” under National Socialism

IntroductionFollowing the infamous postwar controversy involving Thomas Mann, Walter von Molo, and Frank Thiess (Grosser; Brockmann) and early apologist discussions of writing under National Socialism (Paetel; von Koenigswald), some literary scholars came to reject the notion of an emigration (Schonauer). Others emphasized the ambivalent character of certain Christian conservative authors' work, arguing that their privatist flight into the historical, metaphysical, and apolitical could readily be interpreted as supportive of Nazi ideology (Loewy; Schnell). In an important study, Grimm (48) sought to avoid the resistance-conformity dichotomy by promoting a sliding nonconformist scale ranging from open resistance to passive refusal. Building on this and avoiding ideological prejudgment of publishing under National Socialism, scholars have more recently endeavored to reevaluate texts of the period by examining publication context, reception, and authorial reputation (Donahue and Kirchner; Golaszewski et al.; Klapper). Particular attention has been paid to the technique and function of the so-called verdeckte Schreibweise, which has been the subject of several significant studies (e.g., Dodd; Ehrke-Rotermund and Rotermund).Despite cultural policy restrictions subtly disguised short literary works and journalistic texts appeared after 1933 in both liberal (e.g. Frankfurter Zeitung, Kolnische Zeitung) and state or party newspapers (Krakauer Zeitung, Volkischer Beobachter), while individual publishers (Goverts, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Insel, List, Kosel & Pustet) continued to distribute work that could be read as not conforming to the principles of the regime. The mostly conservative authors of such texts adopted a conscious and calculated silence on ideologically conformist subjects, while writing about alternative topoi, frequently under the protection of historical camouflage. The challenge was to perform a balancing act of communicating a critical stance with clarity to an attuned and like-minded readership, while simultaneously rendering the text sufficiently ambiguous to create doubt about its actual meaning in the minds of less well-disposed readers, most notably state- and party-controlled censorship bodies. The process presumed a heightened sensitivity to nuance, suggestion, and key fictional tropes, and also a select, insider readership, which has been dubbed esoteric in contrast to the ex- oteric audience for messages that conformed to the dominant Nazi discourse.1 Techniques included disguising critical or nonconformist elements by adding an affirmative or neutral statement, changing the order in which contentious material appeared in the text, or alerting sensitized readers to critical content through conscious use of stylistic oddities (Ehrke-Rotermund and Rotermund 16-19).Among the most significant of substitution techniques was the use of tropes and figures that contributed to a metaphor or allegory of life under National Socialism. Works employing this approach included historical anecdotes and legends. They have been designated Aesopian, denoting fable- or fairy tale-like narratives written in a camouflaged manner often involving myths.2 The terms and method refer back to the disputed Ancient Greek figure of Aesop in the sixth century BC and his supposed use of allegory in animal fables to disguise opinions on the authorities in Africa (Reifarth 16-19). Over time, use of the terms has been broadened to denote any critical intellectual attitude expressed in a veiled artistic form in the face of an oppressive regime's attempt to suppress dissent, such as Dolf Sternberger's (8-13) retelling in 1941 in the Frankfurter Zeitung of the fable of the wolf and the lamb, an allegory on Nazis and Jews.This article explores a key example of the Aesopian genre, Der weise Buffel oder Von der grosen Gerechtigkeit (1937/1945) by the controversial inner emigrant writer Ernst Wiechert. …

The Artist’s Longing and Belonging: Cultural Sensitivity in Yurii Kosach’s Narratives

As an emigre writer living outside of Ukraine, Yurii Kosach constructed an “imaginary homeland” through his treatment of history, culture, and memory in his literary works. This article analyzes these categories in Kosach’s meta-narratives of the artist in exile, by focusing on the texts “Zaproshennia na Tsyteru” (An Invitation to Cythera, 1945), Skorbna symfoniia (The Sorrowful Symphony, undated), and Senior Nikolo (Signore Nikolo, 1954). Kosach’s characters are placed between exile and homeland, nation and empire, and self and other. All these notions are included in a discourse that is inclusive rather than oppositional. Following a strategy used by Lesia Ukrainka, Yurii Kosach also tests the artist’s ability to create in lands beyond one’s homeland and in conditions of cultural oppression. Each story plot of the analyzed narratives is constructed in terms of the cultural and national aspects of the artist’s identity.

Archiwa Pracowni Badań i Dokumentacji Kultury Literackiej Instytutu Filologii Polskiej Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego

This paper is aimed at collecting the most important information about specific archives kept at the Unit for Research and Documentation of Literary Culture at the Institute of Polish Philology of the University of Rzeszow and at their characterisation. The tasks of the Unit include collecting and obtaining materials, archives and writers’ book collections. Activities of the Unit refer also to the literary culture of the Rzeszow region. All collections are now kept at the Unit for Special Collections of the Library of the University of Rzeszow. The archives of the said Unit contain works of emigration writers and new items are added successively to the collection, which contributes to the continuation of research concerning literature written in exile. It is a priority for the Unit to carry out the research, gather information and popularize publishing activities. Archives of the Unit for Research and Documentation of Literary Culture give us invaluable biographic, literary, historical and cultural material. The growing archives may serve as evidence that there is a need to investigate the emigration. The obtained and catalogued archive collections include the ones of: Professor Florian Śmieja, Jan Darowski, Jozef Wittlin and Professor Kazimierz Braun. The archives of Jozef Wittlin and Kazimierz Braun are available on CDs. Special Collections include also fragmentary archives with fragments of Wit Tarnawski’s collection, Professor Andrzej Busza’s collection, Bogdan Czaykowski’s collection and Jozef Bujnowski’s archive.

Two Austro-Hungarian Women Writers, Anna Tutsek and Terka Lux, Creating New Urban Identities in Early Twentieth-Century Budapest

In this paper, I examine some literary texts of two turn-of-the century Hungarian women writers, Anna Tutsek and Terka Lux who left behind their childhood environment in remote regions of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in order to move to Budapest, the capital of the eastern part of the Empire. Assuming that individuals hold multiple identities that are flexible and inevitably affected by environmental and social changes, my main focus is on the transformation of their ethnic, regional, occupational and gender identity influenced by the disengagement from their birthplace. Within a context of Hungarian−Eastern-European women's social history, I investigate how migration had led them to reshape their original identities and create new ones and how these emigrant writers reacted to the loss of cultural and social norms in which they had previously lived.

A Generation Gone “Odvukon”: Literary Heritage of G. Andreev (Khomyakov) in the Context of the Creative Fate of the “Young” Writers of the First Wave of Russian Emigration

The article makes an attempt to expand the boundaries of the long-established idea of the “unnoticed generation” of Russian emigre writers by comparing the fates and literary works of emigre “sons” and their contemporaries from Soviet Russia, and in this case — the ones who came to the West during World War II. The author focuses on the creative work of G. A. Andreev (Khomyakov), who consistently reproduced the life of his generation in its Soviet manifestation in his documentary and autobiographical prose: prisons and camps; the participation in the Soviet construction and production; the fate of a soldier during the war. The three thematic layers (camp — production — military) almost completely overlap with the overriding blocks of the auto-documentary plot that is recurrent in the works of “young” writers of white emigration: the Russian Civil War; declassed existence in a foreign country; participation in the Resistance. Referring to the content and thematic levels, the author points out the traits of generational unity in the works of G. Andreev (Khomyakov) and many representatives of the “young” literature of the first wave of emigration.

Ivan Boldyrev’s Story Boys and Girls: On the Peculiarities of Poetics

The article analyses the poetics of emigre writer Ivan А. Boldyrev’s (real last name Shkott) story Boys and Girls. The author focuses on the techniques of incorporating images of the past into a work of fiction, as well as the story of growing up. The analysis is based on a decentered plot and compositional structure, organised by switching points of view, stylistic heterogeneity, and an inverse perspective provided by the author (the view from the emigre present of the Soviet past). The fragmentation of the composition deprives the narration of a defining central action. Discontinuity, difficulty of speech, cinematographic discreteness with alternating perspectives, and intentional intermittence function as an artistic equivalent of the disastrous history of the post-revolutionary years of Soviet Russia. The story creates a portrait of a teenager who draws the reader’s attention to the timeless nature of youth and, on the other hand, reflects the crucial nature of the time after the revolution, where a teenager’s consciousness is a kind of a touchstone. The analysis shows how the story of the first Soviet schoolchildren generation becomes a prelude to the future tragedy of “emigre sons”, the writers of the “Russian Montparnasse”, who experience a deep rupture of historic legacy and feel the need to reflect the consequences of this rupture in their artistic works.

World War II in the Literary Perception of Three Waves of Russian Emigration

The article considers the theme of World War II through the literary and artistic prism of the three waves of Russian emigration as a special area of ideological and philosophical differences. The author analyzes artistic and documentary texts by G. Gazdanov, V. Varshavsky, V. Andreev (the first wave of Russian emigration), B. Shiryaev, L. Rzhevsky, G. Andreev (Khomyakov), I. Yelagin (the second wave of emigration), G. Vladimov, A. Zinoviev (the third wave). The author reconstructs the multidimensional and ambiguous perception of war, characteristic of the representatives of different periods of emigration: patriotic, antifascist, collaborationist, philosophical, critical and patriotic at the same time. In every writer’s works the theme of war is considered in relation to their personal destiny and world outlook. The material in the article is structured according to the principle of historical chronology (the first wave, the second, and the third wave), however, the analysis of individual works focuses on a certain and quite individual viewpoint. The juxtaposition and comparison of these viewpoints gives an idea about the controversy over World War II, reflecting political and moral, ethical and even existential attitudes of emigre writers.

Self-Translation, Literary Creativity, and Trans-Lingual Aesthetics: A Québec Writer’s Perspective

Abstract Self-translation and bilingual writing are drawing increasing critical attention in literary and translation studies. Bilingual writing can cover a wide range of phenomena involving varying degrees of bilingualism. Scholarly focus has been on emigrant, expatriate or exiled writers and more recently, on bilingual writers writing in a post-colonial context, using the acquired language of the colonizer. The emphasis has been on the cultural and political power inequalities between languages. Self-translation has also been seen from the broader, ontological point of view as a form of double representation of the writing self. My own experience in the particular cultural geography of a bi-national, multicultural country such as Canada offers a different context for reflecting on self-translation and bilingual writing, or what I prefer to call “cross-writing,” based on the fundamental cross-cultural communicative aesthetics underlying my specific writing and self-translation process.

CHRISTMAS AND EASTER THEMES IN THE LITERARY HERITAGE OF YURIY MIROLYUBOV

A Russian emigrant writer Yuriy Mirolyubov (1892—1970) wrote a lot about Slavic antiquities. His name is associated with the origin of a legendary “Th e book of Veles” (Velesova kniga). Th is article studies his literary works in a historical and literary context, thematically associated with Christmas and Easter. Th e son of a priest, Mirolyubov was able to create original Christmas and Easter tales. As a priest’s son Mirolyubov managed to create indigenous Christmas and Easter stories. He brought back an already existing genre tradition of Christmas and Easter literature to its folklore origins, freed it from absolutely literary accretions and narrative stereotypes. Yuri Mirolyubov strived to put the Christmas and Easter stories beyond moral (much less entertaining) literature, put them in the mainstream of a folk, “Russian epic” (Ivan Shmelyov). Th at was a defi nition given by an author Ivan Shmelyov to his writing “Th e Lord’s summer” (Leto Gospodne), who also updated the Canon of Russian calendar (Christmas and Easter) literature in his own way. In fi ctional prose Yuri Mirolyubov acted as a scientist-ethnographer, a sensitive receptionist of everyday phenomena and psychological states. But in the works defi ned as scientifi c, he became a true artist, who felt free to deal with the most complicated and poorly studied material, however, existing in the depths of people’s consciousness.