Fortællerens fødsel ud af snestormen

In this article I analyze ‘Kirstens sidste Rejse’ [Kirsten’s Last Journey], one of Johannes V. Jensen’s stories from Himmerland, drawing on both the original version of the text published in 1901, and the version included in 1904 in Nye Himmerlandshistorier [New Stories from Himmerland]. At first sight, the story is realistic account of two men transporting a coffin with the corpse of an old woman from Aalborg to her home village in Himmerland where she is to be buried, and the violent snowstorm in which they are caught on the way. By the time they finally reach their destination, Christen Sørensen, who has been driving the horse-drawn carriage, has undergone a profound change. Earlier a silent person, he now recounts endlessly, with the same mechanical voice, the journey with the dead woman. In this article, I offer a reading of the story from the perspective of Maurice Blanchot’s literary theory, arguing that Johannes V. Jensen’s text can be read as an allegory of the becoming of the literary narration and its relation to the experience of death and nothingness.

A Celebrity from the Sky: ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad’s Journey to National and International Fame in ʿAbd al-Nāṣir’s and al-Sādāt’s Egypt

ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad (1927–88) is one of the most renowned Egyptian Qurʾān reciters of the mujawwad and murattal styles, admired nationally and internationally for his remarkable voice and improvisatory style. Starting from the 1950s, his national and international career was entwined with the emergence of Egyptian mass media, which contributed not only to the spread of his voice on the radio, followed by the distribution of cassettes, but also to the formation of his image through a variety of media texts. While avoiding explicit political engagement, he largely contributed to the religious legitimation of ʿAbd al-Nāṣir’s and al-Sādāt’s policies by his presence at iconic events, as well as to the growth of Egyptian soft power. This article sets ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ʿAbd al-Ṣamad’s career within the media and political landscape of his time, exploring his journey from his Upper Egyptian home village to transnational celebrity.

Navigating ethnicity, nationalism and Pan-Africanism – Kimbanguists, identity and colonial borders

The Kimbanguists, whose church is based on the healing and proclamation ministry of Simon Kimbangu in 1921 in the Belgian Congo, challenge colonially defined borders and identities in multiple ways. Anticolonialism is in the DNA of Kimbanguism, yet in a manner that contests the colonially inherited dichotomy between religion and politics. Kimbanguists draw from holistic Kongo traditions, where the spiritual and material/political are inherently interwoven. Kimbangu’s home village, Nkamba, is the centre of the world for them, and Kongo culture and the ancient kingdom form the backdrop of the Kimbanguist view of the new eschatological order to come. The reunification of the kingdom from the two Congo states and Angola will mark the inauguration of the new era. This will not, however, mean a splintering of the Democratic Republic of Congo but rather a removal of the colonial borders. That hints towards a Pan-African vision of a united Africa and even a universally united Black race that will play a central role in the eschatological salvation historical drama. The Kimbanguist vision also contains global dimensions, and their view of borders and identities is like Nkamba-centred ripples in water. This vision wipes away colonial borders and relativises ethnic, national and racial identities whilst strongly subscribing to a salvation historical narrative that places Africa and Africans in the centre.Contribution: This article contributes to the study of nationalism as well as of African Instituted Churches. The analysis of how the Kimbanguists relate to (Kinshasa) Congolese nationalism, Kongo ethnic identity and Pan-Africanism as well as of their global missional views reveals layers and complex patterns of relationship between all these. What facilitates the simultaneous subscribing to all these layers is an openness of identities (Kimbanguist national, ethnic, etc.), as well as a tendency to see the world as consisting of interdependent areas and human communities with their holy city, Nkamba, in the centre.

UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOUR OF THE AUSTRALIAN RETIREMENT VILLAGE INDUSTRY: A CAUSAL LOOP DIAGRAM

The retirement village industry in Australia has been accommodating an increasing number of residents in recent decades. However, a thorough understanding of the dynamic behaviour of the industry remains largely unknown, which prevents a better prediction of its future growth. This study incorporates system dynamics thinking into residents’ relocation decisions and aims to develop a causal loop diagram to have a full understanding of the complex interactions of variables affecting their relocation, which in turn determines the future growth pattern of the industry. Based on thematic analysis using literature review and interview data, five primary causal loops are identified, including the positive reinforcing loops of word-of-mouth effect and new-supply effect, and three negative balancing loops of the move-out effect, price effect and home-village distance effect. Of these five causal loops, the most dominant ones in determining the system behaviour are the word-of-mouth (reinforcing) and home-village distance (balancing) effects. The causal loop diagram provides a better understanding of the underlying structure of the retirement village industry and will help guide the industry and policy makers in formulating strategies to create a more ageing-friendly living environment for seniors in Australia.

Zabuti imena: Vasylʹ Tkachuk ochyma rodychiv y odnoselʹchan (na osnovi aktualʹnykh intervʺyu)

Vasyl Tkachuk (1916-1944) is a forgotten talent of the Ukrainian literature of the 1930s. Not so long ago this outstanding short-story writer was completely unknown to a wide range of readers. Today his memory is being laboriously restored. His artistic profile, personal features, and his surrounding’s attitude to the author may be described to readers thanks to the recent interviews with his close relatives and the residents of his home village and region. Memories of the people who met Vasyl Tkachuk or remember him from their relatives’ stories prove the writer’s exceptional nature and his writing career, which was stopped by his death.

Performing the Emperor: Sui Jingchen's “Han Gaozu Returns to His Home Village”

Reading Sui Jingchen's song suite “Gaozu Returns to His Home Village” against early sources, this article explores how Sui's work selects and inverts the elements that ground definitive historical accounts of rulership to refashion a familiar narrative in a theatrical mode. The sanqu's use of performance tropes expands the scope of criticism in this humorous piece past concerns about Yuan rulership, or even the imperial institution, to broader questions of representational instability and uncertainty. These shifts implicate readers in a social and political critique and engage issues often associated with early modern fiction and drama, including authenticity, imposture, and interpolations of author, character, player, reader, and audience.

Changing Atmospheres: The Proto-Ecological Landscapes of Nikolai Astrup

The innovative artist and smallholder Nikolai Astrup (1880–1928) spent most of his career devoted to portraying variations of his home village of Jølster. The early reception and framing of Astrup’s work as ‘national’ was, by large, a result of the budding national art institutions’ efforts towards unifying the diverse regional cultures into a single national identity. This chapter questions to what degree Nikolai Astrup’s artistic project adhered to a national agenda. Through the lens of ecocritical art history, Astrup’s art can be seen as an expression of proto-ecological sensibilities and a reaction to the environmental changes of his time. His landscape paintings often include humans working on the land, and appear to represent an opposition to the nature-culture dichotomy and the increasing separation between humans and their environment that occurred during Astrup’s lifetime. His representation of his surroundings was that of the place-specific, cyclical and particular. In this chapter, these characteristics of Astrup’s artistic project are discussed in light of Arne Næss’ notion of deep ecology.

A Life in The Museum: An Homage to Dr. Dumitru Murariu at 80 Years

Dr. Dumitru Murariu was born on September 21, 1940 in Ungureni, Botoşani County, as the first child in a peasant family. He attended primary and secondary school in his home village. Since the beginning he proved himself to be one of the brightest students in the class and, as a consequence, the school teachers advised his parents to have him continue his education. At the end of secondary school, the young Dumitru Murariu enrolled at the “August Treboniu Laurian” theoretical 280 Popa & Popa high school in the city of Botoşani. During these years (1955–1957), the teacher of “the Fundamentals of Darwinism” made a strong impression on the future scientist, with practical lessons, in a small garden, on the correlation between the natural selection and the variability of organisms. On the way from the main building to the above‑mentioned garden, the professor taught his pupils how to identify the trees on the sidewalks and from the “Public Garden”. This teacher’s name was Remus Cehovschi - former Assistant Professor at the University of Chernivtsi (Cernăuți – North Bukovina), from where he took refuge to Botoșani in 1944. After graduating high school, Dumitru Murariu returned to his home village, where he occupied a position of unqualified teacher in the village school. In the fall of 1958, he was drafted for the mandatory military service until mid-January 1961. Returning home, he resumed his school position but in the autumn of the same year, he successfully passed the admission exams at the Faculty of Biology-Geography, the Department of Biology-Zoology at the “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iași. Based on his academic excellence he received a scholarship until graduating in 1966.

THE FAMILY NARRATIVE IN THE NOVEL “BUKOVA ZEMLYA” [BEECH LAND] BY MARIYA MATIOS

The purpose of the research is to define “family narrative” term; to analyze its structure as well as typological features in “Bukova Zemlya” [Beech Land]. Panorama-novel covering 225 years” by M. Matios published in 2019.Methods have been designed in compliance with the key principles of narratology (particularly, works by Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette, Yury Lotman, Vladimir Propp, Wolf Schmid, etc), the inter-relation of narration types as well as the implemented forms of memory’s reproduction.Results. The author of the research has suggested a definition of “family narrative” term as a form of transformation of cultural, historical and communicative memory. The author has identified and analyzed its structure, key functions, typological and individual features using “Bukova Zemlya” novel by M. Matios. The text of the novel is built as a linear narrative of four families during 225 years in XVIII-XX centuries at the territory of Bukovyna (currently, in the South-West of Ukraine). According to G. Genette’s typology, the impartiality of the story is achieved via conducting a narration on behalf of a heterodiegetic narrator in an extradiegetic situation. Combination of a family and a historical narratives is typologically manifested through detailed descriptions of ancestry trees; family stories; ethnography-styled descriptions of customs and every-day living of Hutsuls [an ethnic group living in Caprathian mountains of Ukraine or nearby]. The author also mentions well-known historical figures, uses testimonies of the individuals who lived in those times found in archive sources on the First World War, protests, rallies and riots in 1918; describes the events of the Second World War, anti-Soviet Resistance in Bukovyna and finishes the novel with the events of the War in Donbas in 2014. Following the classification approach by G. Genette, M. Matios applies an internal focalization of a plural type. In particular, the views of the various characters are presented from the perspective of a heterodiegenetic narrator. For example, one of the novel’s chapters describes a cross-cutting theme of war simultaneously both as viewed by a peasant, Dariy Berehovchuk, and by an ambassador, Nikolay Vasylko. The family narrative includes specific typology features as “sine qua non” components of the plot: birth, marriage, re-location (home/village/city/home country), hardships (diseases, famines, the Holocaust, wars), death. The author’s specific elements of her view upon the family narrative include the themes of Land, the God and belief, Language, Ethnicity (including the topic of multiple ethnic groups living in Bukovyna). The novel also has such popular elements for a family narrative as images of twins (or twin strangers) and some borrowed traditional features of folk epic tales: cases of “magical recognition” and “magical prophecy” for a future of a kin.Conclusions. The family narrative of M. Matios’ novel includes both typology and individual features. It is built in compliance with the structure of the internal focalization of plural type. The narration is presented as conducted by a heterodiegentic narrator in a extradiegenetic situation. Hence, an impartiality of a narration and a subjectivity of a discourse in present time provides for realization of “I”-presence of a reader and avoiding idealization and mythologization of a family narrative, which are quite traditional for it.Key words: narration, heterodiegenetic narrator, historical narrative, cultural memory, communicative memory. Мета – визначити поняття «родинний наратив», проаналізувати його структуру та типологічні ознаки у творі М. Матіос «Букова земля. Роман-панорама завдовжки у 225 років» (2019).Методи дослідження формуються відповідно до основних положень наратології (праці Р. Барта, Ж. Женетта, Ю. Лотмана, В. Проппа, В. Шміда та ін.), взаємозв’язку типу нарації і втілених форм репродукції пам’яті.Результати. У процесі дослідження було запропоновано дефініцію поняття «родинний наратив» як форми трансформації культурної, історичної та комунікативної пам’яті. Визначено та проаналізовано його структуру, основні функції, типологічні та індивідуальні ознаки на прикладі роману М. Матіос «Букова земля». Зазначено, що текст побудований у формі лінійного наративу історії чотирьох родів протягом 225 років на території Буковини XVIII–XXI століть. Об’єктивність викладу досяга-ється, за типологією Ж. Женетта, завдяки нарації від імені гетеродієгетичного наратора в екстрадієгетичній ситуації. Типо-логічною ознакою є поєднання родинного та історичного наративів, що демонструється через детальний опис родоводів, сімейних історій, етнографічного опису побуту та звичаїв гуцулів, згадок про відомих осіб, використання свідчень сучасників з архівних джерел подій Першої світової війни, протестів, мітингів і заворушень 1918 р., подій Другої світової війни, істо-рії антирадянського опору на Буковині та завершення оповіді роману подіями війни на Донбасі у 2014 р. За класифікацією Ж. Женетта, в романі використано внутрішню фокалізацію множинного типу, а саме подаються погляди різних персонажів із точки зору гетеродієгетичного наратора. Наприклад, наскрізна тема війни в одному з епізодів роману одночасно описується з погляду селянина Дарія Береговчука і посла Николая Василька. Типологічними ознаками родинного наративу є і неодмінні складники сюжету: народження, одруження, зміна місця (дому/села/міста/батьківщини), випробування (хвороби, голод, голо-кост, війна), смерть. Виразними елементами авторського погляду на родинний наратив стали теми землі, Бога і віри, мови, національності (зокрема, і тема багатонаціональної буковинської землі). У романі присутні і такі поширені елементи родин-ного наративу, як образи близнюків (або двійників), а також запозичені усталені ознаки сюжетів народного епосу – епізоди чарівного упізнання і магічного передбачення майбутнього роду.Висновки. Родинний наратив роману М. Матіос містить типологічні та індивідуальні ознаки, формується відповідно до структури внутрішньої фокалізації множинного типу. Нарація подається у викладі гетеродієгетичного наратора в екстрадієге-тичній ситуації. Таким чином, об’єктивність оповіді та суб’єктивність дискурсу теперішнього часу дає змогу втілитися ефекту «я»-присутності читача та уникнути традиційної для родинного наративу ідеалізації та міфологізації.Ключові слова: нарація, гетеродієгетичний наратор, історичний наратив, культурна пам’ять, історична пам’ять, комуні-кативна пам’ять.

Love at the Threshold of War and Migration

In 1946, as the dust began to settle from the brutalities and destruction of war, Maria’s young life was set in motion. Her departure from her home village in Southern Italy to a boarding school in Umbria—followed by subsequent moves within Italy, and later to Canada—signaled a mobilization that would, in time, transform her notions of love, home, and family. Love and separation form the nexus of analysis in this chapter on love and migration. Through narratives of memory, silence, loss, regret, and resilience, a transnational love between a mother and daughter is unraveled. Drawing from a series of oral history interviews and a lifetime of conversations, this chapter examines the world of tensions and dynamics of distant love between a mother and her daughter. It shows how love was a powerful driver of migration and legitimizer of separation between mother and daughter in a historical moment of severe austerity in Italy. An auto/biographical, personal narratives approach is employed to explore questions on love and distance emerging in the contexts of war and migration in the mid-twentieth century.