The role of the canonic genre of the idyll in high Biedermeier: formulating the problem
The article examines high Biedermeier in its rapprochement with the idyll genre based on the poetry of Annette Droste-Hülshoff and Eduard Mörike. The idyll is very influential and active in both poets. Biedermeier, which was considered an era, a trend, a style, in its variety, ‘high Biedermeier’ at the start can be interpreted in a fundamentally new way — as an unusual turn in the fate of the idyll genre and the idyllic mode. The purpose ...
Innovative meaning-generating structures in the early formation of a literary tradition: the case of Kosta Khetagurov
The article examines the conditions and mechanisms leading at an early stage of the formation of a literary tradition to the dependence of the innovative meaning of the word and its context. The translation of the title of Kosta Khetagurov‘s program verse “Nystwan”, which opens his poetic collection “Iron fændyr” (“Ossetian Lyre”), shows the fundamental differences between the semantics of this word in the ethnographic era and its modern interpretation. Further on, following Buslaev‘s fundamental...
Ideology in the mailman's bags: towards the pragmatics of the postage stamp
The article explores the semiotic potential of a postage stamp as a social communication tool. Despite the fact that a postage stamp is initially a utilitarian means of payment, it is capable of implementing many functions, and its pragmatics are directly related to the representation and transmission of cultural and ideological meanings, which makes the stamp an important means of forming cultural identity. Collectable practices make stamps semiotic artefacts that lose their utilitarian meaning...
Kaliningrad text through the eyes of a flaneur (Königsberg con text in the text of Kaliningrad)
This paper attempts to conceptualize the city as both text and context—an interpretive construct jointly produced by the urban environment and its inhabitants in their search for self-understanding within a specific place and time. Using the example of the phenomenon of the ‘Petersburg text’ and the emerging ‘Königsberg-Kaliningrad text’, it is shown that these texts play the role of a reflexive form-mirror in culture, helping the city comprehend itself. Using the example of Brodsky’s poetics, the...
Velimir Khlebnikov’s poem “Vam”: context, intertext, ekphrasis
The present study examines Velimir Khlebnikov’s early poem “Vam” (“To You”, 1909), addressed to Mikhail Kuzmin. Drawing on Kuzmin’s diary entries and Khlebnikov’s correspondence, it seeks to reconstruct the poets’ personal and creative relationship, clarify the dating of the young author’s letter to his mentor, and analyze the mechanisms of textual address within the poem. Particular attention is given to the poem’s intertextual dimensions. The first ...
The functioning of precedent names from source domain “Literature” in Richard Brautigan’s “Trout Fishing in America”
The main functions realized by precedent names in the novel Trout Fishing in America by the American postmodern writer Richard Brautigan are identified. The study employed methods of contextual and intertextual analysis, as well as the method of exhaustive sampling. The identified sample of literary precedent names (61 units) includes precedent biblionyms (titles of literary works), anchistonyms (authors’ surnames), and anthropoetonyms (names of characters). The following key functions of precedent...
Genre-composition metaphor of rhizome in the novel “Primeval and other Times” by Olga Tokarchuk
The work of Olga Tokarczuk is examined in the context of the nomadological theory of postmodernism as reflected in the writings of philosophers G. Deleuze and F. Guattari. The study investigates the concept of the “rhizome,” which in Tokarczuk’s work functions as a method of plot construction for her literary texts in general and the novel Primeval and
Other Times in particular. The metaphor of the rhizome is expressed in the novel not only through the image of a giant fungal network, a mycelium...
“Interrupted Flight” by V. Vysotsky: to the question of the title
... or non-authorial titles as the main one, instead preferring to refer to the song by its opening line: “Kto-to vysmotrel plod” (“Someone spotted the fruit”). The title “Prervannyi polet” gained popularity and was canonized only after the poet’s death.
Vysotsky, textual study, title, manuscript, audio record, film
78—87
10.5922/vestnikpsy-2025-2-7
The topos of the forest in N. Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”
... author’s true sentiment regarding the legend of the Black Man in the forest. The relevance of this research stems from the importance of engaging with classical texts and addressing existing gaps in scholarship, particularly the exploration of spatial poetics in Hawthorne’s work.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter”, spacial poetics, forest, the topos of the forest
51—64
10.5922/vestnikpsy-2025-2-5
The epithet complex in the prose of Marina Tsvetaeva: linguistic mechanisms of formation
... Tsvetaeva’s prose is metaphonymy, with metaphonymic epithet complexes representing hybrid epithet structures that reflect a complex logic of attributive meaning formation. It is shown that the concept of quality serves as a central poetic dominant in the poet’s idiolect, verbalized through non-systemic epithet structures in the language, the modeling of which is one of the tasks of her poetic universe; the epithet is understood not as a device but as the precise word. The analysis revealed the types ...
A part outside the whole? (To Anton Zimmerling's article “Really: syntactics without semiotics?”)
Before delving into the connections between linguistics and semiotics, it is essential to establish a clear demarcation between these fields, which necessitates a precise definition of each subject. However, the approach taken by Anton Zimmerling in this regard is subject to debate. In the discussion of semiotics, the focus tends to lean towards interpretations that recognize the dual understanding of signs, while unilateral conceptions of signs are often overlooked. Linguistics is typically...
Cultural discrepancy within Russian-speaking community in Israel
The objective of the present research is to discover and explain a variety of cultural preferences within the Russian-speaking community in Israel. We juxtapose veteran immigrants of the ‘1990 wave’ (including children and teenagers who came with their parents, so called 1.5ers) and representatives of the ‘Putin Exodus’ who arrived in the country in 2014—2018. The divergence in preferences and attitudes was revealed thanks to the discourse, semantic and comparative analysis. The research was conducted...
Poetical text as a way of organizing city space
Since the sixties of the twentieth century, different algorithms for using poetic texts in the transformation of urban space have emerged. Poetic discourse is being increasingly contextualized in space, whose role in the contemporary cultural system and specific tasks of urbanism has been growing. In the urban context, poetry may acquire different forms — street performances, advertisements, murals and other types of visual poetry. It may turn the city into a venue for a festival of urban poetry...
Gorod and grad in the Russian poetry of the 18th century
... terms, against a wider temporal perspective, the preceding and subsequent texts of Russian poetry. The lexeme 'grad' was often used in Classicist and Romantic poetry. From the 1830s onwards, it was used less frequently in its full version 'gorod'. The poets employed the lexemes 'grad' and 'gorod' to form tropes and figures of speech, striving to expand the traditional syntagmatics, especially in epithets. Lyrical texts retained sacred meanings and biblical allusions (sacred city, temple, heavenly ...
Lecture at Tartu State University, March 13, 1981
Lotman, Yu. M., 1974. On the reduction and deployment of sign systems (On the problem of “Freudianism and Semiotic Cultural Studies”). In:
Materialy 1-go Vsesoyuz
nogo (5-go) simpoziuma po vtorichnym modeliruyushchim sistemam
[Materials of the 1st All-Union (5th) Symposium on Secondary Modeling Systems]. Tartu, pp. 100—108 (in Russ.).
Lotman, Yu. M., 1977.
Kul’tura kak kollektivnyi razum i problema iskusstvennogo razuma
[Culture as a collective mind and the problem of artificial intelligence]...
Poetics of the deconstruction of Reinhard Jirgl’s text: A translational perspective
This article explores Reinhard Jirgl’s concept of literary writing, which uses linguistic and textual deconstruction, alphanumeric encoding, and intra- and intertextual strategies. Semiotic and discursive analyses allow identifying lexical, syntactic, and semantic elements of the structural and functional performativity of Jirgl’s texts. His prose exploits the enormous poetic potential of the alphanumeric code, the aesthetics of narrative simultaneity and hypertextuality, and the fragmentedness...
Who is the one who uses the human language? On Alexsander Kravchenko's article "Language and the Nature of Humanity")
The article is devoted to the polemic with Alexander Kravchenko regarding his thesis that the way out of the protracted crisis in linguistics is to use a systemic approach to linguistic semiosis as biological adaptation. The author argues that linguistics is not in a state of crisis but rather in a state of stagnation. Overcoming it presupposes an intensive methodological search that infinitely expands the horizons of permissible views rather than the use of a system approach that is inadequate...
Interdiscursivity as a linguocreative appropriation of discourses: the avant-garde and Andrey Tarkovsky
The article explores the category of interdiscursivity from a perspective of its realization in films. As a point of departure, the historical ties of the avant-garde and cinema are analyzed in terms of interdiscursivity. Literary and artistic works of the representatives of the Russian avant-garde are characterized by a number of innovations that are relevant for the understanding of the interdiscursivity in cinematography as art. The established avant-garde foundations of interdiscursivity make...
Events and narration in socio-cultural practices
The article deals with the dynamic interaction of events and narratives. As a result of this interaction, stable links ‘events-narratives’ appear; they influence the formation and transformation of social and cultural processes in society. Event-narrative links form the basis of the system of norms and values of society. The corpus of ‘event-narrative’ links creates behavioural patterns, serves as a motivator for members of society, a cause and reason for actions and an initiator of terraced events...
Between phenomenology and futurism: Roman Jakobson’s poetics before the WW 2
... Prague (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R. O., 1922. O cheshskom stikhe preimushchestvenno v sopostavlenii s russkim [About Czech verse mainly in comparison with Russian]. Berlin (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R. O., 1931. “About the generation that squandered its poets”. In: Smert' Vladimira Mayakovskogo [The death of Vladimir Mayakovsky]. Berlin, pp. 7—44 (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R., 1925. Konec básnického umprumáctví a živnostnictví. Pásmo: Revue internationale modern, 13/14, pp. 1—2.
Jakobson, R....
Digital storytelling and micro-narratives — new forms of representation of personal experience and collective creativity
The article analyses the impact of digital technologies on storytelling. By creating new information streams of personalised stories with open storylines in the virtual media environment, the author shares the process of writing a story with other participants in the digital world. The interaction between the author and the audience is transformed under the influence of the hypertext system of cross-references. Each participant in this creative process acts not only as a co-creator, but also as...
Ironic assessment in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s novel The Golovlyovs
Irony is considered as an evaluative category in literary and artistic discourse. The authors point out such typical features of ironic evaluation as implicit character, i. e. the ability of irony to present the evaluative position of the author in a veiled form, subjectivity, which is directly dependent on the author's attitudes and ideological intentions, negative colouring of ironic evaluation and a high degree of its impact on the reader. The authors identify the basic techniques of expressing...
Imposture as a problem of reference: semiotics of the name in Boris Godunov
In this article, we continue to address the mechanisms of presenting oneself as another and another as oneself. In this regard, non-trivial features of the semantics of a proper name are described. Based on the analysis of contexts of inappropriate use of a name in a situation of imposture, described in Pushkin's tragedy Boris Godunov, the author considers semiotic mechanisms of transformation and assignment of identity. The article shows that Pushkin's intuition allowed him to see the problems that...
Ethnography in Translation Studies: an object and a research methodology
Based on a review of the literature on ethnography produced by translation scholars over the past twenty years, this contribution explores how translation studies [TS] has appropriated this concept, first as a way to solve translation problems (with Eugene Nida), then as an object (within the cultural turn) and more recently as a research methodology to document and analyze translation and interpreting events in context. The author shows how, in the early seventies, both cultural anthropology and...
Translating philosophical aesthetics: Peritext as a window into the translator's mind. Part 2
Providing space for elucidating key translational issues is not a mundane practice but a privilege only hand-picked texts enjoy, philosophical writings among them. The challenge of translating philosophical discourse is widely recognized but scarcely explored. In this article, translation of philosophical texts is regarded as a procedure of knowledge transfer from one intellectual space into another and of knowledge-making through reconceptualization of key terms. This process is made partly observable...
Toil, Passion, Serendipity, Money, and Marketing: a Fresh Look at Agents of Translation
Drawing initially on the “Introduction” to Agents of Translation (Milton & Bandia 2009) and my work on Monteiro Lobato (Milton 2010, 2019), this article presents a number of the elements of the agency of translation such as patronage, habitus, and gatekeeping. Agents are also involved in an Actor Network, and they may act as ambassadors for the author or school they are attempting to introduce. The study then summarizes the work I have done on the Brazilian editor, author, and translator, José Bento...
In search of the text generating structure: Jakobson’s theory of the poetic function of language
.... Moscow, pp. 193—230 (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R. O., 1987a. Grammatical parallelism and its Russian aspects. In: R. Jakobson ed. Raboty po poetike [Works on poetics]. Moscow, pp. 99—132 (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R. O., 1987b. Notes on the prose of the poet Pasternak. In: R. Jakobson ed. Raboty po poetike [Works on poetics]. Moscow, pp. 324—338 (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R. O., 1987c. Futurism. In: R. Jakobson ed. Raboty po poetike [Works on poetics]. Moscow, pp. 414—420 (in Russ.).
Jakobson, R. O., ...
On poetic emotiology in poetry and beyond
... 1996. Vnutri myslyashchikh mirov. Chelovek — tekst — semiosfera — istoriya [Inside thinking worlds. Man — text — semiosphere — history]. Moscow, 448 р. (in Russ.).
Maslova, V. A., 2020. “Unknown Power”: Unreality and Madness in Russian Poetry. Aktual'nye problemy filologii i pedagogicheskoi lingvistiki [Current Issues in Philology and Pedagogical Linguistics], 4, pр. 213—220 (in Russ.).
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Theatrical interpretation of a literary work from the standpoint of semiotic creativity
The study presents the results of linguosemiotic analysis of sign correlations between the play “The Elder Son” by Vampilov and 22 theatrical performances based on it (The International on-line Festival “The Elder Son — 55”, November, 2020). The play and its multimodal interpretations are viewed as parts of a unique communicative space. These parts may be specified as the original communicative situation and the ‘derivatives’ characterized by semiotic creativity of their authors — the playwright...
Peritext of the Russian translation of William Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty: a case study
Translation of philosophical texts is a special challenge because of specific philosophical idiom and conceptual complexity of the narrative. It is not surprising that such translations are often accompanied by commentaries where the translator steps out of the shadows to justify the translational decisions. This kind of supplementary text called the “translational peritext” is under study in this paper aiming to reveal the cognitive effort the translation process involves, and to explore the author-translator-reader...
On fate and/or providence in Pushkin’s short story ‘The blizzard’
... t. [Collected works: in 4 vol.]. Vol. 2. Мoscow. Available at:
https://ruslit.traumlibrary
. net/page/zhukovsky.html [Accessed 25 May 2019] (in Russ.).
Zhukovsky, V. А., 1965. Svetlana. In: Anon, ed. Russkie poety. Antologiya v 4 t. [Russian poets. Anthology in 4 vol.]. Vol. 1. Мoscow. pp. 286—294 (in Russ.).
Zlatoust, Ioann svyatitel', n. d. O sud'be i providenii. Slovo chetvertoe. O budushchem sude [About fate and providence. The fourth word. About the future trial]. Available at:
https://azbyka....
Pushkin texts in the description of characters by Dostoevsky and Nabokov
In his novels, Dostoevsky refers to the Pushkin text to describe characters. For Dostoevsky, Pushkin is an ethical and aesthetic touchstone; the writer’s voice is consonant with that of the poet’s persona. In some cases, the Pushkin text is embedded in religious discourse (the parable of the prodigal son). In interpreting the Pushkin text, Dostoevsky’s characters present and disclose themselves. The ‘dreamer’ from ‘White Nights’ ...
Time and eternity in the literary image of the church procession: Pushkin’s Boris Godunov and Shmeleff’s The Year of the Lord
This article considers the depiction of the church procession to examine the literary interpretation of time and eternity in Alexander Pushkin’s historical drama Boris Godunov and Ivan Shmeleff’s novel The Year of the Lord. The two texts share fundamental similarities in literary images. The church procession is portrayed as a manifestation of eternity in the tangible reality of this world. Despite their common temporal nature, images in Boris Godunov and The Year of the Lord differ in terms of...
The text in the context of the Tartu Semiotic School: problems and prospects
... In: A. Koshelov, ed. Yu. M. Lotman i tartusko—moskovskaya semioticheskaya shkola [Yu. M. Lotman and the Tartu — Moscow semiotic school]. Moscow: Gnozis (in Russ.).
Bart, R., 1989. Izbrannye raboty: Semiotika: Poetika [Selected works: Semiotics: Poetics]. Moscow: Progress (in Russ.).
Benvenist, E., 1974a. Levels of linguistic analysis. In: E. Benvenist, ed. Obshchaya lingvistika [General linguistics]. Moscow: Progress (in Russ.).
Benvenist, E., 1974b. The formal apparatus of utterance. In: ...
‘What can be described can happen too…’: describing text semantics as a model structure of transworld relationships
In this article, I explore the content-related and formal aspects of describing the multidimensional semantic organization of a text, particularly, I focus on the possibility of using the apparatus of modal semantics to identify the relationship between sentential complexes. To those ends, I employ the concepts of model, model structure, and centred world. The latter is a system of functions that correlate language expressions, the language expressions of a text, states of affairs (possible worlds)...
Meaning in life and meaning in the text (roundtable proceedings)
The roundtable discussed the key problems of meaning formation in narrative and performative practices. In free discussion, experts analysed various factors and parameters determining the meaningfulness of action and examined mechanisms for their interpretation. These mechanisms can be considered as manifestations of various modally different types of textualisation. Interpretation and textualisation make it possible to identify and describe the interaction between some causal and functional relations...
Textual, moral and psychological voices of translation
The concept of voice has engendered a growing amount of research in translation studies in the last decades, especially regarding literary translation. Voice is typically used in studies that investigate stylistic or structural characteristics of translated texts, intertextuality and other forms of multivocality and ethical questions related to agency, ideology and power in translation and interpreting. The first part of this article defines two essential concepts related to voice in translation...
The reality of fiction in a literary world: on an excerpt from Stanisław Lem’s Solaris
Using an excerpt from Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, this article explores the idea that, in a literary text, a fictional world and the world of physical reality may interact to form such a reality that can paradoxically turn out to be more real than what we believe to be the actual reality. It is also shown that the fictional world realized in a literary text may bring the reader to certain conclusions about the world in which he or she lives. Thus, even if literature is incapable of affecting reality...
How translations are willed into existence
This paper will argue that translations are willed into existence in three conceivable ways: pull, push and shuffle. Pull is the most intuitive form. It corresponds, for example, to a publishing house that decides to translate a foreign novel. Here, the initiative to invest in a new translation project is almost entirely located on the target side. The push mode, in contrast, can be exemplified by a company that decides to localise its website to cater for foreign markets. Here the decisions to...
The intertexteme as an instrument in the past — present — future dialogical space of urbanism practices: an intersemiotic analysis of graffiti and inscriptions in Gdansk and Kaliningrad
This paper discusses intertextual and intervisual tools for creating the past — present — future dialogic axis in urban practices, using the example of graffiti and inscriptions in Gdansk and Kaliningrad. The authors describe the urban space as an object of research, give a definition of the urban inscription, characterize the semiotic nature of the latter, consider terminology problems relating to the category of intertextuality, and broadly interpret the intertexteme as a tool in the ‘past —...
Translation of sociolect texts
A moment's reflection suffices to convince one that no language is homogeneous, being represented by a set of language variants or language existential forms, reflecting the heterogeneous character of the national culture. Notwithstanding variable nature of language, linguistic theorizing has been mostly based on standardized languages forms, rather than on natural speech dialects. The present research addresses the fundamental issue of variability within a language and aims at studying the specific...
‘Reaching out’ beyond the text: philosophical notes
In this article, I define the concept of text and briefly discuss the related concepts of speech and discourse. I demonstrate how the humanities treat texts and examine the structural-semiotic and the hermeneutic approach. Further, I identify both the differences between these approaches and the similarities in the ways they interpret texts. I argue that the philosophical approach seeks to go beyond the text as far as possible without leaving it altogether and stress that the divide between the...
The Book of Life in the hermeneutics of Johann Georg Hamann
... all that exists. In being the Book of Life, all that exists communicates with the human being as if it were the Book. It does so within the complex dialectics of objectivation in the epistemological linguisticality of a prophet, a scientist, or a poet and, through them, reaches out to countless generations of the Reader, who is voluntarily or involuntarily involved in the existential fate of the ontological dialogue. The ‘death of the Book’, or the transformation of the Book into a simulacrum,...
A. G. Baumgarten’s aesthetic-semiotic concept
In this article, we consider the semiotic concept developed by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, a founder of modern aesthetics. We describe the principles of the semiotic theory, as expressed in Baumgarten's Metaphysica, particularly in the parts ‘Ontology’ and ‘Psychology’, in which he introduced the basic semiotic terminology. We pay special attention to the general context of Baumgarten’s Aesthetica. This context had determined the characteristics of the semiotic ideas that he developed later. In...
Indirect translation: Main trends in practice and research
This article concerns indirect translation (ITr), understood broadly as translation of translation, and has the aim of facilitating systematic research on this long-standing, widespread yet underexplored phenomenon. The article thus provides an overview of some of the main patterns in ITr practice and research and explores suggestions for related future studies. The overview follows the ‘Five W’s and One H’ approach. The what question concerns terminological and conceptual issues related to ITr and...
Hagiographic genre in the works of Konrad von Wurzburg
I analyse three hagiographic poems written by Konrad von Würzburg, a German poet of the XIII century. The poems describe the lives of Saint Alexis, a Man of God, Saint Pantaleon and Pope Sylvester. These saints are worshipped both by the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Special attention is paid to Konrad von Wurzburg’s ...
V. The hagiographic topic in I. S. Shmelev’s novel The Inexhaustible Chalice
In this article, we discuss the hagiographic topics in I. S. Shmelev’s novel The Inexhaustible Chalice, which are expressed through different components of the novel’s literary structure — ranging from the individual traits of the main character, Ilya Sharonov, to twists of the plot and the milestones of his biography. We maintain that in terms of the genre this novel resembles both the lives of the righteous and the lives of the venerable. The novel conforms to the canons of hagiographic texts because...
Between faith and disbelief: the theme of life and death in Yu. N. Ivanov’s novel Dances in the Crematory: Ten Episodes from the Life of Königsberg
In exploring the themes of life and death in Yu. N. Ivanov’s novel Dances in the Crematory, I carry out a structural-semantic analysis of the fragmentary chronotope and the ideational- thematic and plot-compositional levels of the novel. I demonstrate that the principle of fragmentarity is utilised by the author to the full extent across the novel, primarily, in its chronotope. The latter is closely connected with the fragmentary-discrete structure of human consciousness and memory, including the...
Mapping Poetic Bilingualism in Europe: Language Contacts and Cultural Transfers
This article presents preliminary results of a project studying multilingualism in world poetry. Multilingual interactions are particularly persistent in the contexts where either writers (poets) exist in multilingual sociocultural environments or they are moving from one country to another throughout their literary career. Existing in two or more cultural and/or linguistic spaces at the same time and thus making transfers across the boundaries ...
Philosophical Discourse and the Conceptualisation of Word Formation
The article studies hyphenated complexes in Russian, French, and German philosophical discourses. The author identifies key word-formation models that use the hyphen. In philosophical discourse, the hyphen serves as a linguistic tool to convey dialectic thinking that expresses the conceptualization of the limited/the unlimited, under-certainty or emerging certainty, and motion and stillness. In philosophical texts, hyphenated complexes facilitate the tendency towards a perfect dialectic form in language...