Conference FF Ljubljana 30 11- 01 12 2017

Literature and the European Spiritual Traditions International Conference, 30. November – 1. December 2017, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Aškerčeva 2, Ljubljana Conference organised by Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana Slovenian Comparative Literature Association

The Organizing Committee Alen Albin Širca, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts

The symposium on Literature and the European Spiritual Traditions is sponsored by JAK RS (The Slovenian Book Agency) and Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana

Programme Venues: Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana (Blue-Room), Aškerčeva 2 Pod lipo Restaurant, Borštnikov trg 3, Ljubljana

*** Thursday, November 30th 10.00–11.30 Registration (Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2) 11.30 Opening address First session (chaired by Alen Širca) 12.00–13.00 Ioannis Kalogerakos (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece) “Contemplation in Aristotle and in early Greek philosophical literature” (keynote address) 13.30–14.00 Blaž Zabel, (University of Durham, United Kingdom) “I step up to the altar and read from sacred Homer”: reading practices of Homer and nature mysticism in Goethezeit” 14.00–14.30 Matic Kocijančič (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia): “The Mystery of Antigone’s Double Burial” 15.00–16.30 Lunch in Pod lipo, Borštnikov trg 3 Second session (chaired by Matic Kocijančič) 17.00–17.30 Jan Ciglenečki / Borut Škodlar (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) “John Climacus’ »Ladder of Divine Ascent«: Kenotic literature and the Quest(ion) of the Self ” 17.30–18.00 Nena Bobovnik (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) “Nikolaus Kempf and Dionysian tradition” 20.00 Dinner

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Friday, December 1th Third session (chaired by Jan Ciglenečki) 11.00–11.30 Raid al-Daghistani (University of Münster, Germany) “Impact of Islamic mysticism on German romanticism” 11.30–12.00 Vid Snoj (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) “»Rose of Nothingness«: Kabbalah in »Psalm« of Paul Celan” 12.00–12.30 Coffee break Fourth session (chaired by Vid Snoj) 12.30–13.00 Neža Zajc (SAZU, Slovenia) “St Maxim the Greek and his Opus of Prayers” 13.00–13.30 Alen Širca (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) “Barock mystical poetry” 13.30–14.00 Janko Lozar ((University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) “Gombrowicz and the transcendence of the interhuman” 14.00–15.30 Lunch in Pod lipo, Borštnikov trg 3 Fifth session (chaired by Janko Lozar) 15.30–16.00 Željko Uvanovič (University of Osijek, Croatia) “Catholic literary revival in England and G. K. Chesterton’s prose works in comparison with Roman Catholicism of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s dramas – and the danger of anti-Semitism” 16.00–16.30 Milosav Gudović (University of Beograd, Serbia) “Two princes, two cities: the motif of kenosis in the works of Hölderlin and Dostoyevsky”

16.30–17.00 Coffee break Sixth session (chaired by Milosav Gudović) 17.00–17.30 Martin Uranič (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) „Lightness and Weight in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Zarathustra’s three metamorphoses of the spirit” 17.30–18.30 Dejan Kos (University of Maribor, Slovenia) “On the Origin of Poetry” (second key note address) 19.00 Dinner

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Participants and Abstracts Participants Raid Al-Daghistani Nena Bobovnik Jan Ciglenečki Milosav Gudović Ioannis Kalogerakos Matic Kocijančič Dejan Kos Janko Lozar Vid Snoj Alen Širca Borut Škodlar Martin Uranič Željko Uvanović Blaž Zabel Neža Zajc

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Raid Al-Daghistani Zentrum für Islamische Theologie, University of Münster Raid Al-Daghistani (1983) received his BA from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and undertook postgraduate studies of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the Institut für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft of the University of Münster (Germany), where he also earned his Ph. D. (magna cum laude) on the subject of Islamic Mysticism. He is currently engaged in Postdoctoral Research at the Zentrum für Islamische Theologie at the University of Münster. He has published several academic and popular articles in both national and international journals, as well as three monographs: “Odsevi in Sledi” (Ljubljana, 2009), “Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali: Erkenntnislehre und Lebensweg” (Freiburg i. Br., 2014), and “Falsafa: Einführung in die klassische arabisch-islamische Philosophie” (Freiburg i. Br., 2016). He has translated two book, the first from German into Slovenian: “Die Kultur der Ambiguität: Eine andere Geschichte des Islams” by the Leibniz-Prize Winner Thomas Bauer (Ljubljana, 2014), and the second from Arabic into Slovenian: “Al-munqīḏ min aḍ-ḍalāl” by the famous Muslim scholar Abū Hāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (Ljubljana, 2014). He has a scholarship from the Maturidi-Studienförderung (ADSAM) and is a member of AFAQ e.V. Association for Cultural and Social Collaboration.

Impact of Islamic Mysticism on German Romanticism In my presentation, I aim at outlining the impact of Islamic mysticism, especially the Islamic mystical poetry of Ḥāfīẓ and Saʿdī, on German romanticism. To this end, I focus particularly on the perception and reception of Islam in the context of the works of Goethe, Herder and Hammer-Purgstall, showing thereby not only their great affection for the Islamic mystical heritage and poetry, but also their fascination with the Arabic and Persian languages, as well as with the Holy Quran. For, it was precisely the aesthetic dimension of Islam which, in addition to its spiritual aspects, inspired the creativity of these important German poets and thinkers of the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Nena Bobovnik Department for Classical Philology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana Nena Bobovnik is student of Latin and Philosophy, and a teacher of Latin at Gimnazija Bežigrad.

Nikolaus Kempf and His Mystical Theology Despite his important role, little is known about Nikolaus Kempf (c. 1397/1416 – 1497), a Carthusian monk born in Straßburg, who lived part of his life in today’s Slovenia as a prior at Jurkloster (Gaming) and Pleterje (Pletriach). His three works on mystical spirituality were probably composed at Pleterje and are found copied in one hand in a Seitz codex dated 1468. Can one thus speak of Slovenian mysticism? Kempf ’s view of mystical theology is anti-intellectual. His path leads from the theology of the intellectus to the theology of the affectus. He mentions three steps: purgation, illumination and union. Each of the three is further divided into three degrees, producing a ninefold structure that corresponds to the Pseudo-Dionysian hierarchy of angels. The key to the third and most perfect cleansing is daily self-examination. It is at this juncture that Kempf stops to ask if such perfect cleansing is indeed possible and gives way to sola gratia spirituality. There are two types of mystical union: via unitiva (the cataphatic and apophatic ways) and unio sanctissima, a passive union without a created medium (sine aliquo medio creato), consisting only of infused activity, altogether apophatic, beyond cognition and love.

The leitmotiv of his work is his inclination to live a quiet, cloistered religious life in contemplation. Those who attend are in fact the poor, the weak and the blind.

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Jan Ciglenečki and Borut Škodlar Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana / University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana Jan Ciglenečki is Assistant Professor on the Department of Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His main fields of interest are Ancient Greek and Medieval Philosophy with special emphasis on Patristic Era, Monastic Spirituality, and Egyptian anchorites. In 2015 he published monograph on ontology and eschatology in Archaic Greek thought entitled Pozabljeni temenos (Forgotten Temenos).

Borut Škodlar is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist and works at University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana and at Faculty of Medicine Ljubljana. He is interested in phenomenology and psychotherapy of psychotic states and also in function, meaning and therapeutic values of monastic praxis and mystical experiences.

John Climacus and the Quest(ion) of Self in Kenotic Literature With the concept of kenotic literature, we can denote literary works that address, encourage and inspire a reader to initiate and endure the path of inner deepening into oneself, without which approaching God is inconceivable. Kenosis in Greek stands for emptying, i.e. emptying as a result of spiritual cleansing. This process of cleansing encompasses an unclasping of the grip of autobiographical story and images of oneself, which hinder insight into the individual’s spiritual core. Attachment to personal stories, which all gravitate to one’s role, importance and achievements represents a key obstacle in the light of kenotic tradition. One of the most renowned examples of Byzantine kenotic literature is the Ladder of Divine Ascent, which was written around 600 AD by John Climacus. This influential monastic masterpiece describes in vivid language and inspiring style the 30 steps through which the principles, dynamics and strategies of contemplative absorption into the mechanisms of the human soul are revealed. The insights and recommendations of Climacus that are described in this literary work have influenced generations of monks and can serve as inspiration for contemporary people.

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Milosav Gudović

University of Belgrade / University of Ljubljana Milosav Gudović was born in 1980 in Belgrade where he obtained MA in philosophy. His chief theoretical fields of interest are questions of hermeneutics, phenomenology, philosophy of culture, and philosophical and religious aspects of literature. At the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at Faculty of Arts Ljubljana he is currently working on his PhD on poetology of Martin Heidegger.

Two Princes, Two Cities: The Motif of Kenosis in the Works of Hölderlin and Dostoyevsky The contribution is dedicated to the group of religious-philosophical motifs in Hölderlin’s late hymn, Celebration of Peace, the center of which belongs to the character of Christ as “the prince of the festival”. We arrive at a possible explanation of this poetic image by comparative reading of Dostoyevsky. To Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin, the main character in the novel The idiot, the author also assigned the role of a prince. To the external and accidental kinship of these two artistic figures, which originated in different literary and intellectual frameworks, our interpretation attaches an essential characteristic in common: a poetic conceptualisation of the kenotic act of God and (hu)man. We took the term “two cities” from Sergei Bulgakov’s book of the same name (Два града).

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Ioannis Kalogerakos

Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Ioannis Kalogerakos is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek Philosophy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Department of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology, and teaching associate with the Hellenic Open University. He has worked at the R.C.G.P. of the Academy of Athens and at the Universities of Patras, Heidelberg and Cyprus. His main publications include Seele und Unsterblichkeit.

Untersuchungen zur Vorsokratik bis Empedokles (Stuttgart/Leipzig 1996; Berlin/ New York/London 22012) and Παιδεία και πολιτειακή αριστεία. Ο δρόμος προς την αρετή στο αριστοτελικό ιδανικό κράτος [Paideia and Constitutional Excellence. The Way to Virtue in Aristotle’s Best State] (Athens 2015, 22016). He is currently working on Plato’s Political Philosophy.

Contemplation in Aristotle and in Early Greek Philosophical Literature The philosophical ideal of the contemplative life is praised by Aristotle. According to Aristotle, theoretical activity is the best activity of which we are capable, since it is the exercise of the best in us on the best of all objects, those which are eternal and unchanging; he who thus lives is the happiest man. Many dimensions of contemplation and of the contemplative life are presented in the works of Aristotle, especially in the last chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle follows Plato, since the philosophical significance of theoria and of a life devoted to it is illustrated in many dialogues, especially in the Republic. There are also some previous authors such as Thales, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Democritus, or even Euripides, to which the tradition ascribes the concept of theoria. This paper outlines firstly Aristotle’s understanding and evaluation of contemplation and of the contemplative life, with reference also to the Platonic conception of contemplation. Furthermore, it focuses on the early use of theoria and on the prehistory of contemplation, examining its meaning in the texts of the aforementioned early Greek authors; it also investigates whether Plato and Aristotle shared with them the same or a similar concept of theoria and of the contemplative life.

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Matic Kocijančič

Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana Matic Kocijančič is Young Researcher at the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research interests include ancient Greek drama, philosophy of tragedy, and Slovenian post-war theatre. He won the Maribor Theatre Festival award for the best essay in 2006. His first book, Knjiga pohval in pritožb – a collection of film, book and theatre reviews – was published in 2016.

The Mystery of Antigone’s Double Burial In 1888 Richard Claverhouse Jebb, in a note for his translation of Antigone, cautiously suggested that he had noticed an unclear point in Sophocles’ tragedy to which other work had not yet paid attention. When Antigone before her capture comes to Polyneices’ body for the second time, according to the Guard, she tries to perform a ritual which might be understood as completing or even repeating the burial of her brother, even though the Guard’s first report implies that she had carried out an appropriate and full burial rite already upon her first visit to the scene.

“Was it not, then, done once for all?,” asks Jebb, who is concerned about the detail of the ritual dust being used twice, but between whose lines we can discern a broader problem: Why does Antigone return to the corpse of her brother at all, if she has in fact already carried out what she meant to do the first time? In the twentieth century, this question became a staple of philological, literary and philosophical discussions of Antigone, no doubt also due to Jebb’s comments on Sophocles being so influential.

In my lecture, I will present the main features of the discussion about the twofoldness of Antigone’s burial rite, with particular attention to those aspects that raise questions about the status of narrative reality in Greek drama.

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Dejan Kos

University of Maribor, Faculty of Arts Dejan Kos is Associate Professor of German literature at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor. He writes on the empirical study of literature, contemporary systems theory and medieval German literature. Recently, he has focused on the theory and practice of literary history.

On the Origin of Poetry In the history of European thought, there have been two kinds of discussion about the origin of poetry: those that do not capitalize the first letter of the term origin, and those that do. The former discussions are those that in recent centuries have adopted the language of many subtypes of scientific discourse (from the natural sciences, social sciences and cognitive science, to semiotics, humanistic disciplines and cultural history), while the latter have adopted certain philosophical and theological concepts. Although the two varieties of thought are often connected with one another, the present paper tries to go a step further in attempting to find synergies and relatedness. Reflecting on the common denominator of the two fundamental dimensions of poetry—”productive” (poiein) and aesthetic (self-reference)—we will contemplate the potential within the essential overcoming of this dualism.

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Janko M. Lozar

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana Janko M. Lozar is Associate Professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Ljubljana University Faculty of Arts. His research work covers the field of phenomenology, stemming from the reflections on nihilism, crisis of European rationality and history of being, as advocated by Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger.

He has so far published four philosophical monographs: Vedrenje vedrine (Lingering Joviality, 2011), Fenomenologija razpoloženja (Phenomenology of Attunement, 2012), Nietzsche skozi nihilizem (Nietzsche through Nihilism, 2014) and Nietzsche in Heidegger: ubranosti naproti (Nietzsche and Heidegger: Towards Attunement, 2016).

Gombrowicz and the Transcendence Of The Interhuman If a writer is sufficiently excellent, it is fairly easy to reveal the spiritual dimension of his work. The present treatise attempts to draw closer to Gombrowicz’s magnificent novel Ferdydurke, which contains several clues for uncovering a premodern and even Pre-Platonic paradigm of spirituality. In his self-reflective writings, Gombrowicz explicitly criticizes the prevailing Modern paradigm of extreme anthropocentrism. Ferdydurke, however, brings before readers the artistic revelation of the truth of being, which comes closest to the Pre-Platonic and highly impalpable (for modern minds) truth of being as transition, which could tentatively be described as rushing through existence in the unbearable lightness of the mutuality of coming and passing away. The basic concept serving as the starting point for the explication of this evasive phenomenality is the concept of distance. How are we to understand the dynamics of this being in the distance, if we are to escape falling into the anthropocentric trap of subjective self-sufficiency?

Key words: Ferdydurke, anthropocentrism, cosmocentrism, the interhuman, distance, transcendence

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Vid Snoj

Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana Vid Snoj (1965) is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana. His interest is not limited only to literature, but comprises also other arts, religion, and philosophy. He translated, or cotranslated, several important authors in Slovenian. The list of his non-literary translations includes Meister Eckhardt, Mircea Eliade, Gershom Scholem, Erich Auerbach, George Steiner, and, among philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. In the last few years, he published a translation of Friedrich Hölderlin’s late hymns (2006) as well as three books of his own in Slovenian: Nova zaveza in slovenska literature (The New Testament and Slovenian Literature, 2005), Judovski sekstet (Jewish sextet, 2006; texts on Gershom Scholem, Erich Auerbach, Franz Werfel, Leo Shestov, Jacques Derrida, and Franz Kafka), and Od drugega do Drugega (From the other to the Other, 2007; essays on the status of the other in the contemporary globalized world, literature, and arts).

“Rose of Nothingness”: Jewish Catastrophe and Kabbalah in Paul Celan’s Psalm The Holocaust or Shoah, Jewish catastrophe, has been present in Celan’s oeuvre from the beginning, since the publication of his first and best known poem, Fugue of Death. Over time, Celan’s poetry about the Jewish catastrophe came to include Jewish mysticism, perhaps most deeply so in the Psalm. In this poem he gives voice to victims - not those awaiting death in the death camp, such as in Fugue of Death but to the dead, those already annihilated. The speakers in Psalm address No One, i.e. God, as if he did not exist. This is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s proclamation “God is Dead”, according to which nothing is left of God or the transcendental world, the world of ideas that once gave substance and power to earthly life. However, Celan’s speakers do not talk about God but to God, addressing him as No One. However, the address is also to themselves, to those who instead of being buried were gassed and then rose in the air as smoke, as the “Nothing-Rose” and “No-One’s-Rose” - the rose that belongs to Nothing and blossoms towards Nothing without soil. This is where Celan relates to Jewish mysticism: “In Kabbalah, Nothingness (Ayin) denotes the first Sephirah, the beginning of Divine emanation, the emanation of Ein Sof, the Infinite, even before the creation of the world. However, Tzimtzum, the change over of the Infinite to the dimension of essence and at the same time its withdrawal back to transcendence, i.e. change-over-and-withdrawal, taking place continuously as the beat of God’s life, according to Gershom Scholem, the central historian of Jewish mysticism, whom Celan read, in modern times became the final withdrawal withdrawal of God to the Nothingness of the revelation. It is most likely that Celan’s poetry goes in this direction, which in contrast to Nietschean atheistic nihilism, could be referred to as “religious nihilism”.

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Alen Širca

Department of Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Alen Širca, Ph. D., is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). His research focuses on premodern Western literary history and the methodology of literary studies. He is the author of two scholarly monographs on mystical poetry Teopoetika (Theopoetics, 2008) in Brezdanji val (Groundless Wave, 2012).

Baroque Mystical Poetry Baroque is the ultimate European era of mysticism. It is no wonder that baroque mystical poetry abounds in this period. This contribution will not only attempt to classify all genres within the field of Baroque religious poetry but also to analyze what may be called apophatic poetry. This kind of poetry is linked with the tradition of negative theology that was spawned in the West by Dionysius Areopagite but was reformulated later in the Middle Ages by Meister Eckhart and other figures of the so-called Rheno-Flemish Spirituality.

Martin Uranič

Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts University of Ljubljana Martin Uranič, born in Kranj in 1988, is an assisting PhD student at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. He graduated in Philosophy and Slovene Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana in 2014. In the same year, he was awarded the faculty’s Prešernova nagrada for his thesis Phenomenology and the Phenomenon of Space. He is currently a junior researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Ljubljana, where he is working on his doctoral dissertation about the phenomenology of the everyday.

Lightness and Weight in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Zarathustra’s Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit The key problem of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being in connection to Nietzsche’s idea of the eternal return of the same is manifest on the very first pages of the novel: lightness or weight. If we consider weight as life, which repeats itself in infinity and is, as such, the heaviness of each human decision or, in other words, the heaviness of the spirit that endlessly bears itself, then lightness presents itself as the lack of burden emerging from Thomas’s motto “Einmal ist keinmal”. From – 14 –

this perspective, lightness shows itself as a relaxed and non-binding existence, free from the absolute.

The dichotomy of lightness and weight invites us to rethink the European spiritual tradition, which, stemming from its ancient Greek origins, moves within Plato’s chorismos between the intelligible world of extrasensory ideas and the cave world of sensory experiences. The emergence and unfolding of metaphysics from Plato’s philosophy onward, which Heidegger proclaims as the onto-theological constitution of metaphysics, appears to overcome the sensory world and therefore decides Kundera’s question in favor of weight--at least until Nietzsche’s insight into the nihilist nature of the constitution of metaphysics.

In the second part, the introduction of Zarathustra’s speech “On the Three Metamorphoses” (of the spirit) will provide a path to the reappropriation of the relationship between lightness and weight with regard to the life of the four protagonists of Kundera’s novel. The first metamorphosis, which depicts the transformation of spirit into camel, tackles the loading of weight. Theresa and Franz represent this metamorphosis, as both are subordinated to the “spirit of heaviness”. Theresa succumbs to the “bodiless” soul, Franz, on the other hand, to the idea of the great march. In the second metamorphosis, the camel becomes a lion, a lonely spirit, creating freedom for new creation, whereas in the third metamorphosis the lion becomes a child, the serene creator of its own world. It seems that the creative life of both Thomas and Sabina lies at the juncture of the last two metamorphoses, which function as the zone of the unbearable lightness of being. Hence, this contribution will explore the problem that already occupied Parmenides: lightness or weight. Although Parmenides understood lightness as something positive, there is only one certainty: “The lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all”.

(Kundera, M.: The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

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Željko Uvanović

Department of German Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies, J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek Željko Uvanović is Full Professor, Research Advisor, born in 1967, MA in English and Germa n Studies at the University of Osijek in 1991. PhD study of literary criticism at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Studies of the University of Zagreb with the first postgraduate paper (magister scientiae) in 1998 titled as Ethischer Individualismus und Obrigkeitsgehorsam im Drama und Leben Gerhart Hauptmanns in den Jahren 1914-1946 (supervised by Prof. Dr. Marijan Bobinac), and the final PhD dissertation in 2001 titled as Das Motiv des vermissten Vaters in den deutschsprachigen Prosawerken nach 1945(supervised by Prof. Dr. Vlado Obad). High school teacher of German and English in the period September 1991 – March 1996. University career from March 1996 as Junior Assistant, Assistant, Senior Assistant, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and since December 2013 as Full Professor. Fields of research interest: literary and culture theory, German literary history, comparative literature, comparative history, adaptation studies, film studies, theater studies, pragmalinguistics. Teaching in BA, MA and PhD program in Osijek and abroad. Supervisor of numerous BA and MA papers in Osijek and abroad, supervisor of PhD candidates in Osijek, Zadar and Mostar (/Croatian/ University of Mostar). Conference lectures in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and Poland. Two one-year scholarships: DAAD (Bonn) 1996/1997 (UGh Kassel and Freie Universität Berlin) and ESKAS (Bern, 1999/2000, Universität Zürich). Further research stays at Universität Freiburg i.Br. (DAAD), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and Universität Zürich. Erasmus mobility in teaching programs at the universities of Pardubice, Sevilla, Munich (LMU) and Cracow (Pedagogical University of Cracow). Participant in two national research projects (with international participation) of the University of Zagreb on German-Croatian literature contacts and culture transfer. As invited external researcher in the Croatian-Montenegrin bilateral international project (PL Prof. Dr. Milorad Nikčević); as invited external researcher in the project of the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Arts (PL Prof. Dr. Sibila Petlevski).

The Catholic Literary Revival in England and G. K. Chesterton’s Prose Works in Comparison with the Roman Catholicism of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Drama – and the Danger of Anti-Semitism

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was born to a family belonging to High Church Anglicanism, but he himself converted to Catholicism in 1922. He is con– 16 –

sidered one of the most prominent representatives of the Catholic literary revival in England. Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929) was born to an Austrian family including Jewish roots (in his male line). However, he died as a Catholic and was buried in the white habit of the Franciscan Lay Third Order. These two writers share to some extent their enthusiasm for Christian morality and Roman Catholicism. The paper aims to compare the Christian message of selected prose works by Chesterton with the Christian message of selected plays by Hofmannsthal (e.g. the mystery play Everyman, 1911, and the morality play The Salzburg Great World Theatre, 1922) within the context of their private life and the surrounding social and political factors (e.g. Fin de Siècle, WWI, Austrofascism, conservative r­ eactions, Katholische Aktion). Although the Catholic spiritual tradition since Vatican II (especially Popes John XXIII, John Paul II and Francis) has tried to eliminate all anti-Semitic remnants from its theory and practice of belief, it is true that Catholicism, along with other Christian denominations, has contained anti-Semitic opinions, practices, and even prayers. Unfortunately, both Chesterton and Hofmannsthal faced accusations of anti-Semitism. Finally, this paper aims to compare these (potential) two (latent and manifest) anti-Semitisms and the arguments of Chesterton’s and Hofmannsthal’s accusers.

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Blaž Zabel

Department of Classics and Ancient History, Durham University Blaž Zabel is a graduate student at the Faculty of Classics, Durham University.

Previously, he was a researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education. His research interests are in Homeric scholarship, world literature and the philosophy of education. His current research projects include Homeric Epic and World Literature: A Comparative Study of Method, and Values and social cohesion in education.

“I step up to the altar and read from sacred Homer”: reading practices of Homer and nature mysticism in Goethezeit This paper discusses how different reading practices of Homeric poetry in 18th century Europe influenced a specific understanding of Homer as the most natural of all poets. I first discuss how Homer was used as a sourcebook and travel guide by early travellers to the Near East, and then discuss a very specific reading of Homeric poetry by one English traveller, Robert Wood, in his Essay on the original genius and writings of Homer. Owing to its specific history of transmission, Wood’s essay was extremely influential for German scholars, intellectuals and travellers. Most prominently, Wood influenced Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s understanding of Homer, as well as his perception of the Italian journey he took from 1786 to 1788. I will argue that it was during the Sicilian expedition in 1787 that Goethe developed his views on natural mysticism, which was a direct consequence of Goethe’s reading practices while travelling through the island. In the second part of the paper, I discuss the broader cultural context of nature mysticism and its implications for poetry, especially its implications for the relation between Homer and the production of the Romantic poets. To this end, I will compare Goethe’s philosophy of Homeric poetry and nature mysticism with Herder’s Naturpoesie, Schiller’s discussions about sentimental and naïve poetry, and with Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre.

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Neža Zajc

Institute of Cultural History at Scientific, Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts Neža Zajc (1979) is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural History (ICH) at the Scientific-Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SRC SASA). She is the author of five books on old Slavic history, culture, language and also on the specific topics within the theological, iconographic and poetic area.

Her research work focuses methodologically on primary sources, especially on original authorial manuscripts, which represent a basis for further evaluations in the historical dimension and special consideration of their individual contribution to human knowledge and culture. She is also the organizer of scholarly symposiums on poetry and regularly contributes to Byzantine and medieval conferences, as well as to the annual meetings of the Semiotic researchers. She is a member of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) and a member of the editorial board of the journal Humanistic Sciences in Sibyr (Novosibirsk). Moreover, Neža Zajc also writes original texts (since 1998). Her book of lyric poems, entitled The Name of the Mountain, was published in 2014 by the respectable publishing house, KUD Logos.

Her scholarly and literary bibliography comprises more than 120 published texts.

St Maxim the Greek and his Opus of Prayers In the wide range of the works of Maxim the Greek (Mihail Trivolis, cca. 1470, Arta – Максим Грек, 1556, Moscow) in Slavonic, which should be more appropriately defined as theological writing, his prayers deserve special consideration. Usually attributed to the field of “Miscellanea” (“Varia”), his written prayers could be regarded as a special contemplative style or even a rhythm of his speech. The fragments of prayer inserted in his writings were also a constant element of almost all his theological works. Therefore, they may be interpreted not only as a unique characteristic that represents a continuum in the works of Maxim the Greek, but also as the cornerstone on which his Slavonic opus was built. Consequently, they could serve as a valid confirmation of his authorship, which was often found problematic and was one of the crucial questions of the early Renaissance period. Among his prayers, one finds those dedicated to the three entities of the Holy Trinity, but also to the Mother of God. Thus, they could be understood as his basic monastic prayers, which not only introduced Maxim the Greek to the act of writing, but which could also be explained as his substitute for liturgical prayers. Moreover, it must be mentioned, that – as in the developed Byzantine hymnography – the prayers of St Maxim the Greek embodied an important part of his argumentation of Orthodox theology. This paper intends to explore in more detail his prayers that –-19 –

are dedicated to the Holy Theotokos. Additionally, it will posit the principal connection of his prayers with the Byzantine hymnographic and liturgical traditions, taking a comparative perspective. However, it cannot be said that the byzantine hymnographic sources were directly transmitted to his text. This is the reason that his prayers may well be among the first examples of original, individual, spiritual poetry in Slav(on)ic.

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