Lyrical Cycle Research Articles

A. N. YAKHONTOV IN LATVIA

The aim of this article’s research is the recovering of facts about visits of a Pskov poet Alexander Nikolayevich Yakhontov in 1850–1889 to Latvia. Yakhontov’s life was associated with Latvia for forty years, not only in terms of biography, culture and education, but also in the aspect of creativity. However, until now diverse Yakhontov’s connections with Latvia were not systematized and literary studied by local history; archival materials, stored in the Manuscript Department of Pushkin House, and a manuscript of poems by Yakhontov, located in the Pskov museum-reserve, were not introduced in the scientific process. This article releases the first Latvian text in poetry by Yakhontov, who was predisposed to assimilate the cultural environment by the features of his upbringing and education character: translation activities, that began in Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum and entrenched during his European travels in 50–80s, by the interest in culture and life of other people, their history and modernity (books for popular reading “Journey to the Northern Territory of Russia”, “People’s War in 1812” et al.). Being the translator of European literature (J. W. Goethe, F. Schiller, H. Heine, G. E. Lessing, A. Mickiewicz et al.) and the educator in the broadest sense, Yakhontov perceived Latvia as a special area, that combines elements of Russian and European mentalities, aesthetic influence of Slavic and Western cultures. At the same time, the analysis of poetic texts reveals, that he was quite aware of the unique nature of Latvia and the special aesthetics inherent in its discreet seascapes. Yakhontov’s position – as a poet and translator, as well as the specifics of his life circumstances (the need for mud therapy in the resorts of the Baltic states) – was the basis of the scientific methodology, used in the article: biographical, historical and literary, cultural and historical, textual research methods. The study shows, that the main place for Yakhontov’s visits in Courland was Libau (Liepāja – since 1918). Oversea routes of Yakhontov took him through Libau, where he (and later – his wife and son) had the treatment for several times. In the poetic world of Yakhontov Libau held a special place, symbolizing the pristine, wild nature, opposed to the orderly, resort, recreational space. The analysis of previously unpublished epistolary heritage of Yakhontov, compared with the text of the poem “Libau”, helps to clarify its dating, the story of creation and further processing in the book “Poems by Alexander Yakhontov”, edited in 1884. It has been found out that “Libau” opens a lyrical cycle – “On the seaboard”, “By the sea again” and “Calm”, created in 1857 and 1860. It can be concluded, that Yakhontov’s poems inspired by stas in Liepāja and other places of Kurland, can not only identify new, previously unexplored facts of his biography and poetry, but also provide an opportunity to imagine the natural and cultural environment, that characterizes Latvia in this period. Thanks to Yakhontov, the seascape of Libau and experienced moods, which covered an observer in the minutes of contemplation of sea space, can be represented. Being a so-called secondary poet, Yakhontov could convey the uniqueness of experienced sensations, which did not prevent the literary plaque and an abundance of poetic style, which in the context of the Latvian cycle are perceived as the carriers of cultural experience.

Benn und das fünfte Jahrhundert

„Irrationalism”, a fatally anti-modern devotion to the Dionysiac, has often been identified as a main component of the notorious „tyranny of Greece over Germany”. In its later shape as Nietzsche-imitation, it seems perfectly embodied in Gottfried Benn.s poetry of the twenties, as the very precondition of this poet.s political aberration in 1933 – when, by virtue of a turn towards Apolline measure, the German predicament might still have found a less gruesome issue (such was at least the hope of Thomas Mann). In view of this, it should be observed in the first place that Benn.s 1933 credo is in fact a resolutely anti-Dionysiac statement of the „Doric universe”; against this background, then, an exegesis of the lyric cycle V. Jahrhundert may be attempted. Tensions become visible, bordering on paradox: the absence of „Doric” references in the poems leads to a reflection on Benn.s response to Schillerian classicism, engaging the idea of „play” no less than the artistic shape of the cyclical work itself. As it turns out, for an adequate perception of this poetry marked by „hallucination and construction” to come about, one must be aware of Benn.s relationship to his friend, Carl Einstein.

Brahms's Song Collections (review)

Reviewed by: Brahms’s Song Collections Heather Platt Brahms’s Song Collections. By Inge Van Rij. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. [xii, 271 p. ISBN-10: 0-52183-558-5; ISBN-13: 978-0-52183-558-9. $90.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliographic references, bibliography, indexes. Researching song cycles is a problem: scholars have not been able to formulate a uniform definition of the genre because so many works of varying characteristics have been labeled as cycles. It is well known that Brahms referred to his published groupings of songs as bouquets rather than cycles, but no one has offered a systematic investigation of what this means. As a result, most discussions of Brahms's song cycles focus on the two opuses that are the most clearly identified as such, the op. 33 Romanzen aus L. Tiecks Magelone and the op. 121 Vier ernste Gesänge. In specialized literature on Brahms's lieder, mention is also occasionally made of the possible cyclic properties of op. 32 (Lieder und Gesänge von Aug.v. Platen und G. F. Daumer) and op. 57 (Lieder und Gesänge von G. F. Daumer), in part because their titles point to the poets as unifying threads. In her new book, Brahms's Song Collections, Inge Van Rij offers a provocative argument that Brahms's other groups of lieder are also cycles, which rely on the "Witz" of the reader to appreciate their coherence. Van Rij begins with a succinct overview of the concept of the lieder cycle in the nineteenth century, which considers cycles by Beethoven and Schumann, dictionary definitions, and poetic cycles. She emphasizes lyric cycles that Brahms knew and in particular suggests that Klaus Groth's concept of a cycle, as demonstrated by his Klänge, could have provided a model for the composer. (Brahms was friendly with Groth and set a number of his poems.) In the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schlegel defined "Witz" as "the power that allows us to posit connections between markedly contrasting entities" (p. 20), and more recently John Daverio applied this term to Schumann's fragmentary piano pieces and lieder. Van Rij is the first to invoke "Witz" as an aid in understanding Brahms's lieder groupings, and it is extremely useful because it explains how groups that include a strongly [End Page 281] contrasting song might nevertheless still be seen as unified. Brahms usually assembled his lieder collections only after completing the individual pieces. George Bozarth, among others, has documented Brahms's practice, but Van Rij draws on sources, including the composer's handwritten plan to order the op. 113 canons, to reinforce the idea that Brahms formulated these groupings with great care. Despite this selection process, Brahms referred to these collections as "bouquets," not cycles. Although many publications seem to treat this as an oddity, Van Rij demonstrates that "bouquet" was quite a common image. The Schumann-Brahms circle frequently used floral images in relation to songs, and nineteenth-century poets used similar flowery terms, including bouquet, when referring to poems and lyric cycles. Ultimately Van Rij offers the clearest explanation of the term, noting that a song collection is like a bouquet in that the songs are not necessarily composed together and they may be contrasting. Moreover it is possible for the pieces to be separated and rearranged. Chapter 3 is the heart of the book, and it proposes various ways in which most of Brahms's opus groupings can be viewed as cycles. There is little in-depth musical analysis; rather Van Rij relies on the songs' texts to make her arguments. Her interpretative strategies are derived from her study of Romantic lyric cycles, which demonstrated that groups of poems can be unified by a consistent story line or narrative voice, as well as by more subtle elements such as recurring images, self-reflexivity and "Witz." Like the texts for his Requiem, several of Brahms's collections follow a sorrow to comfort plot archetype, including opp. 7, 32, 49, 57, and 121. By contrast opp. 48 and 106 are characterized by the reverse plot, and move from optimism and security to despair. After exploring the problematic nature of the narrative in op. 33, and briefly...

"Pour un petit de nice semblant": Distance and Desire in Christine de Pizan's Le Livre du Duc des vrais amans

In her lyric poetry cycles, Christine de Pizan creates a narrator-poet who firmly distances herself from the poetic material of love, insisting that she has nothing in common with the lovers who recount their joys and their sorrows in the poems she writes. This thematized lack of interest in love contrasts with the practice common from the very inception of the medieval love lyric, which was for narrator-poets to draw their inspiration and authority precisely from their own experiences of (1) The lyric tradition of poetic sincerity was based on the assumption that poets were personally moved by the emotions they expressed. Roger Dragonetti describes a topos, or cliche, like love, as a lien d'entente pre-etablie entre le poete et son and explains that such liens operate because both parties, the poet and the audience, participate in the emotion conveyed: un cliche n'opere donc que s'il est dynamique, si par consequent, capable de toucher, d'emouvoir d'abord le poete, il peut eveiller ensuite le public aux memes sentiments, au meme ideal, vecu en commun. (2) Christine's narrator-poet eschews any intimate relationship with Amours, breaking with tradition. And yet, she too bases her poetic authority on her own experience, foregrounding an autobiographical element that strikes many readers as more poignant than the ones proposed by traditional love lyricists. She is not in the throes of love at the time she writes, but Christine has indeed known love and lost it: not to betrayal, but to death. Although she refuses identification with her lovers, her mourning widow narrator-poet, sad, but wise, haunts the love lyrics, setting up an implicit analogy with her lovers and offering a rich paradigm for unhappiness in Thus Christine's love poetry cannot be reduced to a critique of the love practiced at the courts for which she composed. For the reader leaves her lyric cycles, not with the message that worldly love is to be despised and abjured, but with the more ambivalent one that love stories inevitably participate in the universal story of worldly mutability under the reign of Fortune. Because it is part of the transitory world, love is overwhelmingly beautiful but fleeting. Christine's grieving narrator is fully aware of love's vast power to bring joy and its equally vast power to bring sorrow. She thus recounts love's sublimity, but simultaneously laments its capacity to destroy. In this essay I will propose that the role of Sebille de la Tour in Le Livre du Duc des vrais amans be considered an example of a similar narratorial strategy. Sebille's purpose, I will suggest, is not to criticize the love practiced at the courts--a purpose long attributed to her. One critic has written that it is impossible to find a clearer statement of Christine's most fundamental objections to the whole concept of love. (3) But exposing the folly of lovers is not Sebille's function, any more than it is the function of Christine's love lyric narrator. As I will attempt to demonstrate here, Sebille can be more accurately viewed as part of an intricate dialectic that ultimately reveals both the unavoidable pleasures and pitfalls of human love than as a simple adversary of courtly Judging by the total number of lines allotted her, Sebille de Monthault, Dame de la Tour, is a character of negligible importance in Christine's oeuvre. And yet this former governess with her highly developed sense of moral obligation towards her erstwhile charge and her talent for expressing herself persuasively in formal written language has been granted a far greater authority by modern critics than her brief appearances would seem to warrant. Although her literary existence is limited to a single letter of which she is said to be the author, a letter twice repeated in two separate works, Sebille creates a lasting impression. She is not one to mince words. Love is perilous for women, and anyone who says otherwise is lying, she insists: Ha! …

Du rococo au sentimentalisme : les trois premiers recueils poétiques de Franciszek Dionizy Kniaźnin (1749/1750-1807)

From Rococo to Sentimentalism : The First Three "Lyrical Cycles" by Franciszek Dionizy Knjaźnin (1749/1750-1807) Franciszek Dionizy Knjaźnin, a virtuoso of versification and verbal paradox, a remarkable translator and adapter of ancient poetry, deserves attention as a master in the arrangement of his poetry books. The study analyses his transition from Rococo to Sentimentalism by comparing the composition of his enormous poetry book Erotica (1779), a 'lyrical cycle' much in the Petrarquist tradition, to the ordering of texts in his poetry collection Amusements and Little Loves and in his 'lyrical cycle' Orpheus' Laments on Eurydice (both in the volume Poems 1783). The author found that both of these sentimentalist poem sequences are more or less derived from rococo Erotica. Amusements are given their sentimentalist turn less by textual modifications than by some important reductions in the overall arrangement of poems. We see a drastic reduction of the collection's size (from 371 poems in 10 books in Erotica to 74 poems in 3 books in Amusements); a reduction of intertextuality and metapoetical autoreferentiality (Sentimentalism prefers not to expose its artistic procedures); and a reduction of the variety of lyrical genres in favour of a clear domination of the idyll. Furthermore, Amusements do no longer constitute a 'lyrical cycle', since the highly complex web of quasi-narrative threads in Erotica has disappeared. Nevertheless, the three books of Amusements show a movement in tonality from slight euphoria to moderate scepticism in eroticis, but also to serious patriotic didacticism whose connection with Sentimentalism will live a long period in Polish literature. Noteworthy in the last part of Amusements are the 'motivic hints' (death motifs) to the directly following Orpheus' Laments. These consist of 24 poems ('laments') and form a fully developed 'lyrical cycle'. They are sentimentalist in their 'simple' quasi- narrative outline, in their pastoral modesty restraining the sublime of the Orpheus-Eurydice theme, and above ail in a most remarkable lyrical 'tonelessness' and 'colourlessness' in expressing the moods of mourning, despair and depression.

Poetry of the Swamp: Blok’s “Folks” Cycle Bubbles of the Earth

magical song and spell seem to to be primeval form of poetry. -Nietzsche, The Gay Science Bubbles of Earth (Puzyri zemli) comprises first lyric cycle in Aleksandr Blok's Second Book, book that contains his poetic output for years 1904-1908.1 The poems of Bubbles of Earth seem oddities, owning little by way of linkage to rest of Blok's oeuvre. The setting in most of poems is swamp; their diction derives from folk vernacular; and their narrative orientation is toward folk genres. In his 1907 review of cycle, Andrei Bely did most, perhaps, to damage reputation of poems by encouraging subsequent critics to regard them as horrid, painful, childish, and idiotic.2 Commentary on cycle, overall, has settled for slightly dismissive verdict of playfulness to account for Blok's interest in swamp creatures. This fate is undeserved by poems that in fact engage rather serious philosophical problems concerning powers of language and Symbolist attempt to reconcile and experience. While thirteen poems of Bubbles of Earth, composed in 1904 and 1905, present a thematic domain uncommon in Blok's properties associated with swamp locale directly engage his interest in an article of 1908, Poetry of Spells and Incantations (Poeziia zagovorov i zaklinanii). In that essay, Blok regards charms cast by sorcerers as gold of genuine poetry, and maintains that in art of incantation, word and act become indistinguishable and identical, subject and object, magician and nature, sweetness of complete (5:37, 47).3 The sorcerer's ability to effect a synthesis between language and physical surroundings represents an ideal of unity cherished by Symbolists. In Bubbles of Earth, Blok seems to experiment in imagining a world in which poet exercises wizardly powers. This essay will consider folk context of cycle, in particular, intimations of spells and incantations. I would like to suggest that route into center of swamp, represented by cycle's central poem, is created by poet's sorcerer-like use of language, but that poems in second half of cycle move away from this organic wholeness of world and word, becoming riddled with an irony that sunders totality of sought by poet. The ambition to unite proves unachievable for modern artist. Paul de Man writes that language of Romantic poetry seems to in desire to draw closer and closer to ontological status of object, but that language is incapable of achieving absolute identity with itself that exists in natural object. That cohesive identity is elusive because poetic words move beyond common meanings to originate anew over and over again. Because of this disjuncture, he claims, for most post-Victorian poets, the priority of nature is experienced as a feeling of failure and sterility.4 The Russian Symbolists shared with Romantic poets not only idea of an intimate harmony between nature and humankind (which artist can bring to consciousness with his supernatural gift-an intuition of ideal form of world5), but also a common interest in customs, language, songs and riddles of folk. Blok has often been identified as a Symbolist cognizant of his ties to Romanticism. What Blok finds in spells and incantations appears to take on dilemma outlined by de Man by positing a world in which subject and object experience sweetness of complete unity. …

Cyclosporin A and FK506 Block Induction of the Epstein-Barr Virus Lyric Cycle by Anti-Immunoglobulin

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) BZLF1 gene is expressed early upon induction of the viral lytic cycle and its protein product is unique in its ability to disrupt viral latency in some latently infected cell lines. Anti-immunoglobulin (anti-Ig) treatment of the Burkitt's lymphoma cell line Akata, which bears surface IgG, has previously been shown to synchronously induce transcription of the BZLF1 gene (K. Takada and Y. Ono, 1989, J. Virol. 63, 445-449). We have previously shown that anti-Ig induction of Akata cells activates expression of the tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) gene via a calcineurin-dependent mechanism (Goldfeld et al., 1992, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89, 12198-12201). Here, we report that anti-Ig induction of the EBV lytic cycle in Akata cells can be blocked by the immunosuppressants cyclosporin A and FK506. Furthermore, we demonstrate that synergistic induction by phorbol ester and calcium ionophore of a BZLF1 promoter-driven reporter construct in an EBV-negative BL cell line can be inhibited by addition of cyclosporin A. Thus, analogous to activation of TNF-α gene in Akata cells, anti-Ig induction of the BZLF1 promoter is most likely mediated by calcineurin and probably involves translocation to the nucleus of a transcription factor sequestered in the cytoplasm. As such, immunosuppressants may be useful probes for dissecting B cell activation pathways involved in regulating EBV gene transcription.

Reading Suicide: Tsvetaeva on Esenin and Maiakovskii

Мне кажется, смерть художника не следует выключать из цепи еґо творческих достижений, а рассматривать как последнее заключительное звено.Osip Mandel’ shtamThe death of a poet is a theme Marina Tsvetaeva addressed frequently both in poetry and in prose. The list of poets whose deaths underwent Tsvetaeva’s artistic scrutiny is varied and includes Aleksandr Pushkin, Aleksandr Blok, Sergei Esenin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Vladimir Maiakovskii, Maksimilian Voloshin, Andrei Belyi, and Nikolai Gronskii. A number of notable lyric cycles and some of Tsvetaeva’s finest prose essays emerged as homage to deceased poets. The function of these works extends beyond commemoration and entails the elaboration of Tsvetaeva’s definition of lyric poetry and her exploration of poetic responsibility.

Alexander Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle

Alexander Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle

Aleksandr Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle

Aleksandr Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle

Aleksandr Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle

Aleksandr Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle

Brahms's Magelone Romanzen and the "Romantic Imperative"

B rahms's Opus 33 Magelone Romanzen, composed between 1861 and 1869, occupy a most unusual position within his corpus of works. So far as the music is concerned, there is a marked departure from the idealized Volkslied style to which Brahms aspired in most of his songs. And while most song cycle texts are usually assembled from a pre-existent lyric cycle (e.g., Schubert's Die 343 Schine Miillerin), from a single poet's output (e.g., Schumann's Opus 24 Heine settings), or from unrelated poems fashioned into a narrative or associative sequence by the composer himself, here Brahms chose to set the interpolated verse in an old Volksmdrchen elaborated in the form of the contemporary Kunstmdrchen, Ludwig Tieck's Wundersame Liebesgeschichte der schinen Magelone und des Grafen Peter aus der Provence.l The idea of setting interpolated lyrics to music was not a new one, witness the numerous settings of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister poetry. But Goethe's verses are integral only to limited portions of his Bildungsroman; in Tieck's Magelone, a lyric poem of large dimensions is a regular feature in each of the Mdrchen's eighteen brief chapters.

After the Ball is Over: Sophia Parnok's Creative Relationship with Marina Tsvetaeva

The love affair between Sophia Parok and Marina Tsvetaeva, which consumed the two poets from late October 1914 until February 1916, seems to have been one of those passions fueled by an attraction to its own doom. Yet, as Sofiia Poliakova has demonstrated, the creative potential and fruits of this love affair were substantial.1 It inspired Tsvetaeva's magnificent lyrical cycle Podruga (Girlfriend), arguably her most mature work so far, as well as several other lyrics. On the whole, Tsvetaeva's poems about Parok are striking for their ambivalence-the mixture of tenderness, love, bitterness, and predictions of doom. In the very first poem of Podruga, Tsvetaeva predicts the end of the relationship, telling her girlfriend that one of the reasons she loves her is that she will tell her good-bye: [Ia Vas liubliu!...] Za to, chto Vam, moi demon krutolobyi,/Skazhu prosti. ([I love you!...] Because to you, my steepbrowed demon,/I'll say goodbye.) Despite their expressions of ecstatic love, Tsvetaeva's poems to Parok are preoccupied with the aftermath of the ball. The poems Parok wrote while she was in love with Tsvetaeva are neither numerous nor poetically distinguished, but they share Tsvetaeva's ambivalence about the relationship. One of Pamok's best early poems, however, was directly inspired by breaking up with Tsvetaeva. Another beautiful lyric to her was composed many years later, in 1929, long after the love affair was over.

Lyric Sequences in theCantigas d'amigo

Lyric Sequences in the<i>Cantigas d'amigo</i>

The Love Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

If Yehuda Amichai does not use as topics for his work all three of those that Dante considered fundamental to poetry, salus, venus, and virtus, the second, venus, appears as a pervasive theme, perhaps the most pervasive throughout his work, revealing a consistency of idea which has unfailingly moved through the structured verse of the early volumes to the less tersely conceived poems of later years. One of the primary topics of his poetry is the alteration of love within a variety of contexts: time, war, youth and maturity, memory and religion. Love is the framework in which most of the events of the poetry take place, and it is itself celebrated or mourned in a number of long lyric cycles, particularly in the early books, written between 1948 and 1968.

Studies in Goethe's Lyric Cycles

Studies in Goethe's Lyric Cycles

Studies in Goethe's Lyric Cycles

Studies in Goethe's Lyric Cycles

Studies in Goethe's Lyric Cycles (University of North Carolina Studies in the German Languages and Literatures, no. 93)

Studies in Goethe's Lyric Cycles (University of North Carolina Studies in the German Languages and Literatures, no. 93)

Helen Meredith Mustard, The Lyric Cycle in German Literature

(1948). Helen Meredith Mustard, The Lyric Cycle in German Literature. The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory: Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 229-231.

The Lyric Cycle in German Literature

The Lyric Cycle in German Literature