The paper deals with the conception and depiction of the positive image of senility in A. Kuprin’s prose (works of 1890–1910 and of 1930s). The following functional features of the images of old people are analyzed: 1) the meaning of being old (old people as perceived by the young and the old); 2) the role in the storyline: loneliness and the attempts to overcome it, assistance (providing help / wise advice); philosophical thinking in an existential situation (death, emigration from Russia); as well as the devices of depicting senility (kinship / non-kinship, application of the scheme “an old man + achild + apet (dog / cat)”). It is concluded that the images of the old comply with the established Russian ideals: “diffuse communication” (K. Kasyanova), love for the Motherland, and due to this the ontological plane is revealed in these works.
PL
Artykuł ukazuje sposób przedstawienia pozytywnego obrazu starości w prozie Aleksandra Kuprina i rozważa jego znaczenie (utwory z lat 1890–1910). Obrazy starców poddano analizie uwzględniającej semantyczne nacechowanie starości (podejście do starości przez ludzi młodych i starych); udział postaci w fabule: samotność i próby jej przezwyciężenia, okazywanie pomocy (od spraw codziennych do „mądrej rady”); filozoficzne rozważania o sytuacji egzystencjalnej (śmierć, emigracja); sposoby prezentacji starości (stosunki rodzinne i pozarodzinne, wykorzystanie schematu starzec + dziecko + zwierzę: pies lub kot). We wnioskach podkreślono, że obrazy starców w prozie Kuprina łączą się z modelem stałych wartości wyznawanych przez Rosjan. Dzięki wprowadzeniu do utworów postaci ludzi starych, problematyka wzbogacona zostaje o sens ontologiczny.
In the paper Cultural and national stereotypes in War and Peace by L. Tolstoy several chapters of the 3rd and the 4th books of the novel are analyzed, the chapters which are set in the territory of Lithuania, a former part of Respublica Poloniae. The paper concerns a “mechanism” of transformation of the natural geographical space of Lithuania into a fictional space of Russia. Tolstoy treats ironically the mental confrontation of Napoleon and Alexander I, when basing on the clichés about Russians and the ‘Russian earth’ each of the emperors presents his own understanding of the territories having taken over by Russia as a result of the third partition of Poland in 1795. According to Tolstoy, it is impossible to comprehend rationally the cultural and national mythologems and stereotypes in which the sacred spirit of a people is embodied. Arguing for this claim Tolstoy as an artist sacrifices the national peculiarities of Lithuania.
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