From Lukács to Lukács: the course of his repackaging (original) (raw)
Related papers
The novel and the myth of the epic: Balestrini, Lukács, and the cathartic experience
Forum Italicum, 2020
In this article, I address the critical reception of Nanni Balestrini's narrative work, focusing in particular on the novel Vogliamo tutto (1971). I compare the interpretative model, which sees this text as overcoming the novelistic form and moving toward the epic, with a similar model in György Lukács' foundational text The Theory of the Novel (1916), which sets up an opposition between the novel, understood as an expression of the irrelevance of private existence in our society, and the idea of a ''rebirth'' of the epic as a redemptive collective dimension. In order to investigate the textual mechanisms that generate a reading experience that has been defined resorting to the cliché of the epic, I draw on Lukács' later Aesthetics (1962). In this work, he offers a response to the impasses of his earlier thought by using the concept of catharsis, which explains the effects of a work of art on the reader/ viewer through the pathetic energy generated by the dissolution of the subjective perspective. Through a close reading of key passages from Vogliamo tutto, I show how the rhetorical structure of the text is grounded in a repeated dissolution of the narrative point of view (the narrator's voice) in the collective voice of the workers. I argue that the ''pathetic intensity'' produced by this loss of subjectivity inscribes the communal existence of the political struggles of the time in the immediacy of the reading experience.
The Philosopher as a(n anti-)Hero. The Literary Representations of Georg Lukács
2020
Literary works generally portray historical and social changes of their times besides of their aesthetical values. These writings also interpret the ideas which influenced the most. This makes them a form of contemporary documentation (Zeitdokument or Zeitroman), which helps to understand a specific era. In the 20th century, Georg Lukács, the Marxist theorist and philosopher, was a significant thinker, whose attitude, character, and ideas influenced many other philosophers and artists. The aim of this paper is to outline Lukács’s development of thinking from the point of view of his contemporaries. To this end, I discuss four literary writings in this paper: these four works represent an era from Lukács’s life and thinking. The almost unknown feuilleton of Béla Balázs published in 1911 idealizes the young Lukács and portrays him as a quixotic thinker, who belongs to another sphere, another “caste”. In the turn of 1921-1922, the novel of Emma Ritoók entitled Spiritual Adventurers was published, which represented the generation of pathfinders negatively and disillusioned, as they tried to calculate the redemption of the individuals with some mystical philosophical ideas. Anna Lesznai’s novel, In the Beginning was the Garden, is a significant opus with two volumes which outlines the troubled times of Hungarian history and recreates the historical events from the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 to the collapse of the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the first years of emigration. The two novels portray Lukács as a pathfinder who stands at a crossroads between theory and political praxis. Ritoók’s novel judges this struggle and interprets it in a caricatured way, while Anna Lesznai represents Lukács’s dilemma and decision as a sacrifice. The fourth work is The Interview by István Eörsi, which was published first in 1983 and is a very personal writing. Eörsi’s writing is a drama or rather an “absurd documentary play”, where Eörsi evokes his old Master, who is not the great thinker and philosopher, who he once was. The mind struggles as it still tries to create and work, but the body fails and Lukács got lost in the maze of his own thinking. The student wants to face his old Master, trying to get answers to his own dilemmas about Lukács, but his physical inability makes it almost impossible to communicate with him. All these four works represent Lukács in different phases and they take a very specific glance at a significant œuvre. However, these works deserve the consideration not just from the point of view of Lukács’s significance, but because of their literary value. The literary works mentioned here are on the periphery of the literary canon and the rediscovering of these writings could bring new aspects not just for literary studies, but for the history of philosophy and ideas as well. Galley proofs (please quite the final published version). Published in Mester, Béla; Smoczyński, Rafał (eds.). Lords and Boors – Westernisers and ‘Narodniks’ : Chapters from Polish and Hungarian Intellectual History. Budapest, Gondolat Publishers, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of Philosophy (2020) 286 p. pp. 184-203. , 20 p. © Bettina Szabados (Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary) and/or the publisher (2020). Unauthorized reproduction or posting to other websites is not allowed. All Rights Reserved! Scientific use only!
«Subversive Literary Representations of 1821 in the Metapolitefsi (1974-1981)»
Journal of Greek Media and Culture, 2021
The article examines the afterlife of the Greek War of Independence during the Transition period in Greece (1974–81), focusing on literature. The military dictatorship (1967–74) presented itself as the heir of this national revolution. Representations of the 1821 were popularized and mediatized through film, paintings and the public spectacles organized by the regime, culminating in the 150-year anniversary in 1971. This triggered an alternative use of these representations, by songwriters, playwrights and writers who aimed to subvert them through mimicry. Focusing on three novels by young writers of the period, Yoryis Yatromanolakis’s Leimonario (The Spiritual Meadow) (1974), Nikos Platis’s Gkount mpai mister pap (‘Goodbye Mr. Pap’) (1976) and Takis Theodoropoulos’s Ο vios stin politeia tou Thodori Kotronithodorikolou (‘Life in the times of Thodoris Kotronithodorikolos’) (1977), the article examines how these young writers subverted the representations of heroism constructed by the dictatorship through the use of surrealist and avant-garde techniques. The use of pastiche, the corporeal and the fantastic by Yatromanolakis creates an alternative discourse of heroism. In the case of Platis and Theodoropoulos, surrealist techniques, and images of transgressive sexuality create a grotesque gallery of heroes, by emphasizing the hybridity and performativity of their identities. These writers also experimented with the ways in which history is represented in narrative, through reversal of temporality, the nightmarish, corporeality and the private. The article also examines the texts’ reception, at a time when new grand narratives of national history were being shaped.
“Il potere è sempre… realistico”: Pasolini Against Power and Realistic Literature
Annali d’italianistica, 2022
This paper investigates the link between experimental narrative and political engagement in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Petrolio (1992). In particular, it argues that Pasolini employs the narrative strategy of allegorical vision, typical of medieval literature, to challenge the new Power of neocapitalism. He does this by opposing an allegorical and visionary representation of reality to a realistic one, as in the novel realistic literature appears to be dangerously related to Power. This article starts with an analysis of Appunto 103B, where the concept of realistic representation acquires a negative connotation. Used as a synonym for "Machiavellian," realistic representation is defined as the way in which the new Power acts. In the same appunto, visions are presented as an alternative non-realistic form of representation that mocks the logic of Power. Thus, considering the novel's main allegorical visions, this paper discusses how this type of representation sheds light on the new Power and its crimes.
Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD), Central European University, 2024
Komnenian novels were, for some time, considered mere “replicas” of Hellenistic novels. In the last decades research has started to take a different tack, approaching the 12th century novels as refined and complex pieces of literature that enter a dialogue with their own period through their rewriting of ancient models. Niketas Eugenianos’ novel “Drosilla & Charikles” stands out among the other Komnenian novels, due to its subversive engagement with previous and contemporary literary works. Research on Eugenianos’ novel, which previously focused on its transtextual links with other works, has recently shifted its focus to narratological aspects. Although the literary models used by Eugenianos have been thoroughly discussed, his “distancing” from such models has not received scholarly attention so far. Eugenianos acknowledges his debt to previous works while still deliberately choosing to explore different paths, thereby building up anticipation and suspense, while ultimately subverting readerly expectations. This thesis will analyze the effects and functions of these literary strategies, as well as how they might have contributed to Eugenianos’ display of literary virtuosity. I will first perform a narratological analysis of the novel, which will provide the basis for further research. I will then explore various episodes in Drosilla & Charikles where Eugenianos’ dialogue with previous and contemporary works, his use of comic elements, and his establishment of contrasts can be seen as subversive. The analysis of Drosilla & Charikles as a subversive work will shed light on Eugenianos’ engagement with other works and on the interaction between the author, who purposefully creates a multilayered meaning, and his well-educated audience, capable of deciphering and understanding these strategies.
Tertium datur: Lukacs Early Aesthetics and Ethics as Mirrored in "Die Eigenart des Ästhetischen"
Zagreber Germanistische Beiträge, 2020
Considering common compartmentalizations of Lukacs’ work into the early, mature, and late phase, the article explores elements that speak to what critics regard as a ›continuity thesis‹. Against possible assumptions on the prevalence of form in his early work and the dominance of the aesthetics of content in the later phases, the article explores the dialectical relationship of form and content, which comes to represent a leitmotif in Lukacs’ work as a whole. Here, the early specificity of form does not consist of its domination over content but in the inability of the aesthetic to tackle the social problems of a modernity in which art and life part ways.
Towards a Cinema of Poetry - In the Mythical Imagination of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Film and Television Institute of India, 2020
Centered on the essay Cinema of Poetry, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, this short thesis will try to explore the ideas of myth and reality as they appear in the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. In this particular essay Pasolini expands on his ideas of cinema and forges different connections. This paper does not only take these ideas as base point to take flight into the master's work, but also tries to use similar methodology. This thesis is thus about an intricate web of connections and relations, as Pasolini chooses to build them.