Philology, pedagogy, and psychology

2021 Issue №2

Poetry as a space for cognitive research: Czesław Miłosz and Howard Nemerov

Abstract

The article is focuses on the interaction of artistic and scientific discours­es: scientific thinking into poetry. Based on two poems (Dom filozofa by Czesław Miłosz and The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar’s House by How­ard Nemerov), the author examines the possibilities of thinking about cogni­tive problems in the space of poetry. Reincarnating as their characters (philos­opher and artist), Miłosz and Nemerov work in the subject area of professional cognitive scientists, they reproduce the process of analytical thinking.

The article studies the poetic cognitive schemes that create a mental im­age of reality. Cz. Miłosz and H. Nemerov build a similar route for the verbal representation of the world. The process breaks down into several elements like nomination, categorization, conceptualization and a spatial map of reality (mental image). Nemerov on behalf of the artist creates a map-type representa­tion while Miłoszʼs philosopher accentuates the temporal component of the spatial image, proposing a linear path-map.

The poets conclude that it is not the eye that makes the world visible, but verbal thinking, which translates all empirical facts into verbal signs. The thinker's task is to incorporate the visual image into the mental construct, to create the topology of the world, not represented in the world itself.

Finally, the author considers the value of Miłosz and Nemerov’s texts for modern culture and states that they are illustrations for cognitive research,  generators of scientific ideas and they create the marginal area of contempo­rary cognitive science; meanwhile there is an uncertainty whether the mor­phological type of language in which “scientific” poetry is created influences thestylistic features of the texts.

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Ontology of the «new world» in the work of Frie­drich Hölderlin (to his 250th anniversary)

Abstract

The work raises the issue of Hölderlin’s creative secret of, interpreting its connection with the transformation of German culture into ontology of “new light”. Considering the essence of the “poet of poets” (Heidegger), the authors relate complex discourses to the hermeneutic key for understanding the mys­tery of Hölderlin. They make an attempt at interpreting one of the mysteries in his work, reflected in the novel "Hyperion". The article draws conclusions about the action of “new light” in this novel and other works of Hölderlin. The secret of Hölderlin is interpreted through the standpoint of some theories of Russian cosmism.

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The formula «If there is no God, everything is allowed» in the poetic interpretation of Czeslaw Milosz

Abstract

The article considers the specific perception of Dostoevsky's creativity in poetry and essays by Milos. The author studies Milosz's multiple reinterpre­tations of the precedent formula “If there is no God, everything is allowed” in the poems “If not”, “Meaning” and “Oeconomia divina”. It is concluded that the poems under study form a "triptych", where the leading role is played by dialectics of word and silence.

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The image of the pilot in the eschatological vision «The Great Divorce» K. S. Lewis

Abstract

The author considers the image of the guide and its artistic interpretation proposed by C. S. Lewis in his eschatological vision “The Great Divorce”. The article traces different approaches to distinguishing the genre of the book and establishes the relation between the transformation of the genre of eschatologi­cal vision and the image of the guide in it. The purpose of the article is to pro­vide a thorough characteristic of the image of George MacDonald (the guide) in “The Great Divorce” by C. S. Lewis. To meet this purpose, the main func­tions of this image have been described as well as the means of its text repre­sentation and peculiar properties of the relations between the main character and his guide in C. S. Lewis’ eschatological vision.

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«The images of water» in the structure of oniric spaciopoetics of K. Ishiguro’s novel «The buried giant»

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the spatial organization of one of Ishiguro's lat­est novels "The Buried Giant". The authors focus on the process of changing of the aesthetic paradigm taking place in modern prose and affecting the foun­dations of its poetics. Special attention is paid to that kind of changes in the spatio-temporal organization of the text. Its peculiarity in Ishiguro's novel is the artistic synthesis of the surreal elements (mythopoetics, space of memory, the loci of consciousness, intertextual inclusions), which is nominated as on­iric space (J. Faryno). It is created along with the images appearing in the pro­cess of recollecting in characters’ minds as a result of including multifunc­tional images of the sea and other water objects. Those images are traditional and unique at the same time. In this regard, the transgression of archetypal images and their artistic functions in the novel are investigated.

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On the Old Believers in the literary heritage of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Abstract

The article examines M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s views on the phenome­non of the Old Believers. The research establishes the sources for the writer to study the everyday life and religious characteristics of the adherents of "old piety", and also highlights the background of the Western philosophy that in­fluenced the writer’s perception of their image. The article focuses on mutual­ly exclusive characteristics of the Old Belief in the author's concept and makes a conclusion about the predominantly negative perception of the “schisme” in the work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

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