In the article is considered if it is possible that there is some kind of representations similarity in case of the author of the Literary Work of Art and its readers and if an “imagination community” between readers of the original and the translation can be established. In the first part of the article the theory of Literary Work of Art by Ingarden is presented with a special focus on his “Schematized aspects”. Their function is to guarantee the vividness of the literary work. The types of vividness which are distinguish in the modern linguistics are told over as well. In the second part of the article the significance is emphasized to reconstruct the stratum of schematized aspects in the translation on the example of visual and auditory aspects and the relevance of the phenomenological theory of Literary Work of Art is pointed out both for translation theory and practice and for teaching of translating as well. The conclusion of the article is that the imagination community is possible because thanks to existence of schematized aspects in the literary work our representations – despite some differences in details – can have common elements if they are steered properly according to text instructions and if the reader self-disciplines his imagination to eliminate involuntary images. Whether the imagination community would be possible among recipients of the original and the translation depends extremely on the translator being able to reconstruct or to create analogous stratum of schematized aspects in the translation. The evidence that it is feasible are the congenial translations like Karl Dedecius’ translation of the poem W drodze by Stanisław Młodożeniec into German.
The symbolic imaginary of counterculture was fostered by dissent towards the cultural roots of the Western world, by a challenge to traditional norms, values and symbols, and by the rejection of historical identity and national sovereignty. This article aims to discuss some of the aftermaths of the counterculture of the 1960s as resulting from the transformations of its symbolic imaginary. The transformation of the symbolic imaginary of the counterculture is reflected in specific historical changes which had a profound impact on social relations, manners of perceiving or experiencing the world, and the shape of the public sphere within modern society. The dissent of the 1960s is framed in terms of its ability to take over and impose symbolic power, along with transformations of a given cultural model, a process which has roots in the concept of historicity and a new symbolic universe. Special attention is given to the institutionalization of multiculturalism, one of the most important outcomes of the transformation of the symbolic imaginary of counterculture and the normalization of countercultural radicalism. The aftermaths of the radicalism of the 1960s, when presented against the background of the transformation of the symbolic imaginary, underscore a ubiquitous and profound transformation of the entire culture and ideological dynamics in Western societies.
This article examines the changing practice of urban portraiture in reference to a selection of postmillennial texts written by Ivan Vladislavić. These generically diverse texts trace and reflect on transformations sweeping Johannesburg after the fall of Apartheid, to some extent a metonymic representation of South Africa. An immediate impulse to inquire whether and, if so, how the writer explores the boundaries of portraiture, derives from an explicit textual and visual thematisation of the practice in two of Vladislavić’s works, i.e. the collection of “verbal snapshots” entitled Portrait with Keys and his joint interdisciplinary project, TJ& Double Negative, involving the writer and David Goldblatt, a South African photographer. The article concentrates primarily on the uses and adaptations of the city portrait genre. Vladislavić’s foregrounding of the genre category invites us to consider a series of questions: How does Vladislavić proceed with the appropriation and transformation of the traditional practice of city portrait? Do the portrayals of Johannesburg merely address the past? To what extent does Vladislavić propose contemporary adaptations of the practice? What happens to such categories as realism, accuracy, and likeness? What knowledge does portraiture generate? Finally, the article reflects on whether Vladislavić responds to the need for a new epistemological project in rendering the urban.
Historical and political science research into the role and significance of elections in state-socialist societies points to the variety of functions that these elections fulfilled, notwithstanding their deficiency if compared to liberal democratic conceptions such as the legitimation of the political regime and the mobilisation and socialisation of the population. This paper takes a novel approach towards the social significance of state-socialist elections, arguing that they conveyed imaginary understandings of the societies and polities of which they were part. The concept of the imaginary is discussed in conversation with Charles Taylor, who argues that public social practices are informed by mostly latent “understandings” that render them subjectively meaningful in the first place. Referring to historical research on state-socialist elections, imaginary understandings are identified that pertain in particular to the relationship between officially proclaimed “truths” and unofficial positionings towards them.
The relationship between science and religion, particularly their assumed conflict, has traditionally been discussed in terms of their factual or logical contradictions. The article proposes to change this perspective and to consider them both as sources of images in order to show their powerful interaction in the sphere of the imaginary. It also emphasizes that the historical and cultural context of their interaction is highly important. Based on the 66 in-depth interviews with the (post)Soviet generations of Ukrainian and Lithuanian scientists, the article reconstructs their imaginary of the Divine. Most of them have not retained their Christian belief. Instead, they created an alternative, science-related imaginary that integrated science and religion rather than put the two in conflict. The research provides evidence that the Soviet culture aimed at eradicating religion has in fact planted a seed of a religious sensibility and imaginary that was hidden under the guise of science and that has been persisting through generations.
The symbolism of axis mundi constitutes an integral part of cultural and religious systems across the world. Such symbolism appears clearly and precisely in all forms of religious life. As it is stressed by Eliade, many a time, axis mundi is an intersection of three varied ontological zones (the interior of the Earth, the surface of the Earth, and the Heaven) and creates a contact place of man with sacrum. The axis mundi symbolism, analysed here as a part of literary studies, is reflected also in two important novels by Julius Verne (Adventures of Captain Hatteras, 1864-65 ; An Arctic Mystery, 1897) dedicated to the polar regions. In both novels, such sites (the north-ern and southern poles) become a literary image of axis mundi, while the hypothesis finds its confirmation in the nature of psychological experiences of the heroes cast in the polar regions. The symbolic and religious study of such experiences leads to the conclusion that in both the analysed cases they may be understood as an experience of a contact with sacrum.
A prominent surrealist movement has existed in Prague since the early twenties until today. Before World War II, Czechoslovakia was one of the strongest surrealist centers outside France. One of the main factor of Czech surrealist was their theoretical abilities. Among their inspirations one can find French thinkers, Marxism, realism, symbolism, folklore and many more. Their aim was to create theory and practice of thinking and acting outside social restrains, based on imaginary, critical theory and poetry. Some of them applied to new born socialist republic, break with movement and became prominent socialist intellectuals. Some paid the highest price and some were just forced to work in mines. But even though surrealist movement create during this period create influential theory of practicing freedom.
This essay examines Jurgis Baltušaitis’ writings and shows its connections with the works of Henri Focillon, Aby Warburg and Athanasius Kircher. Baltušaitis oriented his interdisciplinary analyses in art history and cultural studies. The essay aims to demonstrate the complexity and importance of Baltrušaitis’ ideas that are developed in the comparative research of medieval art history, depraved perspectives, aberrations and illusions. Those works are linked by the philosophy of image and imagination that stand at the crossroads between abstractness and concreteness, myth and history, reality and illusion, rational and irrational forces, the East and West. This article tries to shape Baltrušaitis’ legacy by offering an insight into his thinking which unites various research topics, typically excluded from positivistic studies. It reveals the underlying structures of cultural imaginary in which cross-cultural interactions take place. It argues for the revaluation of his oeuvre by attending to the theoretical concerns behind his historical research program.
The essay concerns the ways of reading and understanding the biographies of Andrzej Wróblewski, one of the prominent representatives of modernist and post-war painters. One special case is the art-biography projectshowing the need to reinterpret the author’s current biographical facts. The reading of texts by Jan Michalski, Magdalena Ziółkowska, Wojciech Grzybała and Andy Rottenberg shows this mechanism – expanding theconstellations of Andrzej Wróblewski.
O objetivo dessa análise está centrado na busca de elementos do imaginário social que definem as identidades culturais nordestinas formadas e mantidas fora do nordeste, em especial em São Paulo, um dos maiores centros de concentração de migrantes, no qual a religiosidade, a festividade e as imagens simbólicas desse imaginário formam espaços e palcos privilegiados para processos simbólico-territoriais de regionalização a partir de práticas culturais e devocionais que viajaram pelo Brasil e se alocaram na maior cidade do país. Dessa forma, foram privilegiadas para análise e interpretação, as formas de concepção desses lugares, suas definições e contornos na (trans)formação dos traços da cultura nordestina incluindo sotaques, cores, sabores, memórias e religiosidade nas maiores concentrações de nordestinos fora do seu lugar de produção de sentido. A partir dessas referências e representações culturais foram vislumbradas suas principais relações e sentidos na construção do imaginário para a sociedade. Como metodologia privilegiou-se a análise de imagens de lugares de memória e territórios que contemplam experiências e memórias migrantes, além de revisão bibliográfica sobre a produção das identidades. Como resultados se esmeram reflexões sobre a ideia de manutenção das identidades migrantes em outras terras por meio do imaginário coletivo.
EN
The objective of this analysis is centered on the search for elements of the social imaginary that define the northeastern cultural identities formed and maintained outside the northeast, especially in São Paulo, one of the largest centers of concentration of migrants, in which religiosity, festivity and symbolic images of this imaginary form privileged spaces and stages for symbolic-territorial processes of regionalization based on cultural and devotional practices that traveled through Brazil and moved to the largest city in the country. Thus, the ways of conceiving these places, their definitions, and contours in the (trans) formation of the traits of the Northeastern culture, including accents, colors, flavors, memories, and religiosity in the largest concentrations of Northeasterners outside of their own, were privileged for analysis and interpretation place of production of meaning. From these references and cultural representations, its main relationships and meanings were glimpsed in the construction of the imaginary for society. As a methodology, the analysis of images of places of memory and territories that contemplate migrant experiences and memories was privileged, in addition to a bibliographic review on the production of identities. As a result, reflections on the idea ofmaintaining migrant identities in other lands through collective imagery are painstaking.
The term “circulation of worlds” was used by Achille Mbembe in her essay Sortir de la grande nuit (2013) to expose her Afropolitan thought. Evoking on the one hand the phenomenon of “dispersion”, that is to say the dissemination of Africans and Africa in the world illustrated in Un Océan, deux mers, trois continents (2018) by Wilfried N'Sondé, Tels des astres éteints (2008) and Crépuscule du tourment, I. Melancholy (2016) by Léonora Miano. And on the other hand the phenomenon of “immersion”, namely the migration of the world in Africa represented in Blues pour Élise (2010) by Léonora Miano, L’Africain (2004) by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Mathématiques congolaises (2008) by In Koli Jean Bofane, Une Blanche dans le Noir (2001) by Jean-Roger Essomba and Ténèbres à midi (2010) by Theo Ananissoh ; among other things, he raises the limits of ancestral “African citizenship” based on the African = Black equation.
The article deals with Chamoiseau’s Creole imaginary. The text especially presents and analyzes certain important issues with which Chamoiseau tries to cope all his life: the imaginary of Caribbean memory. In the novels Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows (1986), Slave Old Man (1997), Biblical Tales of the Last Gestures (2002), A Sunday in the Dungeon (2007), the notion of invisible memory is the central topic. The French humanist author presents a similar concept of approach to memory like Édouard Glissant (Caribbean Discourse).
The plentiful literature and the iconography devoted to the subject of incredible creatures, known form Antiquity, widespread during the Middle Ages and up to the modern period, often refer to a female human being transformed into, based on different interpretations, a creature with animalistic characteristics recognized as “monster”. In this context the disposition to “re-present”, resulting from the ability to create new images inspired by the unusual, is closely related to the indirect thought process of which imagination, as an intermediary between the sensual experience and the image projected by mind, is an intrinsic element. In consequence the dissimilarity results in distortion of the image, including the depictions which stigmatize the image of a woman, which alienate this image through mystifying reality – in particular, the nature of the phenomenon, un-investigated, obscured or hidden, in medieval society, pathological conditions.
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