... On the strength of prehistoric evidence and reconstruction, Leroi-Gourhan stresses the import... more ... On the strength of prehistoric evidence and reconstruction, Leroi-Gourhan stresses the importance of the ... près celui des gens des kourganes; mais ceux-ci avaient une civilisation néolithique primitive ... He postulates a boreal root LY-: 'to stick/adhere to' (прили- пать), 'to remain ...
View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Joost van Baak Isaak Babel's "Cemet... more View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Joost van Baak Isaak Babel's "Cemetery at Kozin" I. INTRODUCTION Halfway among the thirty-five stories constituting the narrative text of Babel's Red Cavalry (Konarmiia), the shortest of short stories, the miniature "The Cemetery at Kozin" ("KJIa,/J,6HlI.\e B K03HHe"-henceforth, CaK), occupies a peculiar position. With its 137 words, it is certainly one of his most fascinating prose pieces, and, as I hope to prove, a very important nodal point in the semantics and composition of Red Cavalry (for the complete Russian text of the story and its English translation see the appendix to this article). I intend to present a structural and semantic-semiotic analysis of this story and its literary worlds. It stands apart on account of a significant number of structural features. It is hard to classify among the other stories from Red Cavalry, and is yet connected with the others. It appears to represent a literary genre sui generis: Should we call it a prose miniature, a prose poem, an ornament, an atmospheric (Falen 1974), or lyric sketch (Luplow 1982, 110), a piece of plotless narration, a scenario for a cinematographic still, or even something else? Its ambiguous characteristics as a genre originate from its size, its composition and its stylistic choices (e.g. the absence of plot events, aspectual usage, rhythmic and syntactic patterning, the use of apostrophe and poetic quotation), from its attitude, and from its thematic connections within the chain of Red Cavalry stories. The narrator uses genre indications himself when he says that the memorial stone (the epitaph) "sings" with the "eloquence of a Bedouin's prayer" [my italics]. But the piece as a whole contains a great variety of literary and artistic echoes, including Old Testament poetic topoi, the rhetOlic and pathos of epitaph or dirge, lament, eulogy, elegy, vanitas emblem, idyll, stylized diary entry, the "impressionism" of free journalistic observation, and also still life, or its description in an exhibition catalogue. In the Red Cavalry context this reflects the crisis of the genres typical of the period, as well as the intense interaction between verbal and pictorial art (cf., among others, Flaker 1982, and Hansen-Love 1982). The text evokes a tremendous, and disparate, thematic "space" (for this use of the concept of space cf. also Lotman 1987), or scope, of historical, geographical and cultural images: Volhynia, Assyria, Bogdan Khmel'nitskii, "the East," Bedouin, the diaspora and the disasters of Jewish history in Eastern Europe. We alTive at the stunning conclusion that, by means of lyrical enumeration, allusion, and symbolic implication, the religious, cultural, and even
[…] то что мы ошибочно принимаем за лермонтовский романтизм, в действительности, как мне кажется,... more […] то что мы ошибочно принимаем за лермонтовский романтизм, в действительности, как мне кажется, есть ничто иное, как стихийное, необузданное предвосхищение всего нашего современного субъективно-биографического реализма и предвестие поэзии и прозы наших дней. (Б.Л. Пастернак; цит. по Л.Э., 367)
... On the strength of prehistoric evidence and reconstruction, Leroi-Gourhan stresses the import... more ... On the strength of prehistoric evidence and reconstruction, Leroi-Gourhan stresses the importance of the ... près celui des gens des kourganes; mais ceux-ci avaient une civilisation néolithique primitive ... He postulates a boreal root LY-: 'to stick/adhere to' (прили- пать), 'to remain ...
View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Joost van Baak Isaak Babel's "Cemet... more View related articles Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Joost van Baak Isaak Babel's "Cemetery at Kozin" I. INTRODUCTION Halfway among the thirty-five stories constituting the narrative text of Babel's Red Cavalry (Konarmiia), the shortest of short stories, the miniature "The Cemetery at Kozin" ("KJIa,/J,6HlI.\e B K03HHe"-henceforth, CaK), occupies a peculiar position. With its 137 words, it is certainly one of his most fascinating prose pieces, and, as I hope to prove, a very important nodal point in the semantics and composition of Red Cavalry (for the complete Russian text of the story and its English translation see the appendix to this article). I intend to present a structural and semantic-semiotic analysis of this story and its literary worlds. It stands apart on account of a significant number of structural features. It is hard to classify among the other stories from Red Cavalry, and is yet connected with the others. It appears to represent a literary genre sui generis: Should we call it a prose miniature, a prose poem, an ornament, an atmospheric (Falen 1974), or lyric sketch (Luplow 1982, 110), a piece of plotless narration, a scenario for a cinematographic still, or even something else? Its ambiguous characteristics as a genre originate from its size, its composition and its stylistic choices (e.g. the absence of plot events, aspectual usage, rhythmic and syntactic patterning, the use of apostrophe and poetic quotation), from its attitude, and from its thematic connections within the chain of Red Cavalry stories. The narrator uses genre indications himself when he says that the memorial stone (the epitaph) "sings" with the "eloquence of a Bedouin's prayer" [my italics]. But the piece as a whole contains a great variety of literary and artistic echoes, including Old Testament poetic topoi, the rhetOlic and pathos of epitaph or dirge, lament, eulogy, elegy, vanitas emblem, idyll, stylized diary entry, the "impressionism" of free journalistic observation, and also still life, or its description in an exhibition catalogue. In the Red Cavalry context this reflects the crisis of the genres typical of the period, as well as the intense interaction between verbal and pictorial art (cf., among others, Flaker 1982, and Hansen-Love 1982). The text evokes a tremendous, and disparate, thematic "space" (for this use of the concept of space cf. also Lotman 1987), or scope, of historical, geographical and cultural images: Volhynia, Assyria, Bogdan Khmel'nitskii, "the East," Bedouin, the diaspora and the disasters of Jewish history in Eastern Europe. We alTive at the stunning conclusion that, by means of lyrical enumeration, allusion, and symbolic implication, the religious, cultural, and even
[…] то что мы ошибочно принимаем за лермонтовский романтизм, в действительности, как мне кажется,... more […] то что мы ошибочно принимаем за лермонтовский романтизм, в действительности, как мне кажется, есть ничто иное, как стихийное, необузданное предвосхищение всего нашего современного субъективно-биографического реализма и предвестие поэзии и прозы наших дней. (Б.Л. Пастернак; цит. по Л.Э., 367)
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