Početkom 50-ih godina političke promjene u Hrvatskoj (odnosno u tadašnjoj Jugoslaviji) uvjetovale su stvaranje nove kulturne klime, a kao jedno od važnijih obilježja u navedenom razdoblju moguće je istaknuti promjene manifestirane unutar umjetničke sfere koja je tada imala izuzetan politički značaj. Nakon razdoblja tijesne političko-ideološke veze sa sovjetskim političkim blokom (1945. – 1948.) i zaokreta 1948. godine, koji je rezultirao nastankom samoupravnog socijalizma i složene multietničke federativne države, u samo nekoliko godina dolazi do gotovo potpunog raskida sa socijalističkim realizmom, a modernizam je prihvaćen kao dominantan jezik (službene) umjetnosti. Za umjetnost i kulturu to je značilo prijelaz iz borbenog, revolucionarnog socrealizma u umjereni modernizam intimističkog tipa. U tom razdoblju omogućuje se i djelovanje novih alternativnih umjetničkih grupa koje pratimo u kontinuitetu s predratnim (povijesnim) avangardama sve do rasapa socijalističke države. U korpusu 'alternativne' nove umjetnosti, koja se razvija istodobno s novim pokretom 'kontrakulture' nakon prijelomne 1968. godine, važno mjesto zauzima konceptualizam koji se unutar socijalističke ideologije razmatra u okvirima subverzivnih umjetničkih praksi, što se očituje u načinu bavljenja jezikom, medijem, institucijama, javnim prostorom i sličnim. Time se strategije subverzije adresiraju istodobno i na ove sustave, ali i na konkretne (totalitarne) sustave moći koji imaju ovlasti nad njihovom kontrolom. Ispitivanje potonjeg problema, dakle, položaja umjetnosti unutar određenog sustava, može se razmatrati kroz mogućnosti njenih reakcija u odnosu na dominantnu društvenu moć, bilo da se ta moć manifestira kao ekonomska, ideološka ili politička struktura vlasti. U tom smislu valja ustanoviti u kojoj mjeri umjetnička praksa unutar real-socijalističkog sustava postaje politička praksa, odnosno koliko zadire u polje političkog, s njim kohabitira ili mu divergira, odnosno subvertira. Iako na domaćoj umjetničkoj sceni s kraja 60-ih i početka 70-ih godina nema umjetničkih praksi s jasnim konturama političke subverzije, posebno zanimljiv i značajan primjer konceptualne umjetnosti pruža onaj usmjeren na dekonstrukciju auratičnog statusa umjetničkog djela i umjetnika (autonomije umjetnosti) kao modernističkih koncepata par excellence, i to putem „estetike administracije“ (Buchloh 105) koja podrazumijeva aproprijaciju birokratskih struktura u jezik umjetnosti, iz čega se u određenim kontekstima mogu indicirati elementi subverzije. ...

In his essay on Australian poetry of the early twentieth century, Nicholas Birns claims that the poetry of the given period was not at the time fully appreciated in the rest of the world, and that metropolitan centres placed low esteem on Australian poetic production (173). There was the lack, as he puts it, of “an efficient market”, caused by various factors, including the remoteness and isolation of the country, its distance from the hotspots of political crisis, and its “perceived rejection of modernism” (Ibid). It was the Anglo-American experimental modernism that the young Australian poets rejected, composing verse that “tended to rhyme and obey metrical contentions” (Ibid, 174) or at least have a certain melodic quality. In its stylistic aspect, this poetry was rather traditional, and the themes used were also quite different from those explored by American or English modernist poets: exploration by sea and land, and the European explorations of Australia in particular, was a very popular theme, along with the descriptions of nature and typically Australian landscape (as was the case, for instance, with the Jindyworobak school of poetry). Australian literature of the first half of the twentieth century, as noted by Tom Englis Moore, a well-known poet and professor of Australian literature, was marked by “[t]he ideals of peace, freedom and social justice combined with a marked realism” (Waten 26). The anti-realist strain in Australian literature was rather weak at the time when poets like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound wrote their best works across the globe. The only group of poets truly infatuated with modernism gathered around Max Harris (1921–1995) and called themselves the Angry Penguins. The group that was stimulated by the literary magazine Angry Penguins, was founded in Adelaide in 1940 by Harris and is today probably best-known not for their attempts to introduce modernism into Australian poetry, but for the infamous literary hoax perpetrated by two poets of a more traditionalist orientation, James McAuley (1917–1976) and Harold Stewart (1916–1995). Their main purpose was to debunk modernist poetry as meaningless babble, but what they actually succeeded in doing, as this paper aims to show, was advancing Australian literature beyond modernism into the kind of poetry that stylistically and thematically could be described as postmodern, and thus debunking not only the Angry Penguins’ writing, but their own traditionalist verse as well. ...

Literary texts display many linguistic peculiarities, as well as social and cultural aspects of our lives and, thus, we can assert that literary translation is one of the main ways of communication across cultures. Translating literary texts, however, is not an easy task, since it certainly poses many problems for the translator. One of the problems a translator can face arises from the fact that some words or phrases denoting objects, facts, phenomena, etc… are so deeply rooted in their source culture (SC) and so specific (and perhaps exclusive or unique) to the culture that produced them that they have no equivalent in the target culture (TC), be it because they are unknown, or because they are not yet codified in the target language (TL). When discussing the problems of correspondence in translation, “differences between cultures may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure” (Nida 130). Moreover, several theorists, such as Santoyo, García Yebra and Yifeng, amongst others, support untranslatability when we face texts with terms which are so culture-bound and culture-specific as to defy translation (cf. Fernández Guerra, “The issue” 41)....

You can close your eyes but you can’t close your ears.In the darkness, I keep hearing the screams. I don’t know who’s screaming. I squeeze my eyes tighter and realize that I’m the one who’s screaming. In the darkness, there is no hate. There’s a strange smell and it isn’t me. In another time and another place, someone would have known why all this was happening, someone would have been able to give a name to everything that seems so inexplicable to me, but which does have an explanation. It has to. It won’t be a logical explanation.In another life, I tried to find causes and effects until I came to understand that nothing that happened to me had them. I believed that I thought with my head. I believed that I thought.In the darkness, I don’t think with my heart or with my head. I don’t have any. Others will come and they’ll tell my story. It’ll sound different from their lips.I’ve never been different than everyone else. All my life I endeavored to stay in the middle of the road, not to be too high or too low, too smart or too dumb. I didn’t want to stand out in any way and, in the end, that was the thing that made me stand out, the thing my husband fell in love with....