The Aesthetics of Russian and Czech Symbolism (Selected Chapters)
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Introduction
- Julius Zeyer – “John the Babtist” of Czech Literary Symbolism (The Artistic Creation as a Search for Cultural Integrity)
- From Decadent Aesthetics to Theurgic Art (Parallels in Genesis of Czech and Russian Literary Symbolism)
- Šalda’s Idea of Synthetism in Modern Art
- Two Concepts of Symbolism in the Aesthetic System of Russian Symbolists
- Hidden Affinities of Two Spiritual Poets
- Aesthetics of A. Bely
- The Art
- The Word
- The Constants of the Symbolism of Otokar Březina
- The Sense of Art
- The Synthesis
- Theurgy (The Art and the Word Transforming the World)
- The Renaissance of the Soul (“Self“)
- The Symbol and the Symbolism
- Conclusion
- Structure of the Genre of Russian Experimental Novel (Destruction of Consciousness vs. Search for Spiritual Integrity)
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index of names
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the
Library of Congress.
This book was published with the financial support of the Faculty of Arts at
the University of Ostrava
Proofreading: Mgr. Iva Cerna
ISBN 978-3-631-91869-2 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-91978-1 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-91979-8 (E-PUB)
DOI 10.3726/b21887
© 2024 Peter Lang Group AG, Lausanne
Published by Peter Lang GmbH, Berlin, Deutschland
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This publication has been peer reviewed.
About the author
Jan Vorel, Ph.D., studied Czech and Russian philology as his university branches. Later, he completed his doctoral studies at Masaryk University. He works as a senior lecturer in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Ostrava. He is the author of several monographs and a wide range of studies in specialized periodicals.
About the book
The book in your hands is a subtle attempt to research a piece of the vast lands of aesthetics, philosophy, art and literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. This period is remarkable for the evolution of the Symbolism which was able to stretch through all the art disciplines and cross the borders of countries spreading its ideas through the intellectual world. The author of the book focuses on parallels resonating in Czech and Russian literature of the particular period. The chapters devoted to the most significant literary and philosophical brains of this period will lead the readers through the evolution in perception of Beauty, they will explain the principles of “theurgy” and show the way culture, and mainly the literature develops as a cross-border phenomena. After browsing the text, you might be able to perceive art as a key factor influencing human thinking.
This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
Introduction
The turn of the 19th and the 20th century brings a total change in the knowledge and artistic projection of the reality. Idealistically oriented philosophers and artists start to understand the Cosmos as a phenomenon that cannot be understood only by means of the Reason. All, seemingly stable models of the world supported mainly by positivism, find themselves in a crisis and the belief that the complexity of our existence could be interpreted through intellectual knowledge fails radically. Thus, as the opposition to rationalism, we can see the rise of idealism, irrationalism and intuitionism in the contemporary culture, represented by ancient systems of thinking (mysticism, Gnosticism, Platonic philosophy, Neoplatonism, etc.) on one hand and, of course, by the modern philosophy on the other hand.
The character of the modern philosophy is represented by a radical redirection from the Reason as the only one source of knowing the reality. Human consciousness began to be understood as a stream of life, as an open, free and creative movement (A. Schopenhauer, F. Nietzsche, H. Bergson), thanks to which the creative individuality was liberated. Nietzsche defined two antinomic principles that participate in the shaping of human culture. He saw its primordial unity in the ancient art. In the modern art, he prioritized the extatically-unconscious Dionysian principle to the Apollonian one that represents mental clarity and order. These findings finally led to a strong mythologizing of the modern art. The creative endeavours of the incoming artistic generation, striving for the spiritualization of culture, are also connected with the strong interest in wide range of religious systems that formed during the history of the human civilization.
Details
- Pages
- 122
- Publication Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631919781
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631919798
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631918692
- DOI
- 10.3726/b21887
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2025 (January)
- Keywords
- Comparative studies Czech and Russian literature of the turn of the 19th and the 20th century aesthetic-philosophical system of the symbolism decadence theurgic symbolism
- Published
- Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2024. 122 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
