Vol. XX

2024

Publication date: 31.12.2024

Licence: CC BY

Editorial team

Additional redactors Aleksandra Stavros, Aleksandra Suszyńska

Secretary Urszula Cierniak

Editor-in-Chief Hanna Kowalska-Stus

Volume editor Urszula Cierniak

Issue content

Seeking and Defending Values

Andrei Muraviev in the Face of Death. On Italian Voyages from a Thanatouristic Perspective

Anna Kościołek

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 7-20

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.001.20748

The article, based on the findings of Sławoj Tanaś, is an attempt to present thanatouristic dimension of Italian voyages of Andrei Muraviev in 1845. The research material consists of two works: Roman Letters and Appendices to “Roman Letters”. Various death spaces visited by the writer in Italy can be divided into two categories. The first and most extensive one includes peregrinations to sepulchral spaces, i.e. places where human remains are buried (temples, cemeteries, tombs, catacombs). These were both places commemorating death of anonymous (e.g., catacombs) and particular individuals (e.g., artists’ tombs). The other category includes visiting areas of natural cataclysms (Pompeii). Muraviev was a post-figurative tourist, as he was characterised by a traditional, sacralised attitude to death in various aspects of its understanding.

PDF

Occultism of the Silver Age of Russian Culture in the Evaluation of Nikolai Berdyaev

Aleksander Posacki SJ

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 21-47

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.002.20749

The article analyses Nikolai Berdyaev’s approach to occultism of the Silver Age, which he regarded as an ambiguous phenomenon. For Berdyaev, occultism was not merely charlatanism or psychopathology but a realm of unexplained phenomena that might have significant spiritual importance. Berdyaev distinguished positive aspects of esotericism from negative influences of occultism. In his era, dominated by mysticism and Gnosticism, occultism and theurgy were subjects of intense spiritual quests. Berdyaev emphasised that magic, as a form of deterministic control over the world, differs from mysticism, which leads to divine freedom. The philosopher criticised the fascination with occultism, perceiving it as lacking true freedom. Berdyaev also explored the connections between occultism and magic, astrology, and demonology, analysing them in the context of personalism and spiritual freedom.

PDF

An American Ex-Nihilist Exposing Postmodern Errors: Eugene Rose on the Perils of Nihilism

Anna Cholewa-Purgał

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 49-60

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.003.20750

This article presents Eugene Rose’s critique of nihilism, the philosophy which he had himself embraced and was devastated by before his conversion to Orthodoxy, before his monastic tonsure and ordination to priesthood. The article argues that Rose’s treatise is not just an ex-nihilist’s and neophyte’s defence of Christianity, but a philosophical analysis of the errors and perils of nihilism, whose relevance today is manifested, for instance, by Putin’s policy and his war in Ukraine.

PDF

In Search of Lemko Values. Culturemes of the Names of Values Based on Selected Folklore Texts of the Lemkos

Tomasz Kwoka

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 61-75

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.004.20751

The paper attempts to identify present-day cultural concepts that are referred to as culturemes in the recent ethnolinguistic literature and, naming the most important values, that co-define the contemporary Lemko identity. The culturemes identified by the author (God, church, work, land, forests, cottage, poverty, longing, injustice) are strongly value-laden, designating the elements of the surrounding world which were, have been, and still are important for the Lemko community in Poland. They constitute values for Lemkos, usually positive, but sometimes also negative, including those strongly linked to post-war historical traumas.

PDF

Memory of Values

Pamięć i przeszłość w Kronice polskiej Anonima tzw. Galla

Jarosław T. Jagiełło

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 79-93

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.005.20752

The content of the chronicle, as a rule, expresses the subject of the memory (in Latin memoria,- ae) placed at the chronicler’s disposal and assimilated by him, but not necessarily referred directly to. Nevertheless, chroniclers writing in Latin tended to use in their works words such as: memoro,-are; memor,-oris; or just memoria,-ae. This kind of additional reference to memory in a text that is by its nature a report precisely from memory, leads to the question of the nature of the historian’s usage of remembering. Gallus Anonymous, used words with the root memor- 49 times in his text.
The analysis of memoriae in the Gallus’ chronicle leads us to discover tendencies present in Cronica et gesta..., helping to grasp the historical beliefs of the chronicler, to penetrate the world of his values. The Chronicle’s title may seem to suggest that it is going to describe mainly the deeds of Polish rulers (Polonorum), which is only partially true. Persons and historical events, which according to the author are considered digna memoriae, co-create, almost without exception, the Latin world, marked by imperial universalism. The chronicler announced that his account would omit the history of those who were “defiled by error and idolatry”, which probably included Christians of the Cyril-Methodian rite.

PDF

Doświadczenie wojny domowej we wspomnieniach Marsz lodowy Romana Gula

Iwona Krycka-Michnowska

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 95-107

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.006.20753

The Civil War in Russia is one of the most tragic periods in its history. A unique testimony to the beginnings of fratricidal struggles is a memoir Ice March by Roman Gul. The work initiated an avalanche of personal documents dedicated to this topic. Gul does not fit into an emigration narrative about the war; he does not paint an apologetic picture of the White Guards nor a black-and-white vision of the world, which would dominate Russian literature. He uses shades of gray, trying to prove that civil war dehumanizes each of the fighting sides. By describing the dilemmas of the autobiographical protagonist, he brings closer his own struggles and those of his contemporaries who faced the problem of accepting violence in the name of higher goals. The article attempts to interpret Gul’s memoirs as a record of the traumatic experiences of a soldier of the White Army, leading him to negate the fratricidal war.

PDF

Powieść Ludzie sierpnia. Siergiej Lebiediew o rosyjskiej transformacji lat 90.

Katarzyna Syska

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 109-120

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.007.20754

Since 2010, Sergei Lebedev has been pursuing a wide-ranging literary and journalistic project. Central concept of this project is the memory of Soviet and post-Soviet crimes understood as an ethical imperative: an active individual effort (confronting the difficult history of one’s own family) and a social one (demanding institutional solutions). The article analyses Lebedev’s novel People of August (2016), which is set between 1991 and 1999, in the context of a discussion of the effectiveness of Russian post-Soviet transit. The writer unequivocally argues that the transition did not happen – primarily due to the lack of an explicit symbolic policy.

PDF

Permanency of Values

Szkoła raczańska w służbie dawnych tradycji i wartości

Izabela Lis-Wielgosz

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 123-135

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.008.20755

This article raises the question of durability and continuity of writing, literary and cultural tradition in the Serbian lands, and territories settled by the Serbs due to the Great Migrations (Velika Seoba Srba) in 1690. The considerations focus on a small, but very influential milieu of monks of the Rača Monastery. Their efforts to sustain and save old (medieval) traditions and values significantly affected the model of periodisation of Serbian culture and literature. Time of the Rača monks’ activity – especially in exile (in territories of Southern Hungary) – should be considered as a period of fostering old (medieval) patterns, and simultaneously a period of slow cultural pre-orientation and entering into the path to the modern period. Thus the reflection focuses on the issue of durability of the Serbian Middle Ages and so called transitional period but, first of all, the paper emphasises crucial historical facts, the great role, and contribution to cultural-social (and especially writing and literary) heritage by the informal but influential School of Rača which is usually marginalised, rarely exposed in academic studies and discussions.

PDF

Krzyż serbski z 1692 roku z monasteru Rawanica w Serbii

Mirosław Piotr Kruk, Justyna Latoń, Katarzyna Skowron

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 137-164

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.009.20756

2023 a handmade cross made of wood in a silver frame with a written inscription indicating its origin from the monastery of Ravanica in Serbia in 1692 was donated to the collection of the National Museum in Cracow. Similar crosses were made in the Balkans and especially on Mount Athos. It is a valuable example of this type of relic, unique in Polish collections, and interesting in terms of technique, technology, materials used, as well as the content it contains and its modification through the use of elements from another cross. At the same time, it is a kind of relic recalling the foundation of the monastery in the 14th century by Prince Lazar I Hrebeljanović.

PDF

The Community and its Values. Contemporary Slovak Drama and Theatre in a Post-Traumatic Perspective (Preliminary Study)

Rafał Majerek

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 165-179

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.010.20757

The article focuses on the key contexts and stages in the development of Slovak drama and theater after 1989, and preliminarily identifies possible areas of research in the proposed perspective, taking into account, above all, the correlation between drama and theatre and transformations in cultural models. The change of a system is understood as a traumatic experience, leading to disorganisation and destabilisation of existing patterns, requiring strategies and actions to overcome the crisis. The results of these activities – reinterpretations of the past, development of new ways of understanding community and identity, greater sensitivity – can be associated with the process of post-traumatic growth, co-created and reflected by the texts of culture, among others – dramatic and theatrical works.

PDF

Ludowy topos wmurowanej kobiety jako narzędzie negocjowania wartości w bułgarskiej kulturze nowoczesnej. Co po kobiecie?

Grażyna Szwat-Gyłybow

Slavonic Culture, Vol. XX, 2024, pp. 181-197

https://doi.org/10.4467/25439561KSR.24.011.20758

There is a widespread topos of a woman in Bulgarian folklore, whom the stonemasons (with the tacit complicity of the whole rural community) wall-up into the foundations of a building under construction to avert an ever-recurring building disaster. Since the 1870s this topos has been adapted to Bulgarian literature and culture. In this article, I attempt to recapitulate the results of my research on this phenomenon, carried out under a grant from the National Science Centre (No. 2020/37/B/HS2/00152). In the centre of my attention there are the values that representatives of various aesthetic and worldview trends have made the subject of their interest and negotiations for 150 years.

PDF

Files to download

Imprint PDF Table of Contents PDF About the Authors PDF Reviewers PDF

Słowa kluczowe: Muraviev, thanatourism, death space, Italy, post-figurative tourist, Nikolai Berdyaev, occultism, esotericism, mysticism, personalism, nihilism, postmodernity, death of culture, theism, Christianity, Lemkos, culturemes, values, longing, ethnolinguistics, memory, past, Gallus Anonymous, Cyril-Methodian rite, Civil War, Russia, White Army, memoirs, experience, Sergei Lebedev, literature of memory, Russian postsoviet transition, symbolic policy, 1990s, The School of Rača, writing tradition, cultural tradition, continuity, Serbian Middle Ages, transitional period, Ravanica Monastery, Lazar I Hrebeljanović, Serbian art, Byzantine tradition, cross, transformation after 1989, trauma, contemporary Slovak drama and theatre, identity, diversity, Bulgarian folklore, Bulgarian culture, topos of the walled-up woman, values, adaptation