The Anatomy of Love

No. 2 - Year 7 - 06/2017

University of Zadar | ISSN 1847-7755 | SIC.JOURNAL.CONTACT@GMAIL.COM

Editorial

In All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks observes that we are constantly exposed to messages telling us that the workings of love are mysterious and its agency unfathomable; that love is, in other words, only invaluable if it remains unexplained and unknowable. hooks argues that knowledge is a crucial element of love and that understanding its forces does not detract from its importance and value; on the contrary, it enriches the experience of love. More recently, Alain Badiou has in In Praise of Love similarly claimed that love is a ‘truth procedure,’ the kind of experience through which the truth about Two is constructed....

Literature and Culture
Antonio Sanna, independent researcher, Italy:

Dead but not Forgotten is a collection of short stories about the characters presented in the thirteen Sookie Stackhouse novels published by Charlaine Harris between 2001 and 2013. The fifteen short stories were not written by Harris herself, but by a series of novelists and best-selling authors. The tales are compelling and their plots are as suspenseful as the original novels by Harris, whose contents they are consistent with. Indeed, the characters are faithful to the spirit of Harris' books and their adventures are a (super)natural and logical continuation or anticipation of what occurs to them in Harris' fictional universe. The stories are indeed set in different time periods: they fill the gaps between the novels or they either precede or follow the facts narrated in Harris' books. Jeffrey J. Mariotte's “Taproot,” for example, focuses on a case assigned to Detective Andy Bellefleur during Sookie's sojourn in Dallas in the second novel. “Nobody's Business,” written by Rachel Caine...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/2.7.lc.7
Literature and Culture
Anders Johansson, Mid-Sweden University, Sweden:

Love has traditionally been understood either as an objective, transcendentforce, or a subjective ability. Through a number of steps,the article argues that both these options have lost their credibility due to changes in the media through which love is performed. First, the article demonstrates how the attempts,in the life sciences, to explain love biologically or physically reproduce a traditional romantic ideology. Then, the implications of the inflation of explicit love declarations, and the consequences of internet dating, are discussed. What these examples amount to is the fact that the medium is brought to the fore. A consequence of this is that the romantic ideology is strengthened, while the premises of romantic love – the autonomous subject and the transcendent objectivity – are weakened or even dissolved.Keywords:idealism, materialism, narcissism, subjectivity, reification,internet dating, controlJennifer Lopez, Haddaway, Howard Jones – yes, virtually every singer, author,or...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/2.7.lc.1
Literary Translation
DBC Pierre and Anita Ćutić:

Taj mi je tip htio pokazati nešto tajno. Nešto zapanjujuće. Prema onome što mi je rekao, bio je to još neotkriven temelj kršćanstva. Tisućljećima najstrože čuvana tajna Crkve, as iz rukava koji još nije odigrala. Zaintrigiralo me. Odveo me u svojevrstan sanktuarij, koji je smrdio po vlazi, pa iz ormara s velikim ladicama stao vaditi relikvije u obliku čvrsto smotanih, požutjelih svežnjeva. Zatim ih je poslagao jedan pokraj drugog, kad gle – iz njih iziđe Djevica Marija. Moram priznati da me zapanjilo. Dogovorili smo spoj, našli se i prošetali po suncu i hladovini. Bila je ljubazna, nismo baš ćaskali, nego se više povezivali pomoću nasumičnih riječi koje su nas tjerale da se smješkamo i pogledavamo jedno drugo. Ali ono što me se najviše dojmilo: ona uopće nije bila povijesna ličnost, nije bila sveta, ni pobožna, ni odjevena u halju! Bila je obična djevojka. Nije se bojala i rado se smijala. Razumjeli smo se. Dok je hodala, donji dio leđa blago bi joj se izvio u nježan luk, i bila je lij...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/2.7.lt.1
Literature and Culture
Sonja Novak, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia:

The paper analyses film adaptations of the play Der Besuch der alten Dame written by the Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt with special focus on how they thematise love. Dürrenmatt’s play is in its essence a tragic comedy that deals with the issue of greed and the distortion of basic moral values such as honesty and sincerity that are then also turned into greed, culminating in the justification of violence and murder for profit. The film adaptations that are analysed in the paper are the German version from 1959, the American version from 1964, and the newest German version from 2008. The analysis shows that the American and the newest German version do not adhere to the original pattern in terms of representing the love and relationship between the two main characters, Claire and Alfred. It is important to stress that love is the trigger that directs the plot to its end. The role that love plays in the film adaptations is the key factor that influences whether the end is tragic or no...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/2.7.lc.4
Literary Translation
Rosa Montero and Ana Stanić:

Izgleda tako slatko, ali živi je otrov. Pogledajmo malo dvoranu: svi su unutra. Trećini njih, a i to sam malo rekao, nisam baš drag. Sve su to moji protivnici, moji krvnici i moje žrtve. Petnaest sam godina u firmi, zadnjih pet kao šef kadrovske – nije lako. Ali od svih tih dama i gospode koji me mrze, vrlo dobro znam, najgora je ona. Moja najveća neprijateljica. Znam što govorim jer dobro je poznajem: to mi je žena.A konkurencija je jaka, tu su svi moji najratoborniji, najžilaviji protivnici: Donatella, ekonomistica s magisterijem s Harvarda, koju sam zaposlio kao tajnicu kad zbog krize nije mogla naći posao i koja mi je jednom prigodom, lagano i namjerno, izlila kipuću kavu po hlačama jer sam je zamolio da nam na sastanak direktora donese piće (A što sam mogao? Nisam ja kriv za krizu. A na sastanku je bio generalni direktor. I lijepo sam je zamolio). Zaldíbar, koji se iživljavao nada mnom šest godina kad mi je bio šef, potpisujući – bez moga znanja – sva moja izvješća kao svoja. Cont...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/2.7.lt.3
Literature and Culture
Justine Shu- Ting Kao, Tamkang University, Taiwan:

In Nabokov’s Lolita, Humbert Humbert’s The Enchanted Hunters, as a quest for love, aims to reconstruct a felicitous world or integrate various fragmentary details into an organic unity that revives a lost love, experiencing it on the basis of irony, and revealing a simulation of the desire, violence, and despondency which have been expressed in myths of nymphs and Persephone. The protagonist never reaches this unity, but his narrative of erotic and romantic love reveals him as a pathetic addict engaged in mechanical reproduction related to the phenomena of desire, seduction, violence, and sex. His The Enchanted Hunters does not simulate what he expects of his childhood love with Annabel; rather, it simulates the erotic imagination suggested in Mary D. Sheriff’s term “nymphomania,” in which artists fall degenerately to a model of tragedy. Keywords: simulation, nymph, nymphomania, The Enchanted Hunters The Enchanted Hunters in Nabokov’s Lolita refers to the name of a hotel and the title ...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/2.7.lc.3