As a field of study, the Middle East, like its predecessor the "Orient", continues to exist more concretely within a vast realm of Western texts, both artistic and ethnographic, than it does on the ground. This ingrained disparity between representation and social reality has motivated some scholars to examine this literature as the manifestation of physical or ideological domination. In Edward Said's Orientalism the interpretation of this literature becomes a search for determining social and political forces, the evidence of which, like the nineteenth-century anthropological notion of "survivals", resides in each text as an implicit network of unconscious images and metaphors. Similarly, Abdelkebir Khatibi, investigating the historical and ethnographic texts of Jacques Berque, views this literature as determined by the requirements of an exigent and compelling, but inherently flawed, Western metaphysic; an "onto-tháologie" which, in confronting questions of essence and existence, must formulate an "other" to realize its "self".
The publication, on Mao Tse-tung's birthday, of an official text of his crucially important speech of 25 April 1956 "On the 10 great relationships" (reproduced below in the Quarterly Chronicle and Documentation, pp. 221–38) adds significantly to our knowledge both of Chairman Mao and of his successor. On the one hand, it constitutes a substantial document which will be closely scrutinized by all those interested in the thought of Mao Tse-tung. On the other, the way in which the text has been edited, and the fact of its publication, provide some hints about the thinking, and perhaps even about the policy intentions of Hua Kuo-feng.
3. P. Labrousse gives some facts on the Indonesian-French Dictionary that he has undertaken in Bandung, using a vast corpus, consisting not only of "literary texts" but also of newspaper selections, secondary and college textbooks and even extracts from popular illustrated magazines. During the past three years, the team of Indonesian collaborators that is working with P. Labrousse, has prepared about 175,000 cards; the compilation of the first volume (letters A to I) is being finished and will be put to press in the fall of 1972.
The 2nd of 5 reviews of Leo Grebler, Joan W. Moore, & Ralph C. Guzmann, THE MEXICAN-AMERICAN PEOPLE (see SA 0410/F6970). The book is called 'a self-consciously designed classic.' Despite its Calvinist thoroughness, however, a pernicious & baneful quality is noted in the book. 'It forms part of a literary & scholarly tradition which purporting to be about a people, instead turns out to be about the authors.' The real tragedy of the book is the evidence it provides of the indifference to Mexican-Amer's as a living people. While the book falls at transcending the ethnocentric barrier, however, it still occasions a host of important questions of which perhaps the most important one is that of Chicano nat'lism. This issue must be confronted critically & rationally. The concepts of la raza & chicanismo are not reverse racism; they represent the struggle for identity. (See also SA 0410/F6959, 0410/ F6962, 0410/F6969, 0410/F6982.) M. Maxfield.
The literature of Muscovite Russia is vast and uneven in quality. In spite of the efforts of scholars, many literary works have not been sufficiently studied to permit one to assign them their proper place in Russian literature. One such work is the Laodicean Epistle (Laodikiiskoe poslanie). A number of articles have recently been written on it, and it has figured prominently in the books of two of the leading specialists in Muscovite history and literature. Discussion has centered on questions of the extent of the work, the original text, its interpretation, and possible sources. None of these points has been decided to the satisfaction of scholars concerned with the intellectual and literary developments of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This article is an attempt to provide other explanations for some of the questions raised by the text.
Yaḥy¯a Ḥaqqī's first article of literary criticism appeared at a time when the critic was still more or less exclusively concerned with explaining a text, or with justifying the rival merits of "ancient" as opposed to "modem" literature. In 1921 Mā.zinī and 'Aqqād had published their Ad-dīwān: kitāb fī an-naqd wa al-adab which constituted a significant step away from the traditional mold of literary criticism. The primary motivation of the madhhab jadīd seems to have been an attack, not always purely literary, on the neo-Classical trend as exemplified in the poetry of Shauqī, Hāfiz and Ismā'il Sabrī. The Diwan School, as it came to be called, required that the poet express his true feelings in an imaginative way without resorting to pure description or stereotyped imagery confined within traditional poetical forms.
All of the contributors to this special issue have reflected on the stakes involved in negotiating differences in language and culture. In their research and professional practice they inhabit the 'space between': the space between languages, the space between cultures, and the space between academic disciplines. While many of our contributors are located in the Australian university system, we also have contributors from outside that system, as well as contributors who are theorising disparate sites for the negotiation of difference. The most exciting aspect of the papers presented here is the ability to move between the spheres of cultural theory and the everyday. Analytical techniques originally developed for literary and cultural analysis are brought to bear on the texts and practices of everyday life.
The loci for these investigations include the classroom, the police station, the streets, local government and the university itself. The practices examined include translating and interpreting, language teaching, academic writing, literary production and critique, language planning and small business and shadow economies. The academic disciplines drawn on include theoretical and applied linguistics, discourse analysis, language teaching pedagogy, policy studies, cultural studies, literary studies, political science, gender studies and postcolonial theory.
On his return to Russia in July 1843 after a period of convalescence in Western Europe, Iazykov was confronted by a literary situation which bore little resemblance to the one he had left in July 1838, five years earlier. Many important nineteenth-century poets had already died by the time of Iazykov's departure: Ryleev (1826), Venevitinov (1827), Griboedov (1829), Delvig (1831), Gnedich (1833), Pushkin, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, the fabulist Dmitriev (all in 1837), and Polezhaev (early 1838). Nevertheless, poetry continued to be the dominant form of literary expression, at least until April 1840, when Lermontov first published the full text of Geroi nashego vremeni. By late 1843, however, the tide had turned decisively in favor of prose. Many more poets had died—Davydov and Alexander Odoevsky (1839), Kozlov and Stankevich (1840), Lermontov himself (1841), and Koltsov (1842). Baratynsky and Krylov were to die in 1844.
The final subchapter of the prose text of Doctor Zhivago takes the narrative, at least by implication, beyond the Stalin era. In these last four brief paragraphs of the epilogue,1 lurii Zhivago's surviving childhood friends, Misha Gordon and Nika Dudorov, now at the twilight of their lives, are reflecting on Zhivago's literary legacy and on what lies ahead for Russia in the 1950s. In the first paragraph they are shown sitting at a window overlooking Moscow as a summer dusk slowly settles. They are reading from an album of Zhivago's writings that his half brother Evgraf had compiled some years previously.
(3) Three brief notes are devoted to the following: (a) to the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka of the Sultanat of Brunei, whose activities, parallel to those of the Dewan of Kuala Lumpur (cf Archipel 2, p. 23) concentrate above all on the publication of texts and lexicography, (b) to Sasterawan, a literary revue edited exclusively in Malay, whose first editions have just appeared in Singapore, (c) To Pustaka Djaya, a new publishing house that Ajip Rosidi has just started under the auspices of the Municipality of Djakarta, and whose aim is to give a taste of books and reading to a larger public.
This excerpt from To Kill a Man's Pride was published in the February 1980 issue of the South African literary magazine Staffrider. The publishers of Staffrider, Ravan Press, announced at that time that the full text would appear in Forced Landing, a new collection of contemporary black South African writings edited by Mothobi Mutloatse. The next issue of Staffrider ( June 1980) carried a notice that Forced Landing had been banned. All three titles in the Ravan Press 'Staffrider Series' of contemporary South African writings have now been banned. The other two titles ( banned in 1979) are Africa My Beginning by Ingoapele Madingoane ( reviewed in Index on Censorship 5/1980, pp 74–6) and Call Me Not a Man, a collection of stories by Mtutuzeli Matshoba ( see Index on Censorship 6/1980, pp 8–12). Forced Landing will be published in Britain by Heinemann Educational Books under the title Africa South: Contemporary Writings.
Karel Kosík, a young Marxist philosopher, played an important role in the intellectual ferment which led to the abortive attempt to liberalise the Czechoslovak political system in 1968. Since the invasion in August that year he has been prevented from working in his field and from publishing his work. June 1967 Kosík celebrated his 50th birthday. His friend, Ludvík Vaculík, marked the occasion by writing a feuilleton which was included in 'Padlock Publications', a typescript literary collection circulated among proscribed intellectuals. Though no doubt unpopular with the authorities, Padlock has so far been tolerated by them, with the result that while people found copying these texts might get into trouble, the authors themselves have remained unscathed, though subject to frequent harassment, house searches and police interrogation. The arrest of the poet Jiři Gruša in June (see entry in Index/Index, p. 65) is an ominous sign that after five years of relatively untroubled existence, Padlock may be facing a more difficult future.