The phenomenon of the vast majority of texts in Russian oral literature is related to the occurrence of chora. The Ruthenian land is described as an icon of heavenly reality there. The term chora was used by Plato in Timaeus, giving it a broader, extra-geometric and extra-geographical meaning. Chora contains hierophany, it invalidates space in a geometric and geographical sense. Oral tradition demonstrates the search for a place in Ruthenia that is conducive to the birth of a real man – Plato called the place chora. The idea of this place differed from the idea of Moscow III Rome – it did not refer to the tsar or the state, but to the land and man striving for salvation. The tsar and the state gain a new, heavenly countenance here – only in the perspective of transformation. This idea is not prospective, it refers to eternity. The basic ontological heritage in the identity of the Ruthenian existence, which is not subject to time, has been preserved. Chora, as a Ruthenian space, has an existential and identity dimension.

The prose of a prominent literary representative of the “first wave” of Russian emigration after the 1917 revolution Ivan Shmielyov and selected texts by Nikolai Leskov were used as the material for the study. The émigré author represents the neorealistic trend in the prose of the early 20th century, referring to the classics of 19th century Russian literature. The traumatic experiences of the revolution and the civil war became for him, as for the entire generation of Russian émigrés, a turning point in reevaluating their worldview, leading to a religious revival. Consequently, the author became a continuator of the Orthodox tradition in literature, whose exponent was N. Leskov. Despite the differences between the discourses of patristics and belles-lettres, the hypothesis stipulated in the title of the article that the considered word artist - both in terms of worldview and literature - was under the influence of hesychasm (elderhood), is confirmed.

This article attempts to define the phenomenon of the fourth wave of Russian emigration in relation to writers leaving their homeland after the symbolic collapse of the USSR, or who are descendants of representatives of the third wave. The characteristics of contemporary emigration that differ from previous waves of refugees and the reasons for leaving their homeland are indicated here. The destinations of emigrants (USA, Canada, Switzerland, Israel) that shape the specifics of the mental landscape of the newcomers, the barriers, the borders that they have to overcome in order to establish good relations with the citizens of their host countries are also included. Indeed, the aim of multiculturalism is not to tear down walls, but to build bridges. In this  respect, dialogue and the associated language as a fundamental distinctive feature of culture that determines the identity of each person is of paramount importance. The current of post-memory, autobiographical and memoir literature, promoted by many emigrants, is linked to identity and its recovery. As far as young emigrants are concerned, they have to live in a global village, in a specific uniformity introduced by the 21^st century, which makes mobility one of the most important values.

Utopia as a literary genre gains popularity in transitory moments, periods of social, economic and mental transformations. Literary visions of the future can be treated as forecasts of the development of societies, or projections of dreams about a better tomorrow, but in the case of anti-utopias, these predictions are not optimistic and have their source in the reality contemporary to the author. The abundance of dystopias in the early 21st century testifies to writers’ concerns about the development of the country and society. The main theme of the latest anti-utopias is undoubtedly the problem of limiting or even depriving an individual of freedom, but the writers also showed particular concern for the future of Russia as a state, its territorial integrity, culture and special spirituality. Both the future autonomy of the country and its indivisibility were quite often questioned, and fears or even phobias were associated with the vision of the threat of Chinese colonisation.

On the one hand, Sergey Arno’s prose stands out due to its black humour, full of paradoxical thoughts and absurd imaginations, but on the other hand, it deals with the condition of literature, its function, value, and literary criticism (i.e. its assessment). Apart from addressing literary subjects, his works relatively often reveal autobiographical and self-referential elements. For this reason, it is possible to extract from Arno’s texts fragments investigating the value of literature and its assessment that can be identified with the author’s own position. This article is an attempt to reconstruct the writer’s views based on four of his works in prose: three fictional pieces and one non-fiction book.

The manuscript collection of the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow contains the so-called Berlin Damaskin (Berl. Slav. Fol. 36, late 18th c.), a handwritten codex belonging to the former Prussian State Library in Berlin. Damaskin, as a book type, marks a transition in the literary tradition in the Balkans, and in particular in Bulgaria, between the medieval Church Slavonic, and the early modern tradition of the Orthodox Church. Its expression is characterised by simplified language, less formal register, and a more extensive use of the common (vernacular) spoken language. Among the forty-five texts included in the Berlin Damaskin there is the Story of the Forty Holy Martyrs of Sebaste. Based on medieval hagiographic sources, the Story is an interesting case of employing an old literary theme in the service of the new Bulgarian religious and homiletic literature. The present paper discusses the characteristic features of the Story’s composition and its plot, with special emphasis put on the narrative’s axiological message.

The article raises the question of understanding and evaluating ideas which should characterise modern literary and scientific work, as documented in the discourse of Bulgarian intellectual elites in the interwar period. The subject of the analysis is literary criticism of Boyan Penev (1887–1927), an eminent literary historian and one of the founding fathers of Bulgarian literary studies, and the notions that are evoked by the key concept of “the spiritual” are at the centre of the reflection. The interpretation is built on the assumptions of postsecular thought, and thus – it takes into account the contextual understanding of the “religious – secular” relation, as well as assumes the existence of crypto-theological entanglements in the process of creating meanings.

The article discusses the role played in the early 1950s by M. Krleža’s essay titled The Gold and Silver of Zadar (1951), as well as the circumstances of its emergence. In addition to the text itself, the analysis also encompasses Krleža’s unpublished notes from his trip to Dalmatia, his scholarly production, journalism and political discourse of that time (in the light of Krleža’s earlier literary works and essays). The aim of the paper is to indicate the ways in which cultural heritage was processed to semioticise space (Dalmatia within Yugoslavia) in the context of articulating certain political visions.

The article discusses an extensive travel journal, entitled A Walk Through Patagonia, by the renowned Slovak writer Martin Kukučín (1860–1928). Recognised as a prominent representative of realism in Slovak literature, Kukučín experienced challenges associated with emigration throughout his life. His travel accounts, encompassing various destinations such as Dalmatia, Montenegro, France, and Patagonia, constitute an integral part of his creative output. In comparison with Kukučín’s other travel narratives, this particular diary documenting his journey to Patagonia stands out through its meticulousness and a distinct dual perspective of an author and a traveller. In his writings, Kukučín portrays himself simultaneously as a wanderer and expresses a longing for a sense of belonging in the world. This dual nature of the writer is reflected in the landscapes depicted, in which the imagery of Patagonia becomes intertwined with the underlying portrayal of Kukučín’s native region of Orava.

Podlasie was inhabited by representatives of different ethnoses, believers of various Christian Churches, primarily the Catholic, Orthodox and Greek Catholic (Uniate). The content of the article is the attitude of the faithful of different Churches to the Marian images famous for grace, formally remaining the property of another Christian denomination.

After the fall of the USSR, there was a real explosion of religious construction in Ukraine. The review article presents fourteen out of nearly a thousand churches built in Ukraine in the thirty years from regaining independence until the Russian aggression (1991–2022). The selection criterion is the category of representativeness, both in terms of quality, formal, regional and denominational aspects (Uniate and Orthodox temples of the Ukrainian Church and the Church of the Moscow Patriarchate). Despite all their diversity, they have in common a certain canonicity in their approach to architectural matter. It is essentially based on the Byzantine model of a cross-dome temple, adopted in Kievan Rus. The selected examples reflect wide spectrum of forms between traditionalism and modernism, ukrainism and rusophilism, regionalism and universalism. Behind each choice there is a specific historical and cultural, but also political, message. Contemporary Ukrainian Orthodox churches are a new incarnation, even a manifestation, of architecture parlante.

The author aims to show the work of Tamara Yakzhina, a Russian journalist and filmmaker of Polish origin, who for years collected materials about Pope John Paul II, with a view to bringing his personality and work closer to Russian audience. The paper concentrates on two documentaries: Fear Not! I Pray for You! (2005) and The Pope Who Did Not Die (2012). Karol Wojtyła is portrayed in both films as a figure seeking dialogue with followers of other religions, including the Orthodox Church. Moreover, the article brings to light John Paul II’s conversations with the Russian, his command of the Russian language, and his passion for Tchaikovsky’s music, Russian literature and philosophy. The author reveals that the Pope, when speaking about the most important matters, used quotes from the works of Dostoevsky. Following Yakzhina and the authorities that she mentions, the author speculates why the Holy Father never visited Russia, even though he was invited by the heads of the state. The author also shows the choice of topics the filmmaker made to accurately bring the figure of the ‘Rimsky papa’, or ‘the Roman Pope’, to Russian-speaking audiences.

Familiarising the reader with the range of factors connecting Polish pilgrims with others on the Way of Saint James (Spanish: Camino de Santiago) will be grounded on the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the virtue of justice which will put in order encounters of the Slavic pilgrim with others on the way. The analysis will also be based on the author’s own empirical research on the experience of Polish pilgrims on the Way of Saint James, namely, in-depth interviews conducted in the summer of 2019 in Santiago de Compostela (n=50).

The virtue of justice will be shown as the empowering of the pilgrim’s will, thanks to which he can be guided by right principles in his actions and his behavior is good, as well as he is able to give everyone what is rightly due to him under the law. The entire argument will be confronted with manifestations of injustice leading to conflict, discomfort and judgment resulting from significant discrepancies in experiencing the Camino pilgrimage.

The objective of this study is to examine to what extent the attitudes of university lecturers are a continuation of Polish intelligentsia ethos and to what extent – they are a response to contemporary socio-economic challenges of an academic environment. The research hypothesis put forward by the author stipulated that the third mission of the university should be perceived as having more axiological than practical dimension as cooperation with the economic and social environment of the university encompasses the values developed by the culture of education in the process of historical growth of the nation. The primary source of the research were the results of a questionnaire survey conducted on a sample group of students and lecturers at one of Poland’s largest universities. The results indicate the tendency to return to the classic ethos of the Polish intelligentsia in which the protection of diversity and national identity came first, contrary to global trends.

The aim of this paper was to present the influence of changes in the system: biological body – mechanical body (humanoid body), resulting from the use of cyborgization and social robotics on the evaluation of the biological body, in the context of the assumptions of the theology of the body (based on the biological body). The article adopts three research perspectives encompassing the perception of: 1. the biological body; 2. the body of a cyborg, i.e. a hybrid of a human and a machine (a machine in a biological body, inside the body, and a biological body functioning in a machine); 3. the mechanical body (humanoid), in the context of the theology of the body.

Personal diaries written in French by young women in the first half of the nineteenth century attracted attention of researchers such as Philippe Lejeune, Elena Gretchanaïa, Catherine Viollet and Irina Savkina. They all believed that very few texts which could be classified as spiritual diaries had survived in the archives of that time. An example of such a rare, well-preserved collection of diaries are ego-documents of a Russian aristocrat, Elisabeth Galitzin (1795–1843), who, after converting from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, began to record regularly her inner state and experience of the value of faith, which lasted from 1815 until her death. This article focuses on the texts preceding Galitzin’s joining the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They are the part of nineteenth-century works discussing the conditions and motivations for the conversions of Russian women to Catholicism. They also provide unique material for a further in-depth research into Russian spirituality during the described period.