Georges Bataille and Hubert Aquin both explore a mystical experience displaying strong similarities, related to what Roger Caillois called « left sacred », that is the impure, malefic sacred, which is accessible by transgression and corresponds to the privileged moment of unity between people. For Bataille, God is absent, even dead: Lamma sabachtani is no longer a question but an assertion in his essays. The object of his new mystical theology is not God, but « the unknown». The divine is reduced to the human, transcendence to immanence. The goal is to free the mystical experience from its religious background and to make ecstasy accessible to every-one. It is precisely by communicating that men can break their isolation and unite themselves with others. « Eroticism of bodies » and « eroticism of hearts » are two of the experiences proposed by Bataille which lead to the sacred. Hubert Aquin is also fascinated by the « left sacred », by eroticism in particular, but it represents for him a temptation which eliminates from the « right sacred » Jesus Christ and perfection He is, for Aquin, the absolute corresponding to the communion between the human being and the Son of God ; it consists in being reborn and in living in “the Christ of the Revelation”.
The article is a proposal for a new interpretation of Herbert’s erotic poems from a collection entitled Podwójny oddech [Double Breath], whose illegal publication caused confusion among readers and literary scholars. In addition to legal matters, the discussion also concerned the artistic level of this collection of poetry. The author draws attention firstly – to the conscious compositional idea in the Podwójny oddech, secondly – to a series of intertextual references that testify to the poet’s reading, thirdly – to the poet’s attempt to find the proper poetic language to express the love experiences and fourthly – to a specific, shaped by religious schemes, philosophy of love.
The article attempts to analyze the poetry of Katarzyna Fetlińska with the main stress laid upon her volume Sekstaśmy (Sex Tapes). The author tries to verify critical tracks and generalizations, introduced mostly by editorial and publishing descriptions which promote the collection. He exposes the importance of dramatic and surprisingly non-ironic themes chosen by the poet, who confronts herself with the most tragic aspects of human existence: loneliness and death. The main theme of the sketch is eroticism, sexuality and even pornographic character of her poetry, directed against metaphysically scandalous friability of interpersonal relations, human objectification and nothingness of being.
The key issue of the analysis, concentrated on the dystopia by Juan Goytisolo, Makbara, is the condition of human sexual body which, in terms proposed by Baudrillard, can be qualified as post-orgiastic. While an asexual, aseptic social system is created in the modern, civilized Europe, Morocco seems to be the last refuge not only for the marginalized sexuality, but also for the romantic dreams about marriage. Nonetheless, the Moroccan promise of authentic eroticism acquires a necrophilic flavour of “love at the cemetery”. In the conclusion, Goytisolo is shown as the advocate of a dying, spectral culture, victim of unceasing, manifold exploitation and unable to counterbalance the European symbolic and economic predominance in the Mediterranean.
A linguistic picture of the world is such a vision of reality existing in the minds of people forming a language community which is fixed in words. The results of empirical research presented in this paper lead to the conclusion that no elements of the so-called striptease culture or confessing culture, or the phenomena of de-tabooisation or eroticisation, perceived as inherent traits of the contemporary mass culture, are observed within the love and eroticism prototypes – components of the linguistic world view of the women in early adulthood examined in this study.
PL
Językowy obraz świata stanowi utrwaloną w słowach taką wizję rzeczywistości, jaka istnieje w świadomości osób stanowiących wspólnotę językową. Zaprezentowane w niniejszym tekście wyniki badań empirycznych prowadzą do spostrzeżenia, iż w obrębie prototypu zarówno miłości, jak i erotyzmu – wycinków językowego obrazu świata objętych badaniami kobiet w wieku wczesnej dorosłości – nie zauważa się ani elementów tzw. kultury obnażania czy kultury zwierzeń, ani zjawiska detabuizacji i zerotyzowania, które są postrzegane jako immanentne właściwości współczesnej kultury masowej.
To read O Físico prodigioso as an autobiography, according to the recommendation given by the author, seems a difficult task. The notion of androgyny, appearing in a larger context of reflection on sexuality and gender led by Jorge de Sena, may give an interpretative key to this text, specially if it is considered in the context of scholarly interests and writings of Jorge de Sena. The intertextual games in O Físico prodigioso give depth to the message concerning sexuality: it should be transcended into androgynous condition, associated with the plenitude of creative powers and the sacred.
Since the beginning of the cinematographic industry there has been a visible interest in exploring two themes: death and sex, whereas the motif of dying and sexuality/eroticism seem to be mutually exclusive in mainstream movies to such extent that they rarely appear together on the screen. To shed some light on this cinema tendency of separating eroticism from dying we investigate some of the factors of the phenomenon as well as the ones that could have contributed to the shift we have noticed. The majority of films devoted to the subject of dying and eroticism concentrate on a very limited range of visual and narrative schemes. In our paper we present the main clichés, plot and visual schemes, motifs and narrative techniques in contemporary cinema. Although the unique power of the cinema is “matter of making images seen”, it could be argued that the cinema uses not only the command ‘open your eyes to’, but also the command ‘close your eyes to’. In this way, audiovisual culture closes its eye to the entwinement of the motif of dying with the themes of eroticism.
The article concerns Thomas Mann’s view on culture and on anthropology. The analyses of the works by the German writer point at the relations between his conception and Fridrich Schiller’s conception of man as a sensuous and sprititual being. Mann’s works, such as Death in Venice or The Magic Mountain are the literary equivalent of the unfinished essay on aesthetics On Spirit and Art. The author stresses the important role of eroticism in the description of culture. Eroticism should be conceived in a wide sense, not only in relation to bodily desire, but as a basis of aesthetic experience. Seen from this angle, Mann’s writings contain a series of reflections about culture and about man, reflections rooted in the modern conceptions presented by Kant and Schiller and later developed by contemporary psychoanalysis and the philosophy of existence.
The poetry of Ausiàs March illustrates not only the emergence of the Catalan literature in the context of the “Romance ocean,” but also the crisis of the European consciousness at the beginning of the early-modern era. The rupture in relation to the Occitan poetic tradition implies a reevaluation of love in alarger context of human life, which is determined by moral and epistemological pessimism. The supposed “misogyny” of the Valencian poet reflects his general attitude towards the human condition, which is unworthy of the ideal, deficient, finite and prone to frustration. The birth of the saturnine eroticism, immersed in its own contradictions, leads to the consciousness dominated by the dependence of man on God.
This article presents Jindřich Štyrský, arepresentative of the Czech interwar avant-garde, the creator of theory of art, poet, literary theorist, scandalist of his era. The analysis of two of his literary works is based on the terms of depth psychology, and refers to the concepts of archetypes, the anima and the process of individuation, which constitute the key to understanding certain motifs in the sensual, saturated with eroticism, sometimes bordering on pornography, works of Štyrský. This sensuality, saturation with eroticism are essential components associated with the recurring motif of woman-anima, aguide of the soul of the artist. Jindrich Štyrský fit in perfectly in the currents of his era by using those motifs.
Eros and Thanatos: Permanent and complementary leitmotifs of novels by Jakuba Katalpa The article follows, at first in general terms, the depiction of the motive of death and dying in literature and culture, including the transformation of the attitude of man towards death in the context of time. It emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the subject and mentions relevant professional literature. The study then examines the psychoanalytic concepts of Eros and Thanatos, the instincts of life and death that emerge from the prose of Jakuba Katalpa and make her work original. It also notes the concept of “female writing” and deconstructivism and reveals the specific artistic features of her novels. Among other things, it reflects on the post-war expulsion of the Sudeten Germans and its perception by the younger generation.
RU
Эрос и танатос — постоянные и взаимодополняющие лейтмотивы прозы Якубы Каталпы В статье представлена специфика изображения темы смерти и умирания в литературе и культуре, в том числе показаны изменения отношения человека к смерти в современном мире. Подчеркивается междисциплинарный характер исследуемой темы и приводятся посвященные ей научные работы. Анализируются психоаналитические понятия „Эрос” и „Tанатос”, т. е. инстинкты жизни и смерти. Мотивы Эроса и Танатоса прослеживаются в прозе писательницы Якубы Каталпы, обращение к исследуемым мотивам придает оригинальное звучание ее произведениям. В статье также рассматриваются концепции деконструктивизма и женского творчества, анализируются специфические художественные особенности романов, написанных авторами-женщинами. Автор также обращается к проблеме депортации судетских немцев и восприятию этой проблемы молодым поколением.
The article points out some recurrent themes in the literary and artistic works by the repre- sentatives of the Czech avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century. It is primarily about the motives of sleep, life, death and eroticism recognized most often in iconoclastic conventions, often on the borders of pornographic description and violating the taboo of eroticism, pleasures of the flesh and religion. In the case of Štyrský, among other topics, the theory of artificialism for- mulated by him and Toyen is discussed. The theory had a close relationship with the poetry, prose and art by this author. On the other hand, based on the example of Nezval, an image of literary pleasures is presented, associated with the often actuated by the author issues of first love and erot- ic sensations. In the end, the figure of František Drtikol is outlined — the creator of photographs, which often depict threads of femme fatale and scandalous nude crucified women.
CS
Článek poukazuje na stálé motivy v literární a umělecké tvorbě představitelů české avant- gardy první poloviny 20. století. Jde především o motivy snu, života, smrti a erotiky, chápané nejčastěji jako obrazoborecké a nacházející se často na hranici tělesné rozkoše, náboženství a por-nografického obrazu, jenž prolamuje erotická tabu. V případě Štyrského půjde mj. o teorii artifi- cialismu, kterou zformuloval spolu s Toyen. Na příkladu Nezvala bude nastíněn literární obraz rozkoše související s problematikou prvních milostných a erotických zkušeností, které se autor často dotýkal. Závěr příspěvku přiblíží osobu Františka Drtikola — tvůrce fotografií, na kterých jsou často vyobrazena témata osudových žen a skandalizujících aktů ukřižovaných žen.
This article aims to clarify the notion of community such as it is perceived by the singularly modern outlook of Georges Bataille, especially in it’s illustration in his story Madame Edwarda. The absence or loss of community seems to represent the very condition of its existence. The lovers in MadameEdwarda simultaneously illustrate the birth as well as the death of such an unusual kind of community. While offering one’s self to the other in a sacrificial attempt to surpass oneself, each of them conveys to the other a sense of shared immoderation, and goes exceptionally beyond the completeness of a homogeneous enclosure in and on oneself. However, at the very moment when it seems to succeed, community is lost, and the being returns to its initial loneliness, which seems to have never been surpassed.
The conceptual images of erotic relations in Spanish. Analysis of some linguistic aspects of The Turkish passion by Antonio GalaIn this paper we try to systematize the contemporary Spanish expressions related to the erotic relations. The corpus is based on the novel by Antonio Gala The Turkish Passion (orig. La pasión turca) which, thanks to its plot with higly erotic content, constitutes an important source of linguistic material for our investigation. The analysis we propose reflects the methodology developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their studies concerning the cognitive theory of metaphor. According to them, every concept consists of a source and a target domain and while expressing one idea we refer to another. Our analysis focuses on the reconstruction of the conceptual domains by means of which the Spanish writer describes the erotic relations. Although the book does not include all the erotic vocabulary and expressions which exist in contemporary Spanish, it enables us to observe some regularities in the use of metaphors in Spanish and reveal some sociocultural phenomena encoded in the linguistic material.
The article relates to how the issues of erotic needs and experiences were raised in Baroque love letters, before and after the marriage. The analysed source material, created both by women and men, shows to which extent former lovers were willing to break a taboo and directly express not only their spiritual longing, resulting from a distance, but also the physical, motivated sexually, in the text theoretically considered as a completely private and devoted only to a partner. In the considerations the letters of the rich nobility representatives (Jan Sobieski, Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowa, Magdalena Radzwiłłowa from Czapski’s family), and of the impoverished nobility members (Teresa and Kazimierz Wiśnicki) were included. The text attempts to answer in what way environment, readings, social status, and personality traits may influence the tendency to break taboos in the field of erotica or vice versa, to decide on its conservation. The analysis presents as well, what methods were used by pen–friends to express some embarrassing content.
The article entitled "Rakish Wokulski – the ongoing problems" takes up the problem of the meaning of erotic motifs in "The Doll" by Bolesław Prus, most of all – their links to the contemporary theories of neurosis. Unlike the existing studies of the problem that draw from neo-freudian theories, the article uses mostly classic Sigmund Freud’s concepts especially 'psychic impotence' and 'debasement in the sphere of love'. From this perspective "The Doll’s" protagonists, especially Wokulski, seem to fall ill into a neurosis as a result of supressing instincts.
Father Franciszek Sawicki is considered to be one of the most important philosophers of the interwar period in Poland. The problem of love must be regarded as one of the most significant among many issues he focused on in his research. Sawicki, one of the precursors of personalistic thinking, understands the essence of love as it functions in a personal relationship. Above all, we should distinguish two areas for the realisation of love: love in relation to God and love in relation to another human being. In both instances, Sawicki emphasises the need to take into account the "erotic moment" for the sake of full and proper understanding thereof. The erotic moment elucidates love as a force that engages not only the emotional and volitional spheres, but also the categorical and existential ones. This approach enables us to appreciate the full dimension of human sexuality as it pertains to the human being and ameliorate the tendency to depreciate or idolise it.
This paper deals with the motifs of eroticism in the story Lilika by Dragoslav Mihailović, in the context of the growing up and maturing of the young ten-year-old heroine. The erotic in this story is brought down to the level of pornography – animal instincts in the scenes of the girl’s drunken mother and stepfather grabbing each other by the arms and legs in front of the child, slipping hands under the skirt, chasing each other with knives and pushing their tongues into each other’s mouth. They stretch the sphere of eroticism to extremes, which is, in this case, thanatically tainted. And such a bestial life that is led by the stepfather and the mother is not far from true violence over the ten-year-old girl, who is beaten and tied to a bed by the parents; and apart from the physical abuse, whose effects are frequent blood spots and bruises under Lilika’s eyes and uncontrolled night urination, there is an additional passive kindof violence towards the girl – ignoring and neglecting her. In a series of circumstances in which she finds herself unwillingly, there forms an inner framework of the heroine’s unhappy childhood, whose basic problem was posed already at her very birth, and it is the question of her identity.
My paper discusses the idea of destructive eroticism in the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Eros is posited here as manifesting in two, opposite forms: the Christian virtue of agape consisting in a humble service to a beloved person, and the Greek eros which in Dostoevsky is transformed into destructive love, one steeped in egoism and sadistic-masochistic impulses. I want to argue that destructive eroticism is for Dostoevsky of greatest interest, while love conceived as agape serves in his work only as a minor, normative projection, a tribute paid to the Russian Orthodox worldview. In my analysis I refer to Georges Bataille’s philosophical thought to combine the pattern of unfulfilled and ruinous love in Dostoevsky with his conviction that irrational aspects of man, his penchant to evil and transgression can be seen as a measure of the intensity and authenticity of one’s spiritual life. Contrary to religious interpretations of Dostoevsky, I argue that the author of Crime and Punishment prefers to cast his protagonists into the limbo of suffering, anguish and distress and therefore he ultimately rejects the possibility that human beings can content themselves with a mediocre life in which existential complacency is bought at a price of resignation from dangerous passions of which one could say that were “worth a life”.
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