Michal Oklot Spring 2013 Marston Hall 204, ext. 3-3972 e-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: TH 11:00 – 1:00 PM or by appointment
SLAV 1790: Central Europe: An Idea and its Literature
Course Description:
Central Europe has been defined by seismic historical events from the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The focus of the course is on literary strategies that developed in the face of political upheaval and cultural crisis. Focusing on Central European literature and theatre, we ask: what does it mean to be a Central European writer? Where do the cultural boundaries of Central Europe lie? Can we talk about Central European writing as a distinctive phenomenon in world literature? We will read J.Roth, Celan, Cioran, Schulz, Witkacy, Gombrowicz, Babel, Hrabal, Kundera, Milosz, Kiš. In English.
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Course requirements:
Writing assignments: Midterm Paper (6 pages) Final paper (8-9 pages) Other assignments: Weekly critique. On each Friday students are expected to submit at My Course a short comment (about half a page) containing interpretative ideas, critique, questions, or any other relevant impressions on the assigned reading; short presentations.
Regular attendance and participation
Grade: Class participation (including your weekly critique, presentations) 20% Midterm paper 35% Final paper 45%
Required text (available at Brown bookstore):
Witkiewicz Reader Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke, Bacaccay Bruno Schulz, Collected Prose Isaac Babel, Collected Stories Milan Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being Bohimil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude I served the King of England Peter Handke, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams Joseph Roth, Radetzky’s March (The Emperor’s Tomb – optional) Danilo Kis, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind Tadeusz Borowski, This Way to Gas Ladies and Gentlemen
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Weekly Syllabus
Week 1 (02/31)
Introduction
Week 2 (02/07)
The Idea of Central Europe. Preliminary remarks
Readings: MyCourses:
Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe” Czeslaw Milosz, “Central European Attitudes” http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/crossc/anw0935.1986.001/113:ANW0935.1986.001?p age=root;rgn=full+text;size=100;view=image Gyorgi Konrad, “Is the Dream of Central Europe Still Alive?” (Ibid.) Danilo Kiš, “Variations of Central European Themes” in Homo Poeticus Bohumil Hrabal, Piruettes on a Postage Stamp (selection) Dubravke Ugresic, Café Europa (selection)
Optional: Czeslaw Milosz, “Looking for a Center: One the Poetry of Central Europe”; Alain Badiou, “A French Philosopher Responds to a Polish Poet”
Week 3 (02/14)
Decline of the Empire
Joseph Roth, Radetzky’s March Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “The Austrian Idea,” “View of Spiritual Condition of Europe” (course packet) Robert Musil, “Kakania” in The Man Without Qualities (course packet) Herman Broch, The Sleepwalkers (selection) (course packet) Józef Wittlin, The Salt of the Earth (course packet) Heimito von Doderer, Demons (selected chapters) (course packet) Edmund de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes (selected chapters) (course packet)
Week 4 (02/21) – LONG WEEKEND (no classes)
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Week 5 (02/28)
The Idea of Galicia
Bruno Schulz: Messianism, Melancholy, and Masochism
Readings: Bruno Schulz, The Cinnamon Shops Bruno Schulz, Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass Bruno Schulz, selected essays (course packet)
Optional: Leopold Sacher-Masoch, selected stories (course packet)
Optional: Ernst Bloch, The Principles of Hope (selction); “The Production of the Ornament” in The Spirit of Utopia
Optional: Larry Wolff, The idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2010) (selection) [electronic resource]:
http://josiah.brown.edu/search~S7?/aWolff%2C+L/awolff+l/1%2C15%2C46%2C B/frameset&FF=awolff+larry&6%2C%2C14
Week 6 (03/06)
Schulz, cont.
Bukovina, or “The Meridian”: Aesthetics of the Borderland
Stanislaw Vincenz, On the High Uplands; Sagas, Songs, Tales and Legends of the Carpathians (selection) (course packet) Josef Wittlin, Salt of the Earth (selection)
George Lukasc, Theory of the Novel (selection) (course packet)
Paul Celan, selected poetry
Week 7 (03/13)
Witkacy: Catasrophism and the Theatre of Pure Form
Readings: Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Janulka, the Daughter of Fizdejko; selected artistic manifestoes; Insatiability (selected chapters)
Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay (selection) (MyCourse) 4
Optional: Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (selection) (MyCourses); Konstantin Leont’ev, selected essays (MyCourses)
Tadeusz Kantor: Theatre of “Central European” Memory
Readings: Tadeusz Kantor, selected writings (course packet)
Screening: Tadeusz Kantor, The Dead Class (OCRA)
Midterm Paper Due
Week 8 (03/20)
Central Europe – a View from Russia
Line and Color: the Art of Isaac Babel
Readings: Isaac Babel, The Red Cavalry Stories (selected stories)
Danilo Kis, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich (selection)
Week 9 (04/03)
Immaturity: Central European Modality
Readings: Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke; selected stories
Witold Gombrowicz, A Guide into Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes (Arthur Schopenhauer and Jean-Paul Sartre); “Against the Poets” (course packet)
Week 10 (04/10)
Gombrowicz, cont.
Eastern Europe? An Idea and Its Literature
Readings: Czesaw Milosz, The Captive Mind; selected poems
Alexander Wat, My Twentieth-Century (selection)
Tadeusz Borowski, “This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen” (selected stories)
Peter Handke, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
Screening: One Day in People’s Poland – a documentary film directed by Maciej Drygas (OCRA); “The Landscape after the Battle,” dir. Andrzej Wajda (OCRA)
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Week 11 (04/17)
Imaginary Central Europe: Between Aesthetics and Existence
Readings: Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude I Served The King of England Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (selection)
Week 12 (04/24)
Milan Kundera: Politics of the Novel
Readings: Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being,
Josiph Brodsky, “Why Milan Kundera is Wrong about Dostoyevsky”
“Central Europe” after 1989 (“Round Table”: Pelevin, Kundera, Maslowska, Stasiuk, Andruchowycz)
Readings: (course packet)
Final Paper Due on May 9
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