The article discusses Lev Tolstoj's involvement in the controversy between the Russian Westerners (Sergej Solov'ev, Boris Cicerin) and the Slavophiles (Konstantin Aksakov, Aleksej Xomjakov, Jurij Samarin) about the nature and character of historical knowledge. This controversy about "true" historical knowledge forms the ideological background for Tolstoj's reflections on the problem of knowledge. This polemic revolves around the Russian reception of Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, whose works and idea of "living science" also find great support with Tolstoj. In his correspondence with Boris Cicerin and later in literary texts (especially in the novel Anna Karenina), Tolstoj develops a peculiar theory of intuitive knowledge that places "living" experience and action above "dead paper", i.e. above academic knowledge.
The manuscript tradition of the Russian Donatus poses a significant challenge for philologists. The recensio codicum has unveiled an intriguing textual transmission, which can be broadly categorized into two primary branches: 1) Some manuscripts, albeit defective (with two of them preserving a bilingual interlinear format), exhibit a rather mechanical copying process of the text; 2) Another branch consists of a single manuscript, which presents a seemingly better text. However, this version is a clearly augmented and interpolated version, reflecting changes made in a later period. A critical comparison between these two recensions not only permits but also necessitates a new editorial approach. This approach should prioritize the legitimate goal of textual restitution while also considering the subsequent history of the text, including its indirect tradition. It is therefore advisable to blend the "classical" method of identifying errors, wherever applicable, with a thorough examination of the text's evolution as evidenced by the interpolated version.
The article, whose title makes an ironic reference to a contemporary Internet phenomenon, is a case study of the marginalization of women writers in the literary history of Slavic modernisms. Detailing the reception of Polish volume Poezje (1876) by Maria Bartusowna, Czech Immortelly (1879) by Irma Geisslova, and Slovak Z vesny zivota (1895) by Ludmila Podjavorinska, I describe the mechanism of downplaying the precursory modernist poetry on account of the age and gender of its authors. Although the volumes, published well before the emergence of modernist movements in the respective literary fields, show all the characteristics of the later Decadence and Symbolism, they were labeled merely as outpourings of excessively sad girls. Instead of being recognized as decadent, they were discredited as naive, immature, and pretentious. As a result, none of the poets has been acknowledged as a precursor of modernism, neither by the succeeding modernists themselves nor by literary historians.
Linguistic research has shown that a new construction, referred to as the absentive, has emerged in many languages. It is commonly understood as a grammatical category that expresses the subject referent's presence in a different location. On a syntactic level, it often involves a combination of the verb to be with an infinitive. Polish also exhibits a structurally similar pattern, which, despite its prevalence, has largely been overlooked in Polish linguistics. The present study addresses this research gap and proposes an interpretation of the construction as a purpose clause.
The Old Church Slavonic eucharistic term (sic) is an original Slavic word derived from the verb *vbsoditi ((sic)) 'to judge; to condemn; to determine. The Slavic lexeme attests a semantic calque of Old High German wiz(z)od 'law, commandment; (Old / New) Testament; communion' (the second stage of the semantic shift is not attested in Slavic). Among the cognates of the Old Church Slavonic (sic) are modem Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian usud and Slovenian usoda 'fatum', while the reflexes of *(sic) are present in Middle Russian, Middle Belarusian as well as in modern Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and in modem Russian dialects.
Polish is considered to be in an initial stage of grammaticalization towards an article language. While previous research has claimed this to be true for monolingual and bilingual speakers, it can be expected that in Polish-German bilinguals the grammaticalization process is further advanced due to contact with an article language (German). In their case, however, the use of lexical (in)definiteness markers may merely be the result of contact with German and does not necessarily indicate the development of an article-like system in Polish. In order to determine the actual degree of grammaticalization of (in)definiteness markers in Polish and to distinguish it from mere contact-related interference from German, this study presents a fine-grained quantitative and qualitative analysis of the use of the Polish demonstrative ten 'this/'the' and the numeral jeden 'one'/'a in different contexts by German-Polish bilinguals and Polish monolinguals. A mixed logistic regression model revealed no significant differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in this respect. While ten was used only as a demonstrative, our data show that jeden has reached the stage of an optional indefinite article.
This article deals with Slovene literature in Austrian Carinthia, where the Slovene ethnic group lives. As a case study, the translations and reception of the Carinthian Slovene Florjan Lipus on the German-language book market are discussed. The research shows that Lipus, unlike other Slovene writers from Carinthia, managed to attract not only Austrian but also renowned German publishers. Moreover, his works were also translated into French and Italian and were well received by the target audiences. A look at the broader context suggests that not only the excellent style and poetics of the Slovene author's language played an important role in this success, but also the enthusiasm and positive criticism of Lipus's works by Peter Handke, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2019). This underlines the thesis of the importance of transnational intermediaries when it comes to selecting works to be translated from Slovene into a foreign language/culture.
