The article concerns the discourses about music, which can be found in Augustine’s Confessions – the work, which distinguish itself by its multi-faceted (autobiographical, philosophical, theological) character. The aim of the paper is to analyze their relation, which can be described as undone project of rationalization of the understanding of music. On the one hand, the Confessions presents explicit Greek influence, which sees music as reflection of cosmic, completely rational order and certain ethos, regulating its functioning in society. In that respect, Confessions could be compared with Augustine’s philosophical works, where that idea dominates. Augustine, as a Christian, also includes in his concepts the Hebrew tradition of understanding the music, rooted mainly in Psalms, expressing emotional and existential approach to the music. The article aims to expose the second discourse, as less known characteristic of the Augustine's thought, and to show how it questions and deconstructs the project of rationalization of music.
This paper concerns the relation between twentieth-century model of an elegy (analyzed on the example of Rainer Maria Rilke’s works) and Zbigniew Herbert’s Elegy for the Departure of Pen Ink and Lamp. Similarities and differences between them show the direction of the genre’s evolution — a process of rejecting formal characteristics for a specific position of the subjectivity, searching for an existential complementarity. In effect the “elegiac” seems to be not a consequence of formal organization, but of the dialectics. Thus, the category could be applied in a wider sense than heretofore.
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