The Book and Beyond

No. 1 - Year 2 - 12/2011

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

Editorial

About a year and a half ago, or perhaps it was more, no one seems to remember the exact day anymore, when we decided to start [sic] – a Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, in our minds we had a small journal that would nevertheless stimulate debates and challenge authors to participate with their contributions in hope of offering a somewhat different view on various topics and themes that we think about in our professional life and work. We hoped for some hundred or perhaps two hundred pages of articles, essays and translations; we counted on contributions from our friends and colleagues from Croatia and secretly dreamed that someone from abroad will find our journal interesting enough to join in. And today, when we are releasing our third issue that counts well over five hundred pages of articles, essays and translations, with more than twenty authors from all over the world, we are safe to say that we more than exceeded our initial expectations and even our wildest hopes. ...

Literature and Culture
Lissi Athanasiou Krikelis, City University of New York, USA:

Due to their self-reflexive propensity, postmodern fiction and metafiction, in particular, have been relentlessly criticized of solipsism and of an indifference to relate to the extralinguistic world. While the novel is deemed to pause in its trajectory to examine itself, to examine its conventions and rejections of them, to address its future uncertainties and its at-present struggles, it has become a misprision that all it can bestow to its readers is an understanding of itself. The basic argument unravels as follows: language is devoid of reality, therefore, literature does not contain reality either; now more than ever, fiction recognizes that it is a self-contained artifact which can only engage in a representation of itself, having no interest in proffering its readers anything but an understanding of itself. The novel in the postmodern period has faced the crisis of representation, when linguists and theorists alike unmask the insufficiency of language and its inability to repre...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/1.2.lc.3
Literary Translation
Tomislav Kuzmanović:

Krajem 2009. godine pisac i urednik Roman Simić Bodrožić kontaktirao me s prijedlogom da napravim nekoliko prijevoda i pošaljem ih kao moguće priloge za antologiju pod nazivom Best European Fiction 2012 u izdanju američke izdavačke kuće Dalkey Archive Press. Prijedlog sam, naravno, prihvatio premda mi ovo nije bilo prvi put da šaljem prijevode za spomenutu antologiju. Međutim, moji prijašnji prijevodi nažalost nisu prošli uredničku selekciju te nisu bili uvršteni u prethodna izdanja antologije, odnosno serije antologija čije je prvo izdanje objavljeno 2010. godine, a čiji je urednik priznati američki pisac bosanskog porijekla, Aleksandar Hemon. U njenim prijašnjim izdanjima našli su se tekstovi Nevena Ušumovića, Mime Simić, Igora Štiksa te nekolicine autora s područja bivše Jugoslavije poput Davida Albaharija, Andreja Blatnika, Vladimira Arsenijevića ili Gorana Samardžića, drugim riječima, tekstovi istaknutijih suvremenih pisaca s prostora bivše Jugoslavije koji zajedno s tekstovima dr...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/1.2.lt.2
Literature and Culture
Katarina Peović Vuković, University of Rijeka, Croatia:

Rad će postaviti pitanje nudi li danas Mreža alat za “osnaživanje čitatelja”, kako je najavljivala hipertekstualna teorija devedesetih. Interaktivnost kao “prirodan” oblik pismenosti postala je ideologem razumijevanja elektroničke pismenosti. No je li danas uistinu riječ o demokratizaciji čitanja-pisanja putem odabira smjera, “kretanja” virtualnim prostorom teksta? Rad će naglasiti razliku između Web 2.0 žanrova i koncepcije hiperteksta te razliku tekstualne i vizualne pismenosti. Ono što ćemo ovdje nazvati “topografskom proizvodnošću” bitno se razlikuje od “distributivne proizvodnosti” kakvu danas susrećemo na Mreži. Mreža nije orijentirana isključivo na proizvodnju virtualnog dérivea, trodimenzionalnog prostora kretanja, već je riječ prvenstveno o komunikacijskom kanalu. Umjesto topografije, za Mrežu će biti ključno povezivanje bilo kojih dviju točaka i uspostavljanje kanala “distribucije”. Temelj distributivne strukture jesu mrežni protokoli, prvenstveno TCP/IP protokol koji omoguća...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/1.2.lc.10
Literature and Culture
Paulina Aroch Fugellie, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico:

What is a book? Perhaps the notion refers firstly to an articulate format: to a substantive amount of printed pages bound together. Yet it also presupposes an articulate discourse: these pages are bound together for a reason, they have a single organizing principle in the conceptual as in the material level. The order in which the pages are arranged corresponds to the gradual spinning out of an overall sense. Furthermore, this coherent material and discursive entity circulates in social worlds, becoming charged with different attributes according to context. A consistent symbolic role in a given time and place may lead a book to operate as the book, or at least allow the generic idea of the book to act as a constant mediation in our relationship with any particular volume. Homi Bhabha, for example, has described how “the English book” – a blanket reference to canonical Western texts such as The Bible – impacted the postcolonial contexts in which it was introduced. According to Bhabha, ...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/1.2.lc.5
Literature and Culture
Rafaela Božić-Šejić, University of Zadar, Croatia:

U članku se analizira uloga knjige u pet ključnih ruskih distopija u dvadesetom stoljeću (Mi, Čevengur, Iskop, Plavo salo i Kis). U svakoj od ovih distopija knjiga/umjetnički tekst (kako se knjiga shvaća u ovom članku) ima jednu od ključnih uloga – posebno u dvije recentne distopije (Plavo salo i Kis). Knjiga se u ruskim distopijama promatra kao jedno od temeljnih obilježja čovjeka i sve promjene čovjeka kao individue ili društvenog bića reflektiraju se na knjigu ili pak knjigom bivaju potaknute.Možda je čudno ili možda tek loš stil započeti članak s dvije digresije. Ali, kao prvo i sasvim neznanstveno, ne mogu se oteti potrebi započeti ovaj članak razmišljanjem o upotrebi i ulozi misala u obredu katoličke svete mise. Slabo pamtim pa me zanimaju načini kojima se ljudi bore protiv zaborava, a posebno su mi zanimljivi (zavidim im) ljudi koji dobro pamte. Nisam osobit vjernik, ali onda kad odem na misu, uvijek me čudi (da, čak i zaboravljivu mene) zašto svećenik koji je održao tisuće misa...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/1.2.lc.11
Literary Translation
Margaret Schwartz:

What does the translator do? Does she transcribe, performing an almost technical function? Or is she an inventor, an interpreter, a kind of singer of lost songs? This is the question Benjamin posed as the translator’s task (Benjamin); here I explore the possibility that translation is liturgy. Translation as either a technical transcription or interpretive intervention neglects its core concern: ethics. Translation is dialogic, speaking from one language to another, yes, but also from a space between languages. The translator voices, though she does not author. The translator’s orientation is always towards respect for another voice – that of the source text. And the translator’s task is always impossible, insofar as total respect (ciphered as total fidelity) gives way to what is inevitably “lost in translation.” Whatever the translator does, she is oriented always towards managing this loss, towards the ethical stakes of this loss. Seen in this light, whether she transcribes or invent...

DOI: 10.15291/sic/1.2.lt.3