Exile Literature Research Articles

Latvju dainu atbalsis Veltas Sniķeres lirikā

The research “Echoes of Latvian Dainas in the Lyrics of Velta Sniķere” examines motifs and fragments of Latvian folk songs in the poetry by Sniķere. Several poems that directly reveal the montage of folk songs are selected as research objects. Linguistic, semantic, hermeneutical and historical as well as literary methods were used in poetry analysis. The research emphasizes the importance of Latvian folklore in the process of Latvian exile literature, the genesis of modern lyrics, and the philosophical conception of the poet. Latvian folk songs in the lyrics of Sniķere are mainly perceived as a source of ancient knowledge and as a path to the Indo-European first language, prehistoric time, which is understood only in a poetic state. Often, the montage of Latvian folk songs or their fragments in the lyrics of Sniķere is revealed as a reflexive reverence that creates a semantic fracture and opposition between profane and sacred view. The insertion of a song in the poem alters the rhythmic and phonetic sound: a free and sometimes dissonant article is replaced by a harmonic trochee, while an internationalism saturated language is replaced by a simple, phonetically effective language composed of alliterations and assonances. The montage of folk songs in a poem is justified by the necessity to restore the Latvian identity in exile, to restore the memory of ancient, mythical knowledge, to represent the understanding of beauty and other moral-ethical values and to show the thought activity. Common mythical images in the lyrics of Sniķere are snake, wind, gold, silver, stone etc. The Latvian folk song symbolism and lifestyle of the poet are organically synthesized with the insights of Indian philosophy.

유배실기에 나타나는 유배 경험에 대한 글쓰기와 삶 살기 －『남해견문록』과 『적소일기』를 중심으로

본고는 유의양의 『남해견문록』과 김약행의 『적소일기』를 대상으로 유배 경험에 대한 글쓰기 양상에 관해 연구한다. 이를 위해 『남해견문록』과 『적소일기』에서 유의양과 김약행이 유배지에서의 경험을 어떻게 서사화하고 있는지를 살펴보고, 그 과정에서 서로 다르게 나타나는 글쓰기 전략에 대해 논의한다. 동일한 유배라 할지라도 그 사건이 주는 고난의 강도와 맥락은 사람마다 다르게 나타날 수 있다. 따라서 유배의 고난에 대응하여 글을 쓴다는 것 자체보다는 ‘고난을 어떻게 인식하고 어떻게 글을 쓰고 있는가’에 주목할 필요가 있다. 『남해견문록』에 나타나는 유의양은 유배 죄인이라는 세상의 인식에서 벗어나 자신의 삶을 스스로가 생각하는 상태로 변화시키기 위해 노력하며, 그러한 경험에 대해 서술한다. 이를 통해 유의양은 유배의 고난과 불안에서 벗어나 이전 정체성을 실천하며 새로운 삶을 살아가려는 자기의 테크놀로지를 보여준다. 이에 반해 『적소일기』에 나타나는 김약행은 유배지에서 경험한 절망 속에서 자신의 삶을 가족들이 공감해주고 기억해주기를 바라며 경험을 서슬한다. 이를 통해 김약행은 자신이 경험한 유배의 고난과 불안을 가족들이 기억해줄 것이라는 바람의 맥락에서 삶의 가능성을 찾아나간다. 이러한 글쓰기를 통해 유의양과 김약행은 유배지에서 자신의 삶을 새롭게 의미화하고, 이렇게 의미화한 삶을 다른 사람들이 읽는 과정을 통해 자신의 삶을 단순한 유배죄인이라는 낙인을 넘어서 새롭게 인식하기를 바랐을 것이다. 그리고 이 과정에서 이들은 유배의 고난에 대응하는 글쓰기를 통해 삶을 살아 나갔을 것이다.

ЗАГУБАТА,КУЛТУРНАТА МЕМОРИЈАИ ЛИТЕРАТУРАТА НА ЕГЗИЛОТ

Exile related trauma emerges from the feeling of loss, which is one of the main topics in Edward Said’s Reflections on Exile. Sigmund Freud, in his work Mourning and Melancholia, states that the loss of the homeland is one of the cardinal reasons for mourning. This has led many exile theorists to analyze works themed around moving or relocating to another place based on the psychology of loss. Presenting the opposing positions of Edward Said, Paul Tabori and John Neubauer on exile literature, as well as their definitions of exile, refuges, expatriats, apatrides, this text focuses on the specific importance of cultural memory in exile literature, which refers to those who don’t live in the country in which they were born, or is authored by them. Implementing Azade Seyhan’s examinations of remembrance and what she refers to as “writing outside the nation”, this paper analyses exile literature as intentional remembrance caused by the feeling of loss, which relies on the restorative ability of cultural memory and aims to connect the past and present in integrative wholeness.

Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile ed. by Valérie K. Orlando and Pamela A. Pears

Reviewed by: Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile ed. by Valérie K. Orlando and Pamela A. Pears Stephanie Schechner Orlando, Valérie K., and Pamela A. Pears, eds. Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile. Lexington, 2019. ISBN 978-1-4985-6703-9. Pp. xix + 214. The chronological and international scope of this excellent book of essays is ambitious, gathering analyses of works by authors from across most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the globe. By choosing to center the volume on Paris, the editors offer what turns out to be an illusory focus in that the city functions only as a transitory point of passage, not a fixed place. For the authors discussed here, Paris is just as often a place to lose oneself as to find oneself. Many scholars have taken up the theme of exile in recent years, but this set of essays takes the reader a step further with the suggestion, made by several authors including Bernardo Toro in the interview that concludes this volume, that exile is the foundational state of all writing. Orlando and Pears have selected essays that complicate the notion of exile by expanding it to include self-exile, linguistic exile, and sexual exile among others. By not limiting exile to issues of nationality, race, or ethnicity, the editors consciously draw the reader's attention to questions of intersectionality. The editors broach this concern in the introduction, but the full impact of their choices only becomes clear as one reads the entire book, which contains essays on a diverse set of authors ranging from the more familiar like Richard Wright and James Baldwin, to lesser-known such as Elena Garro (Mexico) and Évelyne Trouillot (Haiti). One of the best essays is Alison Rice's complex study of the correspondence between Nancy Huston and Leïla Sebbar, two writers who resist interpretation and yet who yield fascinating insights on the question of what it means to be an outsider. Leslie Barnes's insightful analysis of Linda Lê's fiction is complemented by personal reflections on her own wanderings in Paris. Karl Ashoka Britto makes a compelling case for the inclusion of Vietnamese American authors Monique Truong and Aimee Phan, in his persuasive essay on Vietnamese diasporic fiction. Britto's essay draws connections between the French colonial and American postcolonial presence in Asia and subverts the reader's expectations of Vietnamese diasporic fiction. The volume concludes with two essays that allow the voices of writers to speak more directly either through summarized or transcribed interviews. The [End Page 257] reflections of these two authors, Louis-Philippe Dalembert (Haiti), and Bernardo Toro (Chile), close the book in a manner that highlights its far-reaching conclusions about not only the literature of exile but also literature as exile. Stephanie Schechner Widener University (PA) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Samiha KhraisThe Tree Stump: An Arabic Historical Novel by Nesreen Akhtarkhavari

Salo is joined by other refugees from various attacks orchestrated by the Yerezis’ malefactor and the warlord Dark Sun, with chapters regularly switching perspectives to tell an engaging story of young people growing into adulthood and newfound powers. With Scarlet Odyssey, Rwizi has written a novel that is expertly plotted, incredibly well thought out where magical and cultural systems are concerned, and also quite bloody. While not as literarily deft as Marlon James’s recent Black Leopard, Red Wolf (see WLT, Spring 2019, 80) or Jemisin ’s record-breaking Broken Earth trilogy, Scarlet Odyssey deserves to be recognized as a powerful force in the growing Afrofantasy movement. Sean Guynes Michigan State University Samiha Khrais The Tree Stump: An Arabic Historical Novel Trans. Nesreen Akhtarkhavari. East Lansing. Michigan State University Press. 2019. 174 pages. SAMIHA KHRAIS is a Jordanian novelist whose work has the imprimatur of those with heft, political and cultural, in her native land. The winner of, among other awards, the Al-Hussein Medal for Distinguished Creativity (2015), she addresses herself in The Tree Stump to the question of Jordan’s origins in the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Turks. It is perhaps inevitable, then, that one has a slight sense of reading, if not an official account, then at least one that will not displease her compatriots or the (admittedly largely benevolent) dynasty that rules over them. However, the historical background to the creation of the only surviving Hashemite dynasty, that of Iraq having been bloodily overthrown in 1958 and the Kingdom of Syria strangled at birth, is further complicated by the controversial figure of T. E. Lawrence, prominent in the minds of many putative readers of this translation because of a memorable film and in the minds of a few because of a brilliant, if idiosyncratic, autobiographical account of his role in the region, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926). Indeed, the wish to provide an alternative account to Lawrence’s, one rooted in the experiences of Arabs, is avowedly central to the book. Information obtained during Khrais’s meetings with tribal elders “challenged the narrative that Lawrence and most Western historians provided,” resulting in a novel that celebrates the valor of Arab warriors fighting for their freedom and culture and the inspiration given by their strong women, whose strength, contra stereotyping views of the West, “is perceived as a source of honor and pride for the men.” One would expect the role Books in Review ANDRÉ NAFFIS-SAHELY The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature Ed. André Naffis-Sahely London. Pushkin Press. 2020. 352 pages. HARDLY A LITERARY POSITION exists that trumps that of the exile and the émigré. Of course, not every exile succeeds in fashioning from their banishment a new whole or fresh start, imprinting elsewhere; those who do succeed can acquire an aura akin to that of a saint. In this anthology, André Naffis-Sahely sizes up the phenomenon of exile across ages, cultures, and causes, from the ancient and biblical through the Dark Ages and into the age of nations, considering political, religious , and personal reasons for exile, right up to more contemporary notions of “cosmopolitanism and rootlessness.” Many, but by no means all, of the authors of passages in this volume have themselves been exiles, including Naffis-Sahely himself. Yet in every case, care is taken to present excerpts that foreground exile and related states as their topic. Sometimes these converge —author and topic—as in the passage from Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the author meets the exiled Cacciaguida, who warns Dante of his own coming 102 WLT AUTUMN 2020 exile from Florence. More often, exile is the focus but not the fate of the author. There is an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, for example, and Longfellow spells out the tragic fate of Acadie’s Evangeline, severed from her Gabriel: “Thus did that poor soul wander in want and cheerless discomfort, / Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and thorns of existence.” Ample pages are devoted to tales of exile outside the Western canon. From ancient China, we get Du Fu, “Dreaming of Li Bai” (trans. Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping): I’ve swallowed sobs of the lost dead...

Архив В.В. Розанова в Румянцевском музее

The article presents a general overview of the letters to V.V. Rozanov that he sent to . Rumyantsev Museum. The chronology of the receipt of materials from the epistolary archive to the Department of manuscripts of the Museum is traced. The author refers to the names of the persons who directly handed the materials to the archive, and who accepted and processed them. The bibliophilic priorities of the museum curator . G.P. Georgievsky and V.V. Rozanov became the basis for supplementing the epistolary collection “From the Archive of V.V. Rozanov”. The author mentions the error in dating the letter of V.V. Rozanov to G.P. Georgievsky., written to accompany the last part of the epistolary passed to the Museum inter vivos. The text of the letter is published for the first time. The importance of V.V. Rozanov’s review of the book in the “Novoye Vremya” journal at the beginning of the twentieth century is emphasized. The author’s approach to the systematization of the correspondents’ letters for their subsequent passing over to Rumyantsev Museum is shown. The author provides concise information on the contents of certain collections of letters from Rozanov’s correspondents. The main themes of V.V. Rozanov’s epistolary communication with the authors of the letters are outlined. The author takes note of Rozanov’s special attitude to the selection of letters from the archive of correspondence for further publication. in the “Literary Exiles” series.. In the forefront there are letters from Church leaders and the thinker’s allies in the field of legislation on family relations. The article highlights the problem of correctness of specifying archive code numbers of the Russian State library’s manuscript department from the museum part of the archive, which have undergone changes during their stay in the General complex of V.V. Rozanov’s manuscript archive.

«Мы были ядро, были движение…»

The article presents a general overview of the letters to V.V. Rozanov that he sent to . Rumyantsev Museum. The chronology of the receipt of materials from the epistolary archive to the Department of manuscripts of the Museum is traced. The author refers to the names of the persons who directly handed the materials to the archive, and who accepted and processed them. The bibliophilic priorities of the museum curator . G.P. Georgievsky and V.V. Rozanov became the basis for supplementing the epistolary collection “From the Archive of V.V. Rozanov”. The author mentions the error in dating the letter of V.V. Rozanov to G.P. Georgievsky., written to accompany the last part of the epistolary passed to the Museum inter vivos. The text of the letter is published for the first time. The importance of V.V. Rozanov's review of the book in the «Novoye Vremya» journal at the beginning of the twentieth century is emphasized. The author's approach to the systematization of the correspondents’ letters for their subsequent passing over to Rumyantsev Museum is shown. The author provides concise information on the contents of certain collections of letters from Rozanov’s correspondents. The main themes of V.V. Rozanov's epistolary communication with the authors of the letters are outlined. The author takes note of Rozanov’s special attitude to the selection of letters from the archive of correspondence for further publication. in the “Literary Exiles” series.. In the forefront there are letters from Church leaders and the thinker’s allies in the field of legislation on family relations. The article highlights the problem of correctness of specifying archive code numbers of the Russian State library's manuscript department from the museum part of the archive, which have undergone changes during their stay in the General complex of V.V. Rozanov's manuscript archive.

Familia, género y espacio transnacional en Dime algo sobre Cuba, de Jesús Díaz

Family and intimate relationships across borders is a central topic in migration literature. This article investigates the representation of the transnational family in Dime algo sobre Cuba (1998), by the Cuban writer and filmmaker Jesús Díaz. Written from exile in Spain, the novel is set in Cuba’s “Special Period” of post-Cold War economic crisis and emigration of balseros (‘rafters’). The highly original plot of a twofold perilous voyage between Havana and Miami incorporates elements from both exile literature and undocumented migration narratives, but it also goes beyond the established patterns of these genres. Drawing on transnational family studies and feminist theory, this paper examines how the characters experience the migration process with focus on the internal dynamics of the subjects that comprise the family, their relations to multiple places, as well as the narrative modes of representing these relations. It shows the internal dynamics of the protagonist’s family as a split narrative of dis- and reintegration across political and national borders. It also discusses the lived experience of the double orientation of the migrant subject, facing a lost home(land) as well as a new place which s/he still does not inhabit. The analysis suggests that the process of the reorientation of the migrant subject is articulated as a gendered and sexualised narrative of the intimate relations of the protagonist, intertwined with the narrative of the homeland. However, the ambivalent ending of the novel with its references to cultural hybridity points to an opening where the future of Cuban exile and diaspora lies in the ability to forgive and establish cultural contact across borders.

Wayward Heroes: Vagabonds in World Literature

ABSTRACT: In Gerpla (1952), Halldór Laxness’s newly envisioned saga characters leave their native fjords and encounter different cultures on their travels abroad. They find themselves where the Greco-Roman cultural heritage meets the Northern legacy. Rewriting the saga heritage in times of civilization’s monumental decline, Halldór does not withdraw to the medieval and the remote but instead seeks the very roots of Western narrative and culture. Thus Gerpla, recently translated as Wayward Heroes (2016), can be located not only as a modern Icelandic response to the literature of the Old North, but also as a contribution to the European literature of exile; from The Odyssey to Ulysses, from Divina Commedia to Don Quixote.1 x1. This article is shaped by my years of teaching Icelandic literature at the University of Manitoba’s Department of Icelandic Language and Literature. While serving there as the Chair of Icelandic (2003–2015), I enjoyed the good fortune to reflect on the subject in the company of highly gifted students. One of them is the guest editor of this special volume, and I would like to thank Dr. Dustin Geeraert for his immense contribution to this article.

Uprooting and liberation: problematics of Central and Eastern European exile in Škvorecký’s The engineer of human souls and Hoffman’s Lost in translation

To be thrust into exile is necessarily to develop a complex and profoundly problematic relationship to the past, and arguably nowhere is this more tangible than in the exile literature of Central and Eastern Europe. This paper analyses Josef Skvorecký’s The engineer of human souls (1984) and Eva Hoffman’s Lost in translation (1989) in an exploration of the literary representation of twentieth-century Central and Eastern-European exile to North America. Drawing on the philosophies of Brodsky, Milosz, Suvin and Said, I focus on the plurality of vision afforded by exile, the relationship between exile and (semi)-autobiographical writing, differing opinions towards the host land and native homeland, and issues of “rootedness” and “double-centredness” in the exiled individual, in order to examine the problematic relationship between past and present, uprooting and liberation, in Polish and Czech exile literature.

Witnesses for the Persecution

During the reign of Constantius II (337–361), a number of Christian bishops were exiled from their sees, reportedly for their opposition to the emperor's “Homoian” theological position. Several of them (Athanasius of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers, Lucifer of Cagliari, Eusebius of Vercelli) responded to their institutional insecurity and geographical isolation by writing accounts of their experiences in a range of textual forms: letters to individuals or groups, historical narratives with quoted documents, or formal invectives. This article explores the variety of ways in which these examples of exilic literature construct different forms of communities in order to weave supportive narratives around the authors and their allies: Hilary and Lucifer emphasized their possession of parrhesia both within and through their texts; Athanasius constructed a network of opposition to heresy with himself as its focus; Eusebius presented himself as the lynchpin of a north Italian community which he could still lead from exile in Palestine. Through inscribing particular roles onto both their readers and other figures discussed within the texts, these exiled authors sought to foster their own reputations as leaders of these communities and arbiters of membership, thereby bolstering their positions at a time when their authority was under serious threat.

The Incredible Story of the Book “The Country of White Lilies” of Grigoriy Petrov

Many works about Russian exile literature written abroad were unpublished for years during the Soviet Union period. Some of these works, which lost their originals in Russian language, met with the Russian readers in the 1990s after being translated from the Western languages in Russian. The Russian writer Grigory Spriridovich Petrov’s book The Country of White Lilies due to the intense interest of the Turkish readers was preserved in the approximately 60 years period of prohibition. The book and his author, whose name was forgotten in the Soviet Union, continued to be published in the Balkans and Asia and only 81 years later was published in Russian language. The original was first translated in Turkish and from the Turkish translation the book was translated in Arabic and Finnish. The Country of White Lilies has more than eighty publications and up to ten different translations from Bulgarian and Russian editions in Turkey.

Classical Therapy through Su Shi and Kim Jeong hee’s Exilic literature - Focused on External conflicts of Je-Ju Island Spontaneous exiles

Classical Therapy through Su Shi and Kim Jeong hee’s Exilic literature - Focused on External conflicts of Je-Ju Island Spontaneous exiles

Place in Minority Exile Literature: The Case of Yūsuf Šiḥāda

Place in Minority Exile Literature: The Case of Yūsuf Šiḥāda

Deutschsprachige Kinder- und Jugendliteratur während der Zwischenkriegszeit und im Exil: Schwerpunkt Österreich ed. by Susanne Blumesberger, Jörg Thunecke

Reviewed by: Deutschsprachige Kinder- und Jugendliteratur während der Zwischenkriegszeit und im Exil: Schwerpunkt Österreich ed. by Susanne Blumesberger, Jörg Thunecke Kirsten A. Krick-Aigner Susanne Blumesberger and Jörg Thunecke, eds., Deutschsprachige Kinder- und Jugendliteratur während der Zwischenkriegszeit und im Exil: Schwerpunkt Österreich. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2017. 344 pp. English-speaking readers today may not be aware that Walt Disney’s celebrated 1942 animated film Bambi was based on Bambis Kinder, written 1938 by the forcibly exiled Austrian Felix Salten, or that popular 1930s U.S. proletarian children’s books were translations of works by the Austrian Hermynia von [End Page 143] Mühlen. This volume on German-speaking children’s and young adult (YA) literature written between the world wars and in the postwar period, focuses on these aforementioned and other underrepresented works and fills a much-needed void in scholarship. The articles are the result of a 2014 conference in Vienna led by the editors Susanne Blumesberger and Jörg Thunecke. This edition follows Blumesberger’s 2014 two-volume reference book on children’s and YA literature by Austrian women authors. The volume at hand is comprised of fourteen articles in German that are grouped thematically, ranging from socialist and worker’s literature, both in Austria and the United States, to propaganda and exile literature. At times the organizational structure is problematic as the grouping of the articles sometimes disrupts the flow of the overarching themes, but this does not take away from the fact that each article is in itself timely and engaging. Very helpful to international readers and those seeking specific information in the volume is each article’s introductory abstract in English. The framework of the volume provides readers and scholars with contextual information regarding children’s and YA literature, revealing not only the relevance of this body of literature today but also the need for further research on its authors and themes, especially on underrepresented and still unidentified texts written and published in exile, either in German or in a language of exile. The contributions highlight biographies, text analyses, the personal and professional situations of the authors, and, finally, the challenges of the publication, distribution, and reception of the works. The editors observe discussion points raised in the articles, highlighting especially how the political situation of this period affected the literary production in German-speaking regions, especially in Austria. While each article offers up new readings of texts and reintroduces lesserknown authors, articles also illustrate the texts’ import for readers today. In the opening article, Wiebke von Bernstorff states that reading children’s and YA literature through the lens of Bertolt Brecht’s “alienation effect,” an idea developed through Brecht’s own experiences under National Socialism and in exile, allows for a more didactic approach to the texts that reaches beyond the readers’ initial reaction of empathy. Von Bernstorff positions her analysis between the historicity of the texts and their timeliness, citing that the texts were written as a reaction to World War II and fascism and can therefore provide insight into contemporary social and political issues. The topic of exile is highly relevant to readers today, as a means of gaining intercultural knowledge [End Page 144] and providing insight into the refugee crisis in Europe and elsewhere. Von Bernstorff examines the aesthetics of the literary texts rather than their political intent, as identified in earlier research on children’s and YA literature in exile. Articles on the Socialist Party’s political texts for children, written in the “Red Vienna” between 1920 and 1934, highlight works such as the 1927 Kasperl sucht den Weihnachtsmann (Kasperl searches for Santa Claus) by Anton Afritsch, which warns of the perils of capitalism while revealing that Santa is a myth, and the 1930 Die verwünschte Fabrik (The cursed factory) by Alois Jalkotzy. Jörg Thunecke follows suit with an analysis of von Mühlen’s texts for children that were translated into English and published in the United Statesas Fairy Tales for Workers’ Children (1922), which aimed to combat social inequities and injustice while countering war through coexistence. While Murray G. Hall discusses the militarization of boys through propaganda literature of the early 1930s...

The Exilic Imperative of American Jewry

This article considers the existence of an exilic imperative in the historical and identity hermeneutics of American Jewry. Author considers cases of (1) American Jewish identification with racial outsiders, including the appropriation of historical, cultural, and religious forms; (2) the persistent creation of American Jewish ethnoburbs, unlike other white ethnic groups; and (3) the creation of exilic fantasy literature by American Jewish novelists. The author suggests that although American conditions do not justify interpretations of Jewish social alienation, American Jews have nevertheless applied traditional Jewish exilic hermeneutics to those American conditions.

The Epistolary Counterpoint in V.V. Rozanov’s Polemic Works (On the Materials of the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library)

The article presents the categories of the declared topic (counterpoint, dialogism). It considers a viewpoint on the method of philosophical monologue in V.V. Rozanov’s works. In contrast to previous studies, the article shifted the focus of consideration of the creative method of V.V. Rozanov towards publication of his correspondents’ letters. The author joins the scientists who consider polyphonism to be the main method of poetics of V.V. Rozanov’s works. The article deals with the principal ideas of the dialogic method used by the thinker to work with the texts of the letters. The article notes the novelty in Russian literature of the epistolary-dialogical genre used by the writer during the publication of letters of such prominent figures of Russian culture as V.S. Solovyov, S.A. Rachinsky, N.N. Strakhov, which are now stored in the Manuscripts Department of the Russian State Library. V.V. Rozanov’s use of notes and comments to letters of his correspondents can be considered priority, marking the beginning of his unique polemic style, which eventually grew into the unsurpassed author’s genre of “fallen leaves”. It is noted that it was V.V. Rozanov who managed to turn the genre of notes from an auxiliary component of book’s content into the main one. In addition to well-known epistolary publications in the series “Literary Exiles”, the article draws attention to the fact that V.V. Rozanov uses letters of the clergy in the course of the religious and philosophical discussions of the early 20th century on modernization of the Church. The article confirmed the point of view that V.V. Rozanov used the dialogical method while creating the texts of his publications, by the example of his work with letters in the unique genre of “Literary Exiles” and in early polemical works. There is shown that the process of literary creation in V.V. Rozanov’s works invariably reflects the discursive nature of his way of thinking and exhibits before the reader the creator of new forms of self-expression in literary creativity.

Framed Memories: The Politics of Recollection in Mana Neyestani’s An Iranian Metamorphosis

This essay examines the graphic memoir An Iranian Metamorphosis, by the acclaimed cartoonist Mana Neyestani, in the context of Iranian diaspora literature, particularly the genre of comics. Neyestani’s book is analyzed for its engagement with the politics of exile literature, and its attempt at challenging a two-dimensional view of the political discourse, in which the ethical boundaries of pro- and anti-government are overtly simple. The essay focuses on the book’s narrative techniques that exhibit a complex awareness of what is anticipated from a representative work of Iranian exile memoir, and the way it negotiates its own narrative politics. To clarify the arguments, several comparative examples are drawn from two well-known graphic narratives by Iranian diaspora authors, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Amir and Khalil’s Zahra’s Paradise.

Emigration in Estonian Literature: “Self” and “Other” in the Context of European Literature

The experience of emigration generated a new paradigm in Estonian culture and literature. After World War II Sweden became a new homeland for many people. Estonian culture and literature suddenly became divided into two parts. The political terror imposed restrictions on literature in homeland and the national ideology limited literature in the initial years of exile. Both were closed communities and were monolingual systems in a cultural sense because these systems avoided dialogue and the influence of other signs. It was a traumatic experience for nation and culture where the totalitarian political power and trauma have allied. The normal cultural communication was destroyed. But the most important thing at this time was memory, not just memory but entangled memory, which emigrants carried with them to the new homeland and which influenced people in Estonia. The act of remembering becomes crucial in the exile cultures.Estonian literature in exile and in the homeland presents the fundamental images of opening or closing, escaping or staying, and of flight or fight. Surrealism as well as fantasy and science fiction as the literary styles reveal what is hidden in the unconscious of a poet or a person or even in the collective memory of a nation. Surrealism has played a certain role in our literature, but it has been different from French surrealism, it is a uniquely Estonian surrealism. At the same time Estonia was already a new homeland for many refugees from Russia who had escaped during the Revolution of 1917 and World War I. August Gailit and Oskar Luts wrote about that issue in different literary works. Luts entangled different memories in his novel Tagahoovis (In the Backyard, 1933): the memories of Estonians and the memories of Russian emigrants. He also entangled historical narratives about World War I, the Russian revolution and the young Estonian state in the 1920s. Luts wrote about common people who interpret historical narratives. The novel was also published in exile in 1969 in Toronto.

Silenced Voices: The Poetics of Speech in Ovid by Bartolo A. Natoli

Reviewed by: Silenced Voices: The Poetics of Speech in Ovid by Bartolo A. Natoli Patricia Salzman-Mitchell Bartolo A. Natoli. Silenced Voices: The Poetics of Speech in Ovid. Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison and London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. Pp. x, 227. $69.95. ISBN 978-0-299-31210-7. Natoli’s Silenced Voices discusses speech loss in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and exile poetry, focusing on characters, including Ovid’s own poetic persona, who find themselves deprived of speech and develop alternative ways of communication to reestablish bonds with their communities and shape their communal and individual memories. In the introduction, Natoli provides an overview of key themes, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks within exile studies in classics and with respect to Ovid’s exile. There are helpful remarks on the phrase fortunae vultum . . . meae (Tr. 1.1.120) implying Ovid’s construction of a poetic exilic persona. Tr.1.1 connects with certain characters in the Metamorphoses who are often dehumanized through speech loss, as other critics have remarked. Natoli states that he differs from those who take Ovid as offering a historical self-portrayal in the exile poetry (13). Yet the premise that Ovid creates an exilic poetic persona has been noted before. Chapter 1, “Speech and Speech Loss in Ancient Rome,” gathers evidence from Roman authors about speech loss. Natoli turns to “the modern concept of schema theory, a method of conceptualizing how human beings conceive and make meaning of a situation, and one that has become a major part of the field of cognitive poetics” (17), to appreciate Roman thought on speech loss, an important context for Ovid. A useful survey of the Latin term mutus is illustrative. Chapter 2, “Speech Loss in the Metamorphoses,” engages with the Roman schemata of speech loss (nonhuman state, emotion, and separation from community) and rightly notes that transformation is often only physical, or “incomplete,” as a given character’s essence remains (for example, Actaeon and Io). Transformed, speechless (contrast what was previously a heightened speech ability), now nonhuman, separated from society, deprived of identity, and filled with emotion, characters can still use reason and forge community links, especially through writing. Traditional patterns of Roman speech loss are found in Lycaon, Callisto, Actaeon, Dryope, and Echo, though Dryope, transformed in front of others, maintains her “identity within that community” (47), and Echo remains isolated in an “in between” state with partial speech loss. The cases of Io and Philomela innovate by introducing the written medium as an alternative to speech. Io, unusually, reverses her transformation and reintegrates into the human community through writing (compare Ovid’s own attempt in exile). Philomela has an uncommon speech ability and voices threats of public exposure and revenge; once raped and silenced, she is like the poet in communicating through weaving/text. There are excellent close readings of the poetry, but Natoli could engage more explicitly with the intersection of gender and speech, in Philomela’s case in particular. Chapter 3, “Speech Loss in the Exile Literature,” shows how Ovid, now separated from the Latin-speaking world and expressing how he is losing his poetic skills, becomes like his silenced epic characters. Discussions include an in-depth analysis of Tristia 1, especially 1.3, connections with silenced characters in the Metamorphoses (mainly Callisto, Dryope, and Philomela), and Ovid’s attempts to reconnect with his Roman community through poetry. Noteworthy are considerations of vocabulary related to speech loss, a stimulating analysis [End Page 598] of Aeneas as exile in Tr. 1.3, and the use of gesture by Philomela and by Ovid himself when he tries to communicate with the Getans and Sarmatians. A letter, being a half-conversation, a symbol of the “physical presence of the author” (125) and a substitute for spoken words, is a key vehicle that enables someone with speech loss to reconnect with his poetic community. Chapter 4, “Speech Loss and Memory in the Exile Literature,” approaches the “interplay between community, speech, and memory in the exile literature” (149) and the theme of how Ovid, concerned with not being forgotten, shapes the memory of his work at Rome and in the collective memory. Natoli explores the meanings of memoria...