Lev Nikolaïevitch Tolstoï

Nel progettare la presente raccolta di saggi sulla Sincerita di Tolstoj, i curatori non si sono posti l’obiettivo di celebrare genericamente il grande scrittore in occasione del primo centenario della morte, e neppure quello di abbracciare in modo completo la sua opera. Si desiderava piuttosto affrontare alcuni aspetti essenziali della sua eredita partendo da un punto di vista unitario. Si e scelto cosi il tema della “sincerita di Tolstoj” e si sono chiamati a ‘svolgerlo’ studiosi per lo piu italiani, ma anche stranieri, alcuni dediti agli studi tolstoiani da lungo tempo, altri che li hanno sfiorati nel corso di ricerche differenti, tutti ugualmente a loro agio con la letteratura critica russa (tanto che in lingua russa e stata scritta parte dei saggi) e occidentale dell’ultimo secolo.

This paper is an attempt to interpret the phenomenon of death, not least in terms of its relevance for our understanding of life, using L. Tolstoy’s story The Death of Ivan Ilyich as a congenial starting point.
It is an important attribute of death that it fundamentally defies analysis, and, with human consciousness blocking our access to anything that does so, we find ourselves unable to “admit” death into ourselves or identify ourselves with it. Hence our efforts to come to terms with the phenomenon of death by reducing it to a kind of semiotic form expressed in the accepted practices of mourning and burial. The inevitable clash between the phenomenon of death and that of Dasein, whose topos of opposition is being itself, results in an antinomy which can only be resolved by addressing the phenomenal essence of both as a means of looking beyond their mere contents, clearing thereby a space for thought that is normally occupied by consciousness. L. Tolstoy’s treatment of his character’s dying reveals the fundamental solitude of a human being in the face of the most crucial experiences of human existence, such as pain and death. The indefinite nature of such phenomena reveals the power of the impersonal, making one turn to oneself, to one’s very presence in the world (cf. the notion of Dasein), the most authentic way of doing which is turning to one’s childhood.
Compared with conversation concerning the situations of habitual life, the event of death gives a new direction to thinking, leaving no room for dialogue (with no common ground for communication) and creating a kind of conversation with oneself, which is thoroughly complete in itself. Death introduces a position of reflection that establishes a formal limit to the development of life and can properly be defined as a position of thinking. The event of death enables one to conceive life in its integrity. The topoi of life can be “cleared” of their contents and correlated to each other in their formal respect (i.e. that proper to life itself). Such a correlation is made possible by time, the time of the present, the  time of life itself, which defies measurement and has no duration, and, for that reason, is perceived as fictitious, from the point of view of life’s ‘contents’. Thus, the event of death reveals itself as a ‘utopian’  and, at the same time, a theoretical point (topos), from which thinking unfolds itself. Such a position, which is, in fact, a metaphysical point of observation, enables one to consider what occurs in one’s life from a new perspective and to coin language forms that are connected with thinking, rather than with consciousness. This perspective also enables one to think of time irrespective of the specific contents of life, for it lies beyond their boundaries.
https://philpapers.org/rec/SERTLO-2

During the 1960s, the operatic works of Slovak composer Ján Cikker were among the most often performed contemporary operas in Europe, especially in the two German states. The reasons of this success are as interesting as the reasons of the decline that occurred during the 1970s. In both cases, the intensity of the publisher Bärenreiter's support and marketing played an important role, as did the change of the audience's taste which brought a general decrease in the popularity of the postwar Literaturoper in the tradition of Richard Strauss, the music of which was moderately modern and did not fulfill (as it was not meant to fulfill) the requirements of New Music. The reception of Cikker's work, its aesthetic background, and its musical and dramatic solutions are exemplified within his chef d'oeuvre, the opera Vzkriesenie (Resurrection, 1962), based on Tolstoy's novel, which is highly consistent in its dra-maturgy thanks to Fritz Oeser, the libretto's silent co-author.

Critics have long recognized that Ivan's Turgenev's Notes of a Hunter (Zapiski okhotnika) is only nominally a work about hunting, and that it is concerned, at a deeper level, with much more important issues (serfdom, narrative form, and so on). This essay argues that Turgenev's cycle of stories is indeed about okhota, but not just in the traditional sense of the word: it is centrally (though not exclusively) a book about desire. Turgenev is fascinated by desire and longing (okhota) in its many different manifestations (sexual-biological, psychic-emotional, spiritual, aesthetic), by its slow simmer and burn, its cultivation, suppression, release, dissipation. Again and again throughout the cycle his narrator-okhotnik positions himself, both literally and figuratively, “in cover” (na taige)–a vantage point whence he can study (and vicariously participate in) the romantic longing of his various targets. The essay explores implications of this paradigmatic pattern in a number of the stories (most importantly, and in the most detail, in “Yermolai and the Miller's Wife” and “Living Relic”). It argues, furthermore, that Turgenev's preoccupation in Notes of a Hunter with the nature and dynamics of desire was highly personal in its origins (it reflects his longing for Pauline Viardot), yet also universal in its implications: he drew deeply on his own experience to articulate a model of existential and affective conduct that resonated quietly but profoundly in Russian literature in the second half of the nineteenth century.

A course syllabus for an undergraduate seminar on evil and suffering. The readings include selections from scripture, ancient Greek authors (Sophocles), nineteenth century classics (Tolstoy, Stevenson), twentieth century bestsellers (Kushner, Frankl, Wiesel), and contemporary philosophy of religion.