Stories of the Soviet experience [[electronic resource] ] : memoirs, diaries, dreams / / Irina Paperno

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910789842203321
• Autore: Paperno Irina
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Ithaca, : Cornell University Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0-8014-5787-4; 0-8014-5911-7
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (303 p.)
• Collana: Cornell paperbacks
• Disciplina: 891.7/0935
• Soggetti: Russian prose literature - 20th century - History and criticism; Autobiography - Russian authors; Autobiographical memory - Soviet Union; Soviet Union History; Soviet Union Intellectual life
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. Memoirs and Diaries Published at The End of The Soviet Epoch: An Overview -- Publishers, Authors, Texts, Reader, Corpus -- The Background: Memoir Writing and Historical Consciousness -- Connecting the "I" and History -- Revealing the Intimate -- Building a Community -- Writing at the End -- Qualification: The "I" in Quotation Marks -- Excursus: Readers Respond in LiveJournal -- Concluding Remarks -- Part II. Two Texts: Close Readings -- 1. Lidiia Chukovskaia's Diary of Anna Akhmatova's Life: "Intimacy and Terror" -- 2. The Notebooks of the Peasant Evgeniia Kiseleva: "The War Separated Us Forever" -- Part III. Dreams of Terror: Interpretations -- Comments on Dreams as Stories and as Sources -- Andrei Arzhilovsky: The Peasant Raped by Stalin -- Nikolai Bukharin Dreams of Stalin: Abraham and Isaac -- Writers' Dreams: Mikhail Prishvin -- Writers' Dreams: Veniamin Kaverin -- The Dreams of Anna Akhmatova -- A Comment on Writers' and Peasants' Theories of Dreams -- A Philosopher's Dreams: Yakov Druskin -- Stalin's Dream -- Concluding Remarks -- Conclusion -- Epilogue -- Appendix: Russian Texts -- Notes -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Beginning with glasnost in the late 1980's and continuing into the present, scores of personal accounts of life under Soviet rule, written throughout its history, have been published in Russia, marking the end of an epoch. In a major new work on private life and personal writings, Irina Paperno explores this massive outpouring of human documents to uncover common themes, cultural trends, and literary forms. The book argues that, diverse as they are, these narratives-memoirs, diaries, notes, blogs-assert the historical significance of intimate lives shaped by catastrophic political forces, especially the Terror under Stalin and World War II. Moreover, these published personal documents create a community where those who lived through the Soviet era can gain access to the inner recesses of one another's lives. This community strives to forge a link to the tradition of Russia's nineteenth-century intelligentsia; thus the Russian "intelligentsia" emerges as an additional implicit subject of this book. The book surveys hundreds of personal accounts and focuses on two in particular, chosen for their exceptional quality, scope, and emotional power. Notes about Anna Akhmatova is the diary Lidiia Chukovskaia, a professional editor, kept to document the day-to-day life of her friend, the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Evgeniia Kiseleva, a barely literate former peasant, kept records in notebooks with the thought of crafting a movie script from the story of her life. The striking parallels and contrasts between these two documents demonstrate how the Soviet state and the idea of history shaped very different lives and very different life stories. The book also analyzes dreams (most of them terror dreams) recounted in the diaries and memoirs of authors ranging from a peasant to well-known writers, a Party leader, and Stalin himself. History, Paperno shows, invaded their dreams, too. With a sure grasp of Russian cultural history, great sensitivity to the men and women who wrote, and a command of European and American scholarship on life writing, Paperno places diaries and memoirs of the Soviet experience in a rich historical and conceptual frame. An important and lasting contribution to the history of Russian culture at the end of an epoch, Stories of the Soviet Experience also illuminates the general logic and specific uses of personal narratives.

The objective eye : color, form, and reality in the theory of art / / John Hyman

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910962141003321
• Autore: Hyman John
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2006
• ISBN: 9786612901942; 9781282901940; 128290194X; 9780226365541; 0226365549
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (315 p.)
• Disciplina: 701/.15
• Soggetti: Visual perception; Composition (Art); Color in art; Art - Psychology
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-275) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Front matter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- PREFACE -- INTRODUCTION -- 1. Galileo's Myth -- 2. Frames of Reference -- 3. Perceiving Powers -- 4. Art and Imitation -- 5. Art and Occlusion -- 6. Art and Optics -- 7. Art and Experience -- 8. Words and Pictures -- 9. Realism and Relativism -- 10. The Canvas of the Brain -- CONCLUSION -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- CREDITS -- INDEX
• Sommario/riassunto: "The longer you work, the more the mystery deepens of what appearance is, or how what is called appearance can be made in another medium."-Francis Bacon, painter This, in a nutshell, is the central problem in the theory of art. It has fascinated philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein. And it fascinates artists and art historians, who have always drawn extensively on philosophical ideas about language and representation, and on ideas about vision and the visible world that have deep philosophical roots. John Hyman's The Objective Eye is a radical treatment of this problem, deeply informed by the history of philosophy and science, but entirely fresh. The questions tackled here ; are fundamental ones: Is our experience of color an illusion? How does the metaphysical status of colors differ from that of shapes? What is the difference between a picture and a written text? Why are some pictures said to be more realistic than others? Is it because they are especially truthful or, on the contrary, because they deceive the eye? The Objective Eye explores the fundamental concepts we use constantly in our most innocent thoughts and conversations about art, as well as in the most sophisticated art theory. The book progresses from pure philosophy to applied philosophy and ranges from the metaphysics of color to Renaissance perspective, from anatomy in ancient Greece to impressionism in nineteenth-century France. Philosophers, art historians, and students of the arts will find The Objective Eye challenging and absorbing.