Plato’s Protagoras

Дата добавления: 2015-10-18; просмотров: 453

2. Даль В. И. Толковый словарь живого великорусского языка.

3. Словарь русского языка В 4-х томах / Гл. ред А.П.Евгеньева М.: Русский язык, 1982.

4. Толковый словарь русского языка (под ред. Д. Н. Ушакова).

5. Кунин А. В. Англо – русский фразеологический словарь.

6. Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь / Под ред. В.Ярцевой. М.: Советская энциклопедия, 1990.

7. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology by Hoad.

8. The Describer's Dictionary by D. Grabs, Longman.

9. The Longman Active Study Dictionaiy of English.

10. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

11. The Longman Essential Activator.

12. Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English by A.S. Homby.

13. The Stein and Day Dictionary of Definitive Quotations by M. McKenna, USA.

Художественная литература:

Русская, любое издание:

1. Гарин-Михайловский Н. Детство Тёмы. Гимназисты.

2. Горький M. Детство. В Людях. Мои университеты.

3. Островский А. Бесприданница. Волки и овцы. Доходное место. Лес.

4. Толстой Л. Детство. Отрочество. Юность. Анна Каренина. Война и мир.

5. Чехов А. Рассказы.

6. Тургенев И. Дворянское гнездо. Отцы и дети.

7. Гончаров И. Обломов.

Aнгло – американская, любое издание:

1. Austen Jane. Emma. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice.

2.Bronte Ch. Jane Eyre.

3.Bradbarry R. The Silver Locusts.

4.Eliot G. The Mill on the Floss.

5.Galsworthy John. The Forsyte Saga.

6.Hardy Th. Jude the Obscure.

7.Haggart Н. Rider. King Solomon's Mines. Rural England.

8.Jerome K. Jerome. Three men in a boat to say nothing of a dog.

9. Mansfield K Short Stories

10.Twain M. The adventures of Tom Sayer.

11.Wilde 0. The Importaince of being Ernest. The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Список использованной литературы:

1. Alexandrova O, Vasilyev V. Modern English Language For Philologists. M., 1998.

2. Komova T. A. On British/ American Cultural Studies. Moscow,

3. Красных В.В. Этнопсихолингвистика и лингвокультурология.М., 2002.

4. Филлипова М. М., Ксензенко О. А. Английский язык для пользы и развлечения. М., 2001.

5. Berlin В., Kay P., Basic colour terms: their universality and evolution. Berkeley Univ. Press of California, 1969.

6. Hirsh E. D. Cuitural Literacy. (What Every American Needs to Know). Boston, 1988.

7. Eco U., Theory of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana Univ.Press, 1979.

8. Lakoff G., Johnson M. Metaphors we Live By. Chicago, 1990.

9. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Oxford at the Clareden Press, 1964.

10. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language by David Crystal.Cambridge University Press, 1987.

11.The Stein and Day Dictionary of Definitive Quotations by M. McKenna, USA.

12. Словарь русского языка В 4-х томах /Гл. ред А.П. Евгеньева М.: Русский язык, 1982.

13. Кравков С.В. Цветовое зрение. М., 1951.

14. Англо-русский фразеологический словарь /Под ред. А.В. Кунина. М.: Русский язык, 1984.

15. Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь /Под ред. В. Ярцевой. М.: Советская энциклопедия, 1990.

16. Ожегов. С.И. Словарь русского языка /Под ред. Ю.Шведовой.

Задание к практическому занятию 1.

a). Language as an Instrument of Identity. National Identity: enlarge on the problem in view of history and culture

b) Study the matherial from the book “On British- Americal Studies” by T. A. Komova and render it in Russian.

In the Western part of the country the new type of person appears from the mixture of different bloods. These people seem to have much more from Irish, than from English, they are very aggressive, cruel, it seems that they reject the European civilization, its principles and moral values, though they have their own code of behaviour. These are the Frontier men. Such were the characters of Jack London.

People are people and they always find something to make it a subject for their jokes.

And average American was looking at his neighbours and after finding several differences which seem to him very odd he was starting to laugh, and one of the most popular figures of New England humour has always been the "Yankee" - the rural inhabitant of that region, this name is considered to be an Anglicized corruption of "Jan Kees" or "John Cheese" by this name the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York) called Anglo-Americans who lived in adjoining state of Connecticut. After the collapse of the Dutch colony this word was not used until just before the Revolutionary War. As the relationships between the British and Americans were getting worse and worse, the British began to use this expression as a label of ridicule for those colonials who were for separation from the mother country.

In the nineteenth century the meaning of this word had changed, and it gained many other meanings. During the American Civil War Southerners called all Northerners "Yankees" even if they were from Western States. Here the shift of images is evident, because the Northern states were firstly thought to be the intellectual states, while to the time of the Civil War the North became industrialized and this meant the mass stream of workers, when the South remained aristocratic, after this war they would change again. And by the First World War this term was used throughout the world to designate all the Americans whose behaviour was less than exemplary. That was an image of the simple New England rustic. Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer is certainly the Anglo-Saxon, Northern image, he is relying on his knowledge, on his principles, while Huckleberry Finn is expressing the idea of a Frontier, because in his conciousness the two ideals are combined: the Northern and the Southern, and he cannot agree with neither of them.

The image of Uncle Sam originates from the fictional character Major Jack Downing of Downingville, Maine, though in the beginning he was a Yankee rustic, but with time his figure has developed into the image of a strong and serious person with some political colouring.

c) Comment on the usage of precedent names. Explain what model their usage illustrates:

Precedent text- Precedent phrase - Precedent name

Precedent situation - Precedent phrase- Precedent name

d) Discuss the following:

-the problem of naming in view of history

-static and dynamic meaning in naming

-precedent phenomena: general remarks

Задание к практическому занятию 2

Some Ideas About Cultural Content of the Concept of Beauty:

a). Read the article by John Simons and render it in English.

Концепция красоты у Шиллера и Достоевского

С момента опубликования работы Д. Чижевского "Шиллер и Братья Карамазовы" постоянно увеличивается число исследо­ваний, в центре которых взаимоотношения этих двух писателей. В некоторых обращается внимание на параллелизм в обрисовке характеров, сходство темы и мотивации. В других рассматрива­ется возможность использования философских трактатов Шил­лера для прояснения тех пружин, которые приводят в движение все, что происходит в романах. Именно с этих позиций будет рассмотрено ниже понятие красоты, предмет до сих пор недоста­точно изученный. Сопоставляя взгляды этих писателей на "красоту", я ставил целью не только выявить общее, но, что гораздо важнее, показать, что за слаборазработанными вопросами у Достоевского обнаруживается связь с Шиллеровскими философскими сочинениями, а также прояснить часто загадочное поведение его действующих лиц.

В кратком виде эта проблема сформулирована в шестнадца­том письме "Об эстетическом воспитании человека" (1795). В нем Шиллер говорит о двух типах прекрасного, которые он опре­деляет как schmelzend иenergisch, т. е. как "расслабляющий" и "дающий силу". С помощью первого можно успокоить тех, кто испытывает напряжение, избыток энергии или склонен к эмо­циональным всплескам. Второй — стимулирует тех, кто скло­нен к легкомыслию и праздности. Он не уделяет много места в этом сочинении второму типу, поскольку считает, что тема заслуживает отдельного рассмотрения. "О патетическом" (1801) — посвящено этому вопросу. В этом сочинении Шиллер соединяет тип "деятельной, дающей силу" красоты с поняти­ем "возвышенного", которое он далее подразделяет на "нрав­ственное" и "эстетическое". Эти специальные термины XVIII века в сегодняшнем языке эстетики принимают форму светлой и темной сторон красоты. В соответствии с этим мое исследование состоит из двух частей. Во-первых, я раскрываю взгляды упомянутых авторов на условно светлую сторону пре­красного, которое вызывает в созерцателе чувство радости и наслаждения и способствует формированию более гармонич­ного духа (psyche). Во второй части рассматривается увлечен­ность Шиллера и Достоевского другой, темной стороной пре­красного. Этим устанавливается некое близкое родство прекрас­ного, ужасного и безобразного. В случае художественного воплощения они способны вызвать приятное чувство удивле­ния и ужаса в зрителях и пробудить последних от летаргичес­кого сна. Давайте обратимся к тому, как Достоевский понима­ет красоту в традиционном смысле.

Подобно Шиллеру, Достоевский признает за красотой доб­рое начало. Он обнаруживает, что люди тянутся к прекрасному в критические минуты, когда они не в ладах с реальностью или когда они оказываются в состоянии дисгармонии. Они при­бегают к прекрасному как средству, обладающему возрождаю­щей силой: "Красота присуща всему здоровому, т. е. всему наи­более жизнеспособному, и является потребностью человечес­кого организма. Она — сама гармония; она обещает спокойствие; она олицетворяет собой человеческий идеал и идеалы всего человечества".

Упоминая Шиллера, он также говорит о двойственности красоты. В своих дневниковых записках о романе "Идиот", Достоевский отмечает: "Красота спасет мир — две формы кра­соты". Он не развивает эту мысль, и сделанная им запись до сих пор остается непонятой читателями. Мокульский полага­ет, что автор хотел в своем романе противопоставить два типа красоты: красоту Настасьи Филипповны как красоту упадка и деградации и невинную красоту Аглаи. Он также полагает, что сказанное подтверждается судьбой тех, кто попадает в орбиту притяжения этих двух женщин. Действительно, неурав­новешенное поведение Настасьи Филипповны каждому дос­тавляет неприятности, а характер Аглаи оказывает успокаи­вающее воздействие. Пис считает, что эту картину можно ус­ложнить введением еще одной категории — нравственной красоты, воплощенной в образе князя Мышкина и противо­поставленной физической красоте обеих женщин. Пис гово­рит о "князе Мышкине, что он "пример красоты и положи­тельного человека". У Писа есть интересное замечание о том, как Достоевский пользуется словом "прекрасное", говоря о добре, т. е. термином, используемом в эстетике по отноше­нию к красоте. Итак, о положительном, добром человеке мож­но говорить как о "красивом человеке". Отсюда всего один шаг до Шиллеровского понимания shone Seele — "прекрасной души", однако, этого шага Пис не делает. Если вспомнить, что вXVIII веке эстетика в Германии оперировала словами schon и frei (душа и свобода) как очень близкими понятиями, то приведенное выше наблюдение Писа становится еще бо­лее значительным. Тем не менее ни одним из данных толкова­ний красоты нельзя сблизить Шиллера и Достоевского. Не вдаваясь в более детальные рассуждения о двух названных типах, попробую дать свое, более точное объяснение. Я хотел бы показать, что не только существует некая связь с двумя типами красоты, признаваемыми эстетикой и разработанны­ми Шиллером, но и с двумя различными реакциями, вызы­ваемыми у зрителя. Для этого потребуется кратко остановить­ся на основных положениях сочинения Шиллера "Об эстети­ческом воспитании человека" (1795). Это позволит также яснее понять источники взглядов Достоевского.

Шиллеровские письма об эстетическом образовании — это программа улучшения общества с помощью искусства через образование каждого гражданина. Его тщательный анализ все­го, что вредит здоровью общества, а также мелкие детали самой программы не нуждаются в нашем рассмотрении. Достаточно сказать, что прежде чем в обществе возникнут заметные пере­мены к лучшему, необходимо измениться сначала самим лю­дям. Для достижения этого необходимо развиться способности рационально мыслить, причем настолько значительно, чтобы эта способность могла противостоять сильному и агрессивно­му инстинкту, нейтрализуя его. В результате ни чувство, ни разум не подчиняют себе человека, но действуют вместе: "Beide Gesetzgebungen sollen vollkommenunabhangig von einander bestehen, und dennoch vollkommeneinig sein". В девятом письме имеется указание на средство достижения указанного равно­весия: "Dieses Werkzeug ist dieschone Kunst". По мнению Шил­лера, наиболее важный эффект прекрасного заключается в том, что оно приводит в состояние гармонии рациональное и чув­ственное в человеке. Он выделяет три основные движущие силы в человеке: воздействие на него через форму, воздействие био­логическое материальное, а также стремление к игре, риску. Хотя Treib обычно переводится как "мотив", "стимул", нельзя удовлетвориться таким толкованием. В зависимости от контек­ста это слово может значить: "инстинкт", "стимул", "жела­ние", "стремление", "сила", "энергия", "тенденция". ВXVIII веке этим словом не только обозначали инстинкт у че­ловека и животного, но также и более тонкие и интеллекту­альные устремления — der gottliche Bildungstrieb,стремление к божественному постижению. Некоторые современники оспа­ривали такое употребление слова Treibввиду имеющихся у него низменных ассоциаций. Хотя Шиллеру было известно об этих возражениях в момент написания своих писем для Die Horen, он решил оставить это слово именно потому, что в нем и была ассоциация с основными и примитивными побуждениями. Та­кое отождествление игры и красоты с инстинктом у Шиллера и сделало его теорию привлекательной для Достоевского, пи­савшего: "Искусство так же необходимо человеку, как потреб­ность в еде и питье. Потребность в красоте и творчестве, ее создающем, неотделима от человека и без нее человек, воз­можно, отказался бы жить в этом мире. Человек жаждет красо­ты, находит и принимает ее без всяких условий, просто потому что она — красота и поклоняется ей без трепета, не спраши­вая, зачем она нужна, или что можно на нее купить".

В теории Шиллера существенное место занимает "игра", ко­торую он определяет как занятие без видимой цели. Мы поем, танцуем и играем в разные игры просто для удовольствия. Оче­видно, что удовольствие появляется именно в силу отсутствия утилитарных интересов. Если бы интерес появился, удоволь­ствие исчезло бы, так как все внимание переключилось бы на его достижение (удовольствия). И тогда игра становится рабо­той. Игра приносит чистое удовольствие, потому что в ней в равной мере присутствует разум и чувство. Поскольку игра и красота состоят из тех же компонентов, они имеют одинако­вое синтезирующее воздействие на псюхе (душу). Короче гово­ря, когда мы созерцаем красивый предмет или играем, мы испытываем наслаждение гармонией. Шиллеровская програм­ма воспитания искусством, следовательно, зиждется на удо­вольствии как основном принципе. Достоевский придержива­ется сходной точки зрения. В сжатой форме ее мы обнаружива­ем в "Братьях Карамазовых", когда Алеша рассказывает Коле Красоткину о том, как хорошо играть: "А игра в войну у моло­дых людей, в рекреационное время, или там в разбойники — это ведь тоже зарождающееся искусство, зарождающаяся по­требность искусства в юной душе, и эти игры иногда даже со­чиняются складнее, чем представления в театре, только в том разница, что в театр ездят смотреть актеров, а тут молодежь сами актеры. Но это только естественно".

b). Single out the constituents of the concept “Beauty” according to prof Vorkachev and prof Karasic approach.

Задание к практическому занятию 3

House/ home as a Concept:

a) Render the extract from the article by T. V. Zhuravlejva in English.

Весьма интересную характеристику русского национального дискурса (литературного и философского) даёт известный учёный – философ Ф. Гиренок: «…русская философия изначально была литературой! ...самые крупные русские философы – это литераторы…. … Первая особенность русского дискурса состоит в том, что истина связана не со словом, а с образом. Истину скорее можно увидеть, чем помыслить…Истина – от Бога. Она - не продукт мышления. Такого рода представления ограничивают возможности отвлечённого понятийного мышления, не сопровождаемого созерцанием. …эта «картинность» русского дискурса делает его близким литературе и одновременно далёким от терминологической философии. Русская философия существует как вид литературы. И в этом смысле она отдаёт предпочтение языку повествования, в тот время как европейская философия создаётся в форме науки, ориентированной на язык исследования…. Русское мышление не рефлексивно. Оно является по преимуществу содержательным. И в этом смысле оно неустойчиво. Текуче. Аморфно».

Переосмысливая данное сопоставление литературы и философии в национальном дискурсе, можно сделать и другое утверждение: русский литературный дискурс философичен по своей сути. Ведь именно Достоевский реализовывал философские проекты ещё до Ницше и Фромма!

В свете вышеизложенного перспективы восприятия художественного текста представляются всё более расширяющимися при анализе его в рамках дискурса. По сути своей эти перспективы превращаются в многоуровневый процесс восприятия, понимания, интерпретации – процесс, в котором автор, читатель и текст выступают полноправными участниками.

Обратимся к некоторым примерам трактовки смысла художественного текста русского дискурса.

Так, осмысление одной из глобальных идей пьесы М. Булгакова «Дни Турбиных», на наш взгляд, восходит к значимому концепту культуры – концепту «дом». При первичном же восприятии пьесы или при прочтении её неподготовленным читателем, можно вычленить следующие уровни понимания главного смысла: пьеса о революции, о «белых» и «красных», о терроре, и пр.

Однако, обращение к национальному философскому дискурсу, и, кроме того, знание некоторых фактов биографии самого писателя, позволяет сделать вывод о том, что М. Булгаков в своём творчестве часто аппелирует к воззрениям Григория Сковороды – создателя теории «трёх миров»: мира земного, библейского и космического (на что, в частности, указывает исследователь творчества М. Булгакова И. Л. Галинская). Человеческий мир – мир земной представлен пространственно в пьесе в виде дома, объединяющего всех главных действующих лиц. Дом – это точка отсчёта для всех Турбинных, это – «пункт назначения» для Лариосика, это – временное пристанище для Мышлаевского и всех старых друзей Турбинных. Дом - это - кремовые шторы, ёлка на Рождество, крахмальная скатерть и чисто вымытые полы (потому что Елена не может иначе), несмотря на разруху, смерть, Петлюру. Но дом этот жив не уютным мирком, он жив, благодаря тому, что являет собой некую духовную сущность, и в этом смысле восходит к «мирам горним» - библейскому, а затем и космическому. Дом даёт силы пережить происходящее: он и материален и духовен, связан не просто со словом и именем, но с образом.

Полнее понять значимость философского глубинного смысла, заложенного в пьесе, помогает и интерпретация другого произведения писателя - романа «Мастер и Маргарита». Теория «трёх миров» является стержнем, вокруг которого роман выстроен. «Вечный дом» Мастера – это и микро – и макрокосм одновременно, именно в нём обретают герои покой. Образ дома - земного и вечного так же двойственен, как и два тела, два сердца человека (по Г. Сковороде): ведь человек есть «внешний» и «внутренний», и последний никогда не погибает, а только лишается своего земного тела.

Исследование проблемы понимания текста и его интерпретации в русле национального литературно – философского дискурса позволяет, на наш взгляд, хотя бы условно, выйти за жанровые рамки.

Так, в отличие от приведённых выше примеров, первичное прочтение рассказа Р. Брэдбери “There Will ComeSoft Rains” , казалось бы, не оставляет возможности для вычленения каких бы то ни было глубинных философских смыслов. Речь здесь также идёт о доме – доме, разрушенном в результате атомного взрыва. «Умирание» дома, оставшегося без хозяев, и составляет сюжет рассказа.

b). Read the story “There Will Come Soft Rains”by R. Bradberry and give an interpretation of the concept House/ Home as it is depicted in the story. Answer the questionwhether the concept of the House/ Home as a global concept of mankind has changed in a flow of time?

There Will Come Soft Rains

R. Bradberry

AUGUST 2О26.

In the living-room the voice-clock sang, Tick-took, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating its sounds into the emptiness.Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interiors eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny-side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

'Today is August 4, 2026,' said a second voice from the

kitchen ceiling, 'in the city of Allendale, California.' It re­peated the date three times for memory's sake. 'Today is Mr Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills.'

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.

Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! but no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: 'Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today ...' And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.

Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again.

At eight-thirty the eggs were shrivelled and the toast was like stone. An aluminium wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.

Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were a-crawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.

Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rabble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.

Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of bright­ness. The water pelted window-panes, running down thecharred west side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and oppo­site him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.

The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball - remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer.

The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.

Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace! How carefully it had inquired, 'Who goes there? What's the password?' and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.

It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.

Twelve noon.

A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.

The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.

For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall-panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into thesighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.

The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here.

It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odour and the scent of maple syrup.

The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlour for an hour.

Two o'clock, sang a voice.

Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown grey leaves in an electrical wind.

Two-fifteen.

The dog was gone.

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.

Two thirty-five.

Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing-cards fluttered on to pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.

But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.

At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the panelled walls.

Four-thirty.

The nursery walls glowed.

Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink ante­lopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon colour and fantasy. Hidden films clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminium roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot, still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a darkbellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched weed, mile on mile, and warm, endless sky. The animals drew away into thornbrakes and water-holes. It was the children's hour.

Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.

Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft grey ash on it, smoking, waiting.

Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.

Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling:

'Mrs McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?'

The house was silent.

The voice said at last, 'Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random.' Quiet music rose to back the voice. 'Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favourite....

'There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

The swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.'

The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.

At ten o'clock the house began to die. The wind blew. A falling tree-bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!

'Fire!' screamed a voice. The house-lights flashed, water-pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: 'Fire, fire, fire!'

The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat, and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.

The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water-rats squeaked from the walls, pistolled their water, and ran for more. And the wall-sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.

But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colours of drapes!

And then, reinforcements.

From attic trap-doors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical.

The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear, cold venom of green froth.But the fire was clever. It had sent flame outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze shrapnel on the beams.

The fire rushed back into every closet and felt the clothes hung there.

The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.

In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraifes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing colour, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off towards a distant steaming river...

Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announ­cing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things hap­pening, like a clock-shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film-spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.

The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.

In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon

strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!

The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, arm-chair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under.

Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.

Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam:

'Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is ...'

Задание к практическому занятию 4.

Colour Terms in Cross- Culturul Studies. ColourCollocations as an Object of Confrontational Study:

a). Look at the two colour spaces, make your own lists of current collocations with each of them; find some illustrations in poetry and fiction, pay attention to the etymology of the colour names in Russian and English.

In Russian:

• белый

• лимонный

• розовый

• румяный

• огненный • рыжий

• ржавый • алый • пурпурный • фиолетовый

• оранжевый • рдяный • рубиновый • пунцовый • лиловый

• медный

•шарлаховый •багряный

• пламенный

• кирпичный • красный • карминовый • карминовый

• кумачный • гранатовый

• киноварный • кровавый

• червоный • малиновый

• вишневый • багровый • бордовый

• черный

In English:

• white

• pink

• yellow

• rosy

• salmon • scarlet

• raspberry • lilack

• orange • carrot • lilac

• ochre • brass • RED • strawberry • purple • violet

• ruddy

• crimson

• russus •tan • auburn • ruby

• mahogany • russet

• damson, damascene (black, dark-bluish, purple, or yellow plum) damascus

• brown • blue

• black

b). Read the article by Umberto Eco “How Culture Conditions the Colours We See” and render it in Russian.

How Culture Conditions the Colours We See

By Umberto Eco

Colour is not an easy matter. James Gibson, in "The Senses Con­sidered as Perceptual Systems", says that "the meaning of the term colour is one of the worst muddles in the history of science". If one uses the term "colour" to mean the pigmentation of substances in the environment, one has not said anything about our chromatic per­ception. Johannes Itten, in his "Kunst der Farbe", distinguishes be­tween pigments as chromatic reality and our perceptual response as chromatic effect. The chromatic effect, it seems, depends on many factors: the nature of surfaces, light, contrast between objects, previ­ous knowledge, and so on.

I do not have any competence about pigments and I have very confused ideas about the laws governing chromatic effect; moreover I am neither apainter, nor an art critic. My personal relationship with the coloured world is a private affair as much as my sexual activity, and I am not supposed to entertain my readers with my personal reactivity towards the polychromous theatre of the world. Thus, as far as colours are concerned, I take the privilege of consi­dering myself a blind man. I shall be writing about colours from a merely theoretical point of view, namely, from the point of view of a general semiotic approach.

Since I have assumed myself to be blind or at least a Daltonist, I shall mistrust my visual experience. I shall start from a verbal text, chapter 26, Book II, of Aulus Gellius' "Noctes Acticae", a Latin encyclopaedia of the second century a. d.

To deal with colours by making recourse to a text of this period is rather challenging. We are facing linguistic terms for colours, but we do not know what chromatic effects these words refer to. We know much about Roman sculpture and architecture, but very little about Roman painting. The colours we see today in Pompeii are not the colours the Pompeians saw; even if the pigments are the same, the chromatic responses are not. In the nineteenth century, Gladstone suggested that Greeks were unable to distinguish blue from yellow. Goetz and many others assumed that Latin speakers did not distinguish blue from green. I have found also somewhere that Egyptians used blue in their paintings but had no linguistic term to designate it, and that Assyrians, in order to name the colour blue, could do no better than transform the noun "uknu", naming lapis lazuli, into an adjective.

All of this is highly speculative, but we need not test every case. Let me concentrate on the following passage from Aulus Gellius. The reader is advised to hold his temper, since the passage is highly confusing.

Gellius is reporting a conversation he had with Fronto, a poet and grammarian, and Favorinus, a philosopher. Favorinus remarked that eyes are able to isolate more colours than words can name. Red (rufus) and green (viridis), he said, have only two names but many species. He was, without knowing it, introducing the contemporary scientific distinction between identification (understood as categori­zation) and discrimination, of which I shall speak later.

Favorinus continues: rufus is a name, but what a difference bet­ween the red of blood, the red of purple, the red of saffron, and the red of gold! They are all differences of red but, in order to define them, Latin can only make recourse to adjectives derived from the names of objects, thus callingflammeus the red of fire, sanguineus the red of blood, croceusthe red of saffron, aureus the red of gold. Greek has more names, Favorinus says, but Fronto replies that Latin, too, has many colour terms and that, in order to designate russus andruber (red), one can also use fulvus, flavus, rubidus, poeniceus, ruti-lus, luteus, spadix.

Now if one looks at the whole history of Latin literature, one notices that fulvus is associated by Virgil and other authors with the lion's mane, with sand, wolves, gold, eagles, but also with jasper. Flavae, in Virgil, are the hair of the blond Dido, as well as olive leaves; and the Tiber river, because of the yellow-grey mud polluting its waters, was commonly called flavus. The other terms all refer to various gradations of red, from pale rose to dark red: notice, for instance, that luteus, which Fronto defines as "diluted red", is re­ferred by Pliny to the egg-yolk and by Catullus to poppies.

In order to add more precision, Fronto says thai fulvus is a mixture of red and green, while flavus is a mixture of green, red and white. Fronto then quotes another example from Virgil (Georgica, III, 82) where a horse (commonly interpreted by philologists as a dapple-grey horse) is glaucus. Now glaucus in Latin tradition stands for green­ish, light-green, blue-green and grey-blue; Virgil uses this adjective also for willow trees and for ulva or sea lettuce, as well as for waters. Fronto says that Virgil could also have used for his same purpose (his grey horse)caerulus. Now this term is usually associated with the sea, skies, the eyes of Minerva, watermelons and cucumbers (Propertius), while Juvenal employs it to describe some sort of rye bread.

And things get no better with viridis (from which comes the Ita­lian verde, green), since in the whole of Latin tradition, one can find vindis associated with grass, skies, parrots, sea, trees.

I have suggested that Latin did not clearly distinguish blue from green, but Favorinus gives us the impression that Latin users did not even distinguish blue-green from red, since he quotes Ennius ("An-nales", XIV, 372-3) who describes the sea at the same time as cae-ruleus and flavus as marble. Favorinus agrees with this, since — he says — Fronto had previously described flavus as a mixture of green and white. But one should remember that, as a matter of fact, Fronto had said that flavus was green, white and red, and a few lines before that, had classified flavus among various gradations of red!

Let me exclude any explanation in terms of colour blindness. Too easy. Gellius and his friends were erudites; they were not describing their own perceptions, they were elaborating upon literary texts coming from different centuries. Can one say that they were considering cases of poetic invention — where, by a provocative use of language, fresh and uncommon impressions are vividly depicted? If that were the case, we would expect from them more excitation, more marvel, more appreciation for these stylistic tours de force. On the contrary, they propose all these cases as examples of the most correct and precise use of language. Thus the puzzle we are faced with is neither a psychological nor an aesthetic one: it is a cultural one, and as such it is filtered through a linguistic system. We are dealing with verbal language in so far as it conveys notions about visual experiences, and we must, then, understand how verbal language makes the non-ver­bal experience recognizable, speakable and effable.

To solve Aulus Gellius' puzzle, we must pass through the semio-tic structure of language. As a matter of fact, colour blindness itself represents a social puzzle, difficult both to solve and to detect, be­cause of linguistic reasons.

Rome, in the second century a. d., was a very crowded crossroads of many cultures. The Empire controlled Europe from Spain to the Rhine, from England to North Africa and theMiddle East. All these cultures, with their own chromatic sensitivities, were present in the Roman crucible. Diachronically speaking, Aulus Gellius was trying to put together the codes of at least two centuries of Latin literature and, synchronically speaking, the codes of different non-Latin cul­tures. Gellius must have been considering diverse and possibly con­trasting cultural segmentations of the chromatic field. This would ex­plain the contradictions in his analysis and the chromatic uneasiness felt by the modern reader. His colour-show is not a coherent one: we seem to be watching a flickering TV screen, with something wrong in the electronic circuits, where tints mix up and the same face shifts, in the space of a few seconds, from yellow to orange or green. Deter­mined by his cultural information, Gellius cannot trust to his perso­nal perceptions, if any, and appears eager to see gold as red as fire, and saffron as yellow as the greenish shade of a blue horse.

We do not know and we shall never know how Gellius really perceived his Umwelt; unfortunately, our only evidence of what he saw and thought is what he said. I suspect that he was prisoner of his cultural mish-mash.

Yet it also seems to me (but obviously this hypothesis should be tested on more texts) that Latin poets were less sensitive to clear-cut spectral oppositions or gradations, and more sensitive to slight mix­tures of spectrally distant hues. In other words, they were not inte­rested in pigments but in perceptual effects due to the combined action of light, surfaces, the nature and purposes of objects. Thus a sword canbefulva as jasper because the poet sees the red of the blood it may spill. That is why such descriptions remind us more of certain paintings of Franz Marc or of the early Kandinsky than of a scientific chromatic polyhedron. As a decadent man of culture, Gellius tends to interpret poetic creativity and invention as a socially accepted code and is not interested in the relationships which colours had with other content oppositions in different cultural systems. It would be interesting to transform a given Latin chromatic system, that of Virgil for example, into a structure more or less like the one I proposed for the Hanunoo system, where the names of hues must be associated to opposition between dark and light (also in psychological and moral sense), euphoric and dysphoric, excitation and calm, and so on. The names of colours, taken in themselves, have no precise chromatic content: they must be viewed within the general context of many interacting semiotic systems.

Are we, in any sense, freer than Gellius from the armour of our culture? We are animals who can discriminate colours, but we are, above all, cultural animals.

Human societies do not only speak of colours, but also with co­lours. We frequently use colours as semiotic devices: we communicate with flags, traffic lights, road signs, various kinds of emblems.

Now a socio-semioric study of national flags remarks that national flags make use of only seven colours: red, blue, green, yellow, oran­ge, black and white. For physical reasons, the proportion of these colours is as follows:

Orange, hardly distinguishable from red, is rarely used. What counts in the perception of a flag is categorization, not discrimination. If we were to look up the flags of the Scandinavian countries, we would realize that the blue of the Swedish and Finnish flags (which is light) is different from the blue of the Icelandic and Norwegian ones (which is dark). Now look at Sweden's yellow cross on a light blue field — there is not a flag in the world with a yellow cross on a dark blue background, and for good reason. Everyone would recognize such a flag as the symbol for Sweden. (And, thinking ofNorway's dark blue cross on a red field, a flag with a light blue cross on red would similarly be recognized as Norway's symbol.) In national flags, categorization overwhelms discrimination. This simplification exists not only for rea­sons of easier perception: such "easier perception" is supported by a previous cultural coding by virtue of which certain colours form a clear-cut system of oppositional units which are, in turn, clearly correlated with another system concerning values or abstract ideas.

In the study on national flags I have been referring to, it is inte­resting to check the symbolic values assigned by different countries to the same colour. Red, for example, symbolizes bravery, blood and courage in many countries (Afghanistan,Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Burundi, Chile, Ecuador, etc.), but it also represents animals in Bolivia, faith in Ethiopia, soil inDahomey. White, almost universal­ly, stands for peace, hope and purity, but in Congo Kinshasa, hope is represented by blue which, for the majority of countries, stands for sky, sea and rivers. The colours of national flags are not colours: physical pigments; they are expressions correlated to cultural units, and as such are strongly categorized.

But the real problem is not — or not only — that our discrimina­tion ability is limited to few colours. It is that the system of basic values to be expressed by colours is a limited one. The nature of these values (hope, peace, and so on) is irrelevant: what counts is the structural architecture of their basic oppositions, which must be clear.

One should remark that a greater variety of colours exists, or exis­ted, in heraldry. But heraldry represents a case of an elaborated code for a cultivated minority able to discriminate more colours and asso­ciate more refined names to different hues, as well as memorize nu­merous aristocratic stocks.

The same strong categorization is at work in traffic lights and road signals. A traffic light can work and transmit its orders irrespective of the shade of green, red or yellow that, in terms of wavelengths, it emits. One would certainly stop at a traffic light with an orange light on, and continue moving even though the green light were a shade of blue. (Note that in the traffic light code, the signification of colours is reinforced by the position of the lights, which reduces the relevance of hues — and helps the colour-blind.) In any case, here too, in traffic regulation, people can only recognize a limited system of obli­gations. I do not think it is possible to found a system of communica­tion on a subtle discrimination between colours too close to each other in the spectrum. This may seem strange since, as I have said, we potentially have a great capacity for discrimination, and with ten million colours it would be interesting to compose a language more rich and powerful than the verbal one, based as it is upon no more than forty phonemes. But the phonemes of verbal language are, in fact, a reasonable reduction of the great variety of possible sounds that our phonatory apparatus can produce. The seven colours of flags and signals are probably the most a human culture can recognize — by a general agreement as to categorizable expressive entities. This agreement has come about, probably, because verbal language has shaped our average sensitivity according to the macroscopic segmen­tation represented by the seven colours of the rainbow which is a Western conventional way of segmentation. The agreement has also come about because average verbal language, with its polysemy, works better for common people when many names stand synonymously for few basic concepts, rather than the opposite, when few names stand homonymously for thousands of concepts.

The fact that a painter (think of Paul Klee) can recognize and name more colours, the fact that verbal language itself is able not only to designate hundreds of nuances, but also describe unheard-of tints by examples, periphrases and poetic ingenuity — all this repre­sents a series of cases of elaborated codes. It is common to every society to have members able to escape the determination of the rules, to propose new rules, to behave beyond the rules.

In everyday life, our reactivity to colour demonstrates a sort of inner and profound solidarity between semiotic systems. Just as lan­guage is determined by the way in which society sets up systems of values, things and ideas, so our chromatic perception is determined by language. You may look up your flags again: suppose there is a football match between Italy andHolland. One will distinguish the

Dutch flag from the Italian one, even though the red of either of them, or of both, were looking orange. If, on the contrary, the match were between Italy and Ireland, the Italian flag would be characterized by a dark red, since white, green and orange are the Irish colours.

If one wants to oppose, for shorthand purposes, a Mondrian to a Kandinsky, Mondrian would be recognizable even though its reds were more or less orange, but in the course of an aesthetic discourse on Mondrian, and in judging the correctness of an art book's repro­duction, one should spend much careful analysis in discriminating the better and more faithful colour among Mondrian reproductions.

Thus the artistic activity, be it the poetry of Virgil or the research on pigments by Mondrian, works against social codes and collective categorization, in order to produce a more refined social conscious­ness of our cultural way of defining contents.

If people are eager to fight for a red, white and blue flag, then people must be ready to die even though its red, due to the action of atmospheric factors, has become pinkish. Only artists are ready to spend their lives imagining (to quote James Joyce) "an opening flower breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of light by wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other".