PHILOLOGIST – Journal of Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies

LEXICAL FREQUENCY IN VUK'S LYRICAL FOLK POEMS

Marijan J. Jelić — 2024-12-31

In this paper, we investigated the lexical frequency of Vuk's lyrical folk poems (Serbian folk poems, first volume). The total number of lexemes is 5102, while the number of used (current) words is 72500. The diversity coefficient is 0,07, and the mean frequency or repetition index is 14,21. This ratio of the number of lexemes and current words indicates that the lexicon of lyrical folk poems is not very diverse, i.e., that there is a lot of repetition, which is expected because it is one of the poems’ important characteristic. The most frequent lexemes are: biti/jesam, on, ja, i ti, sebe/se, u, na, ne, da. The frequency, according to the part of speech, looks like this: nouns (2420), verbs (1652), adjectives (574), adverbs (212), pronouns (49), prepositions (64), numerals (40), exclamations (35), conjunctions (30) and particles (22). It is assumed that if the reader understands 75% of the words of a text, he will also understand the remaining 25%. In the observed corpus, 75% of the text covers 463 words (those with the highest frequency). Almost all of these words belong to the corpus of the modern Serbian language. In lyrical folk poems, which Vuk called feminine, the most numerous are nouns that denote persons of the female gender (girl, mother), so even according to the criterion of the most frequent nouns these poems could be called feminine.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPEAKING RATE AND VOICE ONSET TIME OF VOICELESS PLOSIVES IN THE INTERLANGUAGE OF SERBIAN AND ENGLISH

Danica M. Jerotijević Tišma — 2024-12-31

Based on previous research, it is well known that the speaking rate affects the modifications of articulatory movements, especially the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of vowels and consonants. The aforementioned influence is especially prominent in the interlanguage phonological system. Bearing this in mind, the present paper investigates the variability of the voice onset time (VOT) of English voiceless plosives in accented initial position in relation to the speaking rate of Serbian students of English as a foreign language. The sample comprised a total of thirty EFL students at two proficiency levels: B1 (intermediate) and C1 (advanced) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The results of the measurements showed that the respondents articulated the velar plosive with the longest VOT, which is in accordance with previous research performed on native speakers (Cho, Ladefoged 1999). However, significant variability of the measurements of VOT was observed, which testifies to the dynamics of an interlanguage system and the complex process of acquiring the sounds of a foreign language, which is highly idiosyncratic. Comparing the speakers individually, as well as the average values of VOT, it was shown that the values are higher in the group with a higher level of proficiency (C1). The differences between groups were statistically significant for the VOT measurements of the velar plosive, but also for the speaking rate. Namely, the C1 group had a significantly faster speaking rate than the B1 participants, which is understandable given the higher range of vocabulary and grammar, as well as the self-confidence resulting from longer speaking practice. As for the relationship between speaking rate and VOT, a statistically significant correlation was found only for the B1 group, while it was absent for the C1 group. A possible explanation lies in the idiosyncrasy and complexity of the interlanguage phonological system, but also in the selection of examples for analysis. In addition to potential explanations of the observed variability of results, the paper also emphasises relevant pedagogical implications.

ERRORS IN PAUCAL AND PARTITIVE PHRASES IN SERBIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Biljana M. Babić — 2024-12-31

The paper conducts a morphological-syntactic analysis of errors recorded in paucal and partitive phrases. The corpus has been formed by extracting material from written assignments of a heterogeneous group of students (speakers of one of 18 native languages) who attended an intensive Serbian language course (levels A1 and A2) at the Center for Serbian as a Foreign Language at the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad. The aims of the analysis are the following: identification of errors, their systematization according to types (paucal and partitive phrases) and subtypes (paucal phrases with the number two, three, or four, partitive phrases that are numeral, adverbial, or noun phrases), quantitative and statistical processing, presentation of the analysis results according to (sub)types of errors, their frequency of occurrence and according to the student's first language, and finally a comparison of the findings with the results of earlier analyses of errors in these phrases in the production of students whose native language is Slovenian, Russian, French and Hungarian, as well as in the speech production of children of our emigrants in Sweden. The analysis has shown that foreign students make mistakes more frequently in partitive phrases (169 examples) than in paucal ones (97), and that their mistakes are largely consistent with mistakes made by students of Slavic (Slovenian and Russian) and non-Slavic languages (French and Hungarian), although in the case of Slovenian and Hungarian speakers, it is claimed that the errors are the result of cross-linguistic interference. A significant similarity with the developmental errors of children in the diaspora has been established as well. Almost all errors found in earlier analyses have also been confirmed in our corpus (24 occurrences), there has been no confirmation for three phenomena recorded in the speech of children in the diaspora and one in the production of Hungarian students.

THE PLACE AND FUNCTION OF SONGS IN THE TEACHING OF SERBIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: THE LECTURER'S POINT OF VIEW

Nataša A. Spasić — 2024-12-31

The paper analyzes the function of the song as a didactic material in the teaching of Serbian as a foreign language. The aim is to create a clearer picture of its place in teaching practice, as well as the criteria applied during its selection. We used the descriptive method and the method of theoretical analysis with the technique of content analysis and surveying. The research material was divided into two parts and consisted of: 1. textbooks used in the centers for studying Serbian as a foreign language at the Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kragujevac and at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš, and 2. answers from the Serbian as a foreign language lecturer gathered in the Facebook group Serbian language for foreigners: group for lecturers. The research showed that songs as didactic material are used in textbooks for learning Serbian as a foreign language at higher levels, while in their own teaching practice, the majority of surveyed teachers recognize them as functional teaching aids used for: increasing the lexical fund, developing listening skills, familiarizing with the culture and tradition of the Serbian people, the adoption of new grammatical content, the neutralization of fear/jitters and the increase of motivation for learning the Serbian language, the adoption of prosodic elements of speech, the development of writing skills, filling the time in the absence of teaching materials, determining the previously studied material and the realization of interactive homework. Although they are guided by a larger number of criteria when selecting and choosing a song, the results of the research showed that lecturers give priority to the criterion of content suitability of the song compared to the criterion of the song belonging to the appropriate genre.

TRANSLATING LITERARY TEXTS FROM ENGLISH INTO SERBIAN: A CONTRASTIVE APPROACH

Ljiljana M. Janković — 2024-12-31

Contrastive linguistics presupposes a systematic analysis of differences and similarities between two or more languages. Translation studies constitute a field of contrastive linguistics, since translation from one language to another undoubtedly involves the contrasting and comparing of two languages. Some scholars believe that translated texts demonstrate linguistic patterns that systematically distinguish them from non-translated texts in the same language (Baroni & Bernardini, 2006; Volansky et al., 2015; Zanettin, 2013), which supports the idea that translated language is a kind of “third code” (Frawley, 2000 [1984]). However, translation has been defined as both a process and product in linguistic literature. Translation as a process transfers the meaning from one language to another, simultaneously accounting for the textual, grammatical, and pragmatic features of the source text. The empirical research presented in this paper was conducted with the fourth-year students at the English Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. A literary text translated from English into Serbian was analysed in order to prove that, despite various linguistic and extra-linguistic constraints, a balance between the style and form and the achievement of accuracy may be attained in the translation process. The analysis of the students’ translations demonstrates that the best results are gained by concentrating on the aesthetic values of the source text and by considering the substance of the text, as well as its sense and the message. The paper also considers the fact that in translating into the mother tongue (Serbian), the (English) text to be translated poses a problem of analysis – the translator has to analyse the text to comprehend the implicit and explicit shades of its meaning

Metonymy in Greta Thunberg’s Climate Change Discourse on Facebook

Oleksandr Kapranov — 2024-12-31

The issue of climate change, which still remains among one of the most significant challenges to humanity (Han et al., 2024; Malhi et al., 2020), is routinely addressed by politicians and public figures, such as, for instance, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (Mansikka-aho et al., 2024). This article introduces and discusses a study that focuses on Greta Thunberg’s discourse on climate change, which she shares on the Social Networking Site (SNS) Facebook in the form of status updates. In particular, the study sought to identify conceptual metonymy in a corpus of Thunberg’s Facebook status updates on climate change. The study was grounded in the tenets of cognitive linguistics, which considered metonymy a conceptual phenomenon. Specifically, Kövecses and Radden’s (1998) typology of conceptual metonymy guided the identification of metonymy in the corpus. The results of the corpus analysis revealed that Thunberg used such types of conceptual metonymy as part for whole, whole for part, place for event, place for institution, and actor for action. The findings are further presented, illustrated and discussed in the article.

Communicative Features of Selected Nigerian ESL Generation Z’s Language Use on Twitter

Jane Chinelo Obasi — 2024-12-31

Various studies on Generation Z have concentrated on other social media platforms, but less attention has been paid to the micro-blogging site, Twitter (recently renamed as X). This study fills the gap by examining the various communicative features and factors that influence the language use of selected ESL Generation Z individuals on Twitter. The study adopts purposive sampling to select 5 popular Nigerian Generation Z media personalities (Enioluwa Adeoluwa, Rinu Oduala, Emeka Nwagbaraocha, Hauwa Lawal and Abdulsalam Idris) who constitute the population size. Data analysis is subjected to qualitative method with analytical drawn from the tenets of Lesley Jeffries’ (2010) Critical Stylistics theoretical framework: naming and describing, representing action/events/states, equating and contrasting, and prioritising. Although there are several social media influencers on Twitter, the sample is concerned with influencers who are first Nigerians, between the age bracket 18-26 years and active users of Twitter. This, however, formed the population for this study. From the findings, five communicative features are commonly employed by ESL Generation Z individuals: emoji, slang, meme, hashtag, and code-switching. However, slang expressions and memes are more commonly used than code-switching and hashtags. This study, therefore, demonstrates that ESL Gen Z’s language use on Twitter is influenced by a complex interplay of factors, including character limits, social issues, social identity, pop culture, and digital nativity, ultimately shaping their unique online language practices and identities.

Developing Listening Comprehension Through Podcasts in Foreign Language Learning

Jana Kucharová — 2024-12-31

This paper aims to present one of the possibilities of developing listening comprehension with the help of modern media – the podcast – in the process of teaching and acquiring a foreign language. Two main scientific methods were used: experiment and questionnaire. The experiment aimed to prove that using podcasts in teaching the German language positively affected students’ listening skills. We used the questionnaire to collect data about the opinions, experiences, and attitudes of students from the experimental group about using podcasts in the educational process. The target group consisted of 196 second-year bachelor students from the University of Economics in Bratislava, who took a three-semester course of vocational German. Compared to traditional teaching, we find that podcasting is an effective tool for learning foreign languages. However, students must be appropriately motivated for self-study because if they do not approach learning via podcasts with a higher level of motivation, this form does not deliver the expected goals. The students who used podcasts to supplement instruction improved their listening comprehension skills. The podcast can improve the identification of the meaning of words whose spelling and pronunciation are different. Podcasts can help to understand the content of spoken text and to gain an overall understanding of spoken words. However, as we will subsequently show in our paper, the students’ motivation to learn foreign languages is important. Podcasts can improve foreign language competencies, but the student must approach learning responsibly and prepare for classes regularly.

Fitness Тerms in English and their Аdaptation into Serbian

Aleksandra Š. Kardoš Stojanović — 2024-12-31

Having gained enormous popularity since the 1980s, “fitness” has become one of the most widespread words when used in relation to physical exercise, beneficial for both physical and mental health. Since the worldwide emergence of fitness coincided with the English language used as the lingua franca, many fitness terms were taken from English and adapted into other languages. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse fitness terminology in English and different ways of adapting it into Serbian. The corpus used for the research consists of 200 fitness terms in English and their Serbian translation equivalents, collected from relevant literature in both languages. According to the results, there are four different procedures employed when transferring terms from English into Serbian – transshaping, direct translation, structural translation, andfunctional approximation. Furthermore, findings show a significant number of variant forms of the terms used in Serbian, which is a clear indicator of the necessity of theirstandardisation. Therefore, one of the primary goals in the field of sports terminology should be to compile a register of fitness terms in English and Serbian and analyse it within the contrastive linguistics framework, in order to set future guidelines for its standardisation and possible inclusion into an updated version of Novi englesko-srpski rečnik sportskih termina [A New English-Serbian Dictionary of Sports Terms] (Milić et al., 2021) planned for the future.

Orientational Metaphors in Italian, Spanish and Serbian Phraseologisms with the Component eye

Marija N. Vujović — 2024-12-31

Spatial relations, more precisely the formation of concepts related to spatial orientation and the study of phraseologisms in which they are based, represent a relevant, but insufficiently examined part of cognitive research. The paper deals with orientational conceptual metaphors in the phraseologisms of two Romance languages (Italian and Spanish) and one Slavic language (Serbian) that have a somatic component eye their lexical composition. According to the cognitive-semantic approach, conceptual metaphor is one of the basic organizational principles of the human conceptual system. On the other hand, the lexeme eye represents one of the phraseologically most productive somatisms. The aim of the research is to identify the most common orientational metaphors in phraseologisms with a component eye in three typologically (un)related languages, to establish how consistently they follow the postulates of cognitive metaphor theory and to determine whether the analyzed orientational metaphors are universal or culturally determined, having in mind that orientational metaphors in somatic phraseologisms are not motivated exclusively by bodily experience, but have, like all other conceptual metaphors, a sociocultural basis. The analysis of the excerpted corpus shows that the following metaphors induce the creation of phraseologisms: good is up, bad is down; good is near, bad is far; good is right, bad is left; good is front, bad is back and good is shallow, bad is deep. In the largest number of examples of phraseologisms with a component eye the polarization good - bad, it is in accordance with the postulates of cognitive metaphor theory where up, near, right, front and shallow are understood as positive, and down, far, left, back and deep as negative, which can explain the existence of identical or similar phraseologisms in genetically (un)related languages. The analysis also reveals that orientational metaphors often appear with another conceptual metaphor (or metonymy). Finally, in the majority of cases, phraseologisms in which one of the orientation metaphors is activated have no objective connection with real space. They are formed on the basis of human conventional knowledge and as a consequence of man's conceptualization of reality

Collocations in Teaching German as a Foreign Language: Theoretical Framework and Learning Strategies

Marija B. Nijemčević Perović — 2024-12-31

Collocations represent a segment of the lexicon that poses a significant challenge for all learners of a foreign language. However, this aspect does not receive attention in teaching practice proportional to its importance. The reasons for this vary, including teaching approaches, the quality of teaching materials, and the habit of teaching and learning words as isolated units rather than as lexical combinations. This paper aims to deepen the understanding of relevant theoretical discussions on the conceptual definition of collocations from the perspective of glottodidactics, their utility in the process of learning German as a foreign language, as well as collocational competence, which is considered one of the fundamental but also most demanding goals of language instruction. Taking into account the specificity and relevance of this linguistic phenomenon, the paper provides concrete proposals for strategies and activities that contribute to creating an educational environment in which students are sensitized to the recognition, understanding, and use of collocations. Developing awareness of collocations and integrating them into teaching are key steps towards improving students' lexical competence. Implementing the described strategies on a specific sample and over an extended period would help to assess their effectiveness in teaching practice.

Machine Translation in German Language Teaching and Learning: A Survey of Use and Views Among University Students

Ljiljana P. Tasić — 2024-12-31

The use of machine translation is becoming increasingly popular among language learners. Artificial intelligence tools, such as the online service Google Tranlate and the chatbot ChatGPT have the potencial to transform language teaching and learning. This paper examines how students use machine translation and their attitudes towards the application of these tools in the teaching and learning of German language. The participants of this study were students from the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš who are learning German as a foreign language at levels A2.1 and B1.1. The objectives of this research are to gain fundamental insights into the use of machine translation in teaching German at the tertiary level, to provide guidelines for further research and discussion, and to offer practical advice for German language instruction. The results confirm the assumptions that students use machine translation and have positive attitudes towards its application. Respondents mainly use these tools as dictionaries, but also for checking and correcting independently written texts and for writing assignments. Almost all students believe that these tools aid in learning German, and the majority of students state that they should be used in German language teaching and learning.

Historical and Cultural Memory Preserved in Idioms by the Georgians and Georgian Muhajirs

Irine Goshkheteliani — 2024-12-31

Idioms reflect people's viewpoints, values, and worldviews, illuminating their lifestyles, traditions, beliefs, and shifts within historical and cultural contexts. Preserving historical and cultural memory is essential for activating the implicit meanings found within a language's collection of idiomatic expressions. Beyond their literal meanings, these idioms also convey knowledge through the meanings of their components. The key to understanding this is the lexical part of an idiom, which encapsulates the cultural memory tied to national heritage and significant historical events. This component, rich with implicit knowledge, becomes apparent when a society actively preserves its ethnocultural memory through various expressions, including idioms and proverbs. This paper aims to analyse idioms that preserve cultural memory and serve as quasi-symbols of national culture. It seeks to identify the semantic, lexical, and structural changes these idioms have undergone. The study specifically examines the idiomatic expressions of the Georgian Muhajirs, an ethnic group of Georgians who have lived in Turkey for centuries, focusing on their lexical and semantic similarities and differences. The research findings confirm that some of these expressions have been modified lexically, although not all have changed semantically. Many expressions remain similar to those in modern Georgian. While their structure and components are identical, their semantic and stylistic nuances differ. The study's goals and objectives shape the methodological foundation of this linguacultural research, which is grounded in a comparative analysis of idioms and a component analysis at both the semantic and lexical levels.

Pastoral Lexicon of the Prizren-Timok Speeches

Слађана M. Цукут — 2024-12-31

Romanija – a New Piece in the Serbian Toponomastic Mosaic

Душан М. Пејић — 2024-12-31

Collective Nouns in the System of the Serbian Language

Милош М. Кецман — 2024-12-31

Bestiary Forms in the New Reading of А Novel of London

Јелена С. Младеновић — 2024-12-31

On the Publication of Тhe Art of the Book

Вања Р. Шмуља — 2024-12-31

The Bridges of Language and Culture

Aleksandar S. Nikolić — 2024-12-31

The Testified and the Unspoken

Ленка С. Настасић — 2024-12-31

Rejoice in the lord, you righteous ones

Дијана М. Црњак — 2024-12-31

Low-Budget Melo(s)dramas with Prosthesis in Nine Offensives: Vule Žurić

Vladan S. Bajčeta — 2024-12-31

This text analyses the prose oeuvre of Vulet Žurić, especially his novelistic work, in which the writer made the most significant contribution to contemporary Serbian prose. Developing this work for a long time, Žurić wrote a series of works in the indicated domain, creating in the poetic horizon, a “camp” genre transformation and trivial literature, influenced by cinematography, jazz and other pop-cultural phenomena. Special attention is paid to the author's best work, Republika Ćopić (2016), which represents the highest range of the entire corpus of contemporary novels written according to the biographies of our famous writers of the 20th century

Forgotten Letters of Pietro Bembo: Lettere familiari, inedite e varie

Marija N. Mitić — 2024-12-31

Pietro Bembo, an Italian cardinal, writer, and humanist, made a significant contribution to Italian literature of humanism and the Renaissance with his creative works. Among his prose works, his epistles compiled in several volumes are certainly noteworthy. In one of the volumes of Bembo's epistles, published under the title Lettere di M. Pietro Bembo, we encounter letters addressed to his friends, relatives, as well as high officials. Since there is not much information about this collection of epistles in Italian historiography, the aim of our research is precisely to study and analyse individual examples of letters that shed light on many facts about literary trends, culture, and everyday life of that time.

The Poetical Function of Toast in Petar Kočić’s Literature

Valentina R. Milekić Kovačić — 2024-12-31

A toast is one of the oral-poetic forms that, in Petar Kočić’s literature, carries strong evocativeness and artistic expressiveness, particularly in the cycle of stories about Simeun Đak. Through intertextuality in Kočić's work, complex processes of simultaneously continuing and modifying connective structures of collective memory are reflected, finding their poetic sublimation in oral-poetic forms. We have shown that Kočić's appeal of toasts, for the purpose of literary elaboration of the themes of his time, primarily serves to create complex autoimages and hetero-images, i.e., to depict the mentality of the Krajina region and its distinctive characters. Autoimages about oneself and one's own, as well as heteroimages about others, are realized through humour, at the level of subverting canonised forms of toasts and playing with them. This approach represents a way of repetition, memory, and preservation of tradition and identity through literature. The toast emerges as one of those folkloric creations through which the artist succeeds in illuminating the people's wisdom and reflection with new brilliance and expressing them with greater complexity of meaning.

Typologycal Allegory in the Characterisation of Saint Simeon

Nikolina P. Havran — 2024-12-31

The present paper analyses the examples of typological allegory employed as a means of characterisation of Stefan Nemanja/Saint Simeon, the founder of the holy Nemanjic dynasty and its first saint, in the Serbian mediaeval hagiography literature of the 13th century – in the Hagiography of St. Simeon Nemanja by Sava Nemanjic; the Life of Saint Simeon by Stefan the FirstCrowned; Domentian’s the Life of Saint Sava and the Life of Saint Simeon; and the Life of Saint Sava by Teodosije the Hilandarian. The questions that the paper addresses include the degree of frequency of typological allegory used as a means of characterisation of Stefan Nemanja/Saint Simeon, determining its type, defining the scope of the field to which the concept of type refers to, and considering the motives behind its usage. The conducted research shows a high degree of frequency of typological allegory used in the process of characterisation of Stefan Nemanja/Saint Simeon, especially in Dоmentian’s corpus. The variety of types, which are related to the Old Testament (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/Israel, Joseph, Noah, Moses, prophet Elijah, king David and king Solomon), the New Testament (Zechariah, Paul the Apostle and Jesus Christ) or more recent Christian history (the Holy Great-Martyr Demetrius the Myroblyte), also speaks of its degree of frequency. Stefan Nemanja/Saint Simeon’s personality traits and acts are often identified with those of biblical characters and Christian saints, i.e. with the events of holy Judeo-Christian history. The identification with the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph is the most dominant. The choice is not haphazard: by taking the named Old Testament fathers as Simeon’s archetype, Serbian writers concentrate on the idea of predestination and God’s blessing, which are very important for portraying Nemanja (and his descendants on the throne) as an ideal Christian ruler, predetermined to govern the Serbian people and lead it on the path of salvation. Therefore, the motivation behind using typological allegory is very often political-ideological, which is not surprising in the case of mediaeval literature.

The Testimony of Silence: Exploring Trauma in Aleksandar Tišma’s The Use of Man

Aleksandra Z. Stojanović — 2024-12-31

This paper explores the intricate web of testimony, storytelling, and the haunting (in)ability to speak in Aleksandar Tišma's novel The Use of Man. With a thematic framework encompassing critical perspectives on Holocaust representation, unspoken narratives, and the healing of trauma, the paper presents the multifaceted experiences of survivors and their enduring narratives. Tišma's unique approach to Holocaust representation serves as the backdrop for our exploration, emphasising the significance of testimony as a means of bearing witness to the indescribable Holocaust atrocities. Distinguishing between silence and muteness, the paper focuses on the silences that permeate the characters' lives, recognising that some stories are too painful to tell, even within the intimate confines of diary writing. Tišma's protagonists, like many reallife survivors, undergo a complex process of reintegration into their former lives, allowing in-depth exploration of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable suffering. By weaving these themes together, an analysis of intricate narratives that emerge from the ashes of history provides evidence that silence can sometimes serve as the most poignant form of testimony.

The Voice of an Ancient Spring Spouting from the Earth: The Myth of Demeter and Persephone in Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway

Tijana R. Popović — 2024-12-31

The tendencies in literary criticism after World War I brought about the need for the application of innovative literary methods, with the aim of structuring the form and meaning of the text in a different way. The novels of Virginia Woolf certainly have their place in the reexaminations of myth, offering a specific view of some mythological concepts. One of these novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925), is the focus of this paper. The novel follows a day in the life of the main character Clarissa Dalloway and her reflections on her life choices, wrong decisions, and irreversible past. One of the classical myths significant for the interpretation of this novel is the myth of Demeter and Persephone, based on which various relationships can be interpreted, the most important being the relationship between mother and daughter, as well as other female characters, but also between women and men. In this paper, we will attempt to locate the ways in which the basic archetypal patterns of the Demeter ‒ Persephone myth are depicted in the novel, especially when it comes to the relationships among characters who carry the strength of the mythical.

Solipsism or a Dream: the Question of Reality in Vera Pavlovna’s Ninth Dream by Victor Pelevin

Galina-Marija N. Micic — 2024-12-31

Victor Pelevin often explores the question of reality in his works, as he does in his 1991 short story Vera Pavlovna’s Ninth Dream. This story is frequently interpreted from the perspective of solipsism, a philosophical concept that explains the world only through one’s own mind and senses, casting doubt on the existence of anything outside the individual. In this way, a cleaning lady of the men’s restroom on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow becomes the source of all changes in her environment, and the reader is introduced to her world solely through her perspective. This provides a basis for a solipsistic interpretation of the reality in which she exists. As the author mentions in the epigraph about the overlap between solipsism and realism, and concludes the story by describing a woman with solipsism in the third stage, all these elements justify discussing solipsism in the context of Vera Pavlovna's reality. On the other hand, the title itself emphasises the dream as a significant element of the story, which the author undoubtedly uses to establish a connection with Chernyshevsky’s novel What Is to Be Done and the fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna. A dream, as one of the possible realities, as defined by Vadim Rudnev, offers another valid interpretation of this work, one that is well-supported by the text itself. In this way, the specific play with the text, intertextual connections, and numerous interpretative possibilities, which are dominant features of Viktor Pelevin's poetics, remain evident in this story as well, as reader cannot determine with certainty which reality the story is referring to.

Happenings of The Orange Alternative Movement as an Example of Surrealism in Poland in the 1980s

Marta Moldovan-Cywiñska — 2024-12-31

This text is a contribution to the state of research on the surrealist dimension of the actions and verbal messages of the movement known as the Orange Alternative. The author outlines the role of happenings and their artistic and contestation dimensions, as well as showing the links with surrealism. A special dimension of contestation was given to it by the founder of the Orange Alternative movement in Poland – Waldemar „Major” Fydrych, highlighting the essence of the happening's verbal message. The text includes references to the inspiration of Max Ernst's Collages and André Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism as inspiration for the programmatic activities and verbal messages of the Orange Alternative that are part of the examples of happenings presented here from the beggining of the 1980s to the decline of the movement's activity. The actions of the group created by Waldemar „Major” Fydrych are part of the current of socialist surrealism, reflecting the essence of the changes taking place in Poland by the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. At the end of this text one can find a reflection on the artistic legacy of Major, who is recognised as one of the world's most important surrealists.